“Should you ask yourselves, ‘How can we know that the oracle was not spoken by Adonai?’ Well, if the prophet speaks in the name of Adonai and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by Adonai; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of her.”
— Deuteronomy 18:21-22.
It appears that even in the Biblical Age, our ancestors confronted the menace of fake news. Unfortunately, judging by the Torah’s reaction to the threat of false prophecy, our forebears appeared to have about as much success dealing with biases, hoaxes, and alternative facts as we do today (namely, very little).
I remember confronting journalistic bias for the first time as a college student, reading a New York Times article about an Israeli missile attack upon Hamas. According to the author, Gaza responded to the Israeli aggression by launching a rocket strike, 45 minutes earlier. The obvious misrepresentation of sequence startled me, especially in such a renowned source of news, but, in retrospect, seems easy enough to understand.
We’re all human, even those who give us the news, and, as humans, we’re not native diagnosticians. We’re native storytellers, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world understandably affect the way we process data.
That doesn’t make bias any less dangerous, however, as an industry of bias and misinformation has evolved over time to influence our opinions. Just last week, a friend passed me an article from a renowned Jewish journalist that called last week’s protests a pogrom. Citing graffiti sprayed upon 7 synagogues and 3 Jewish schools, he claimed that the protests were inherently anti-Semitic. Of course, he neglected to mention the countless graffiti inscriptions upon churches, gas stations, and other businesses across the city, or that only one anti-Semitic inscription was discovered across more than two weeks of protests around Los Angeles.
Again, it’s easy to understand how such misrepresentations find their way to our periodicals and our inboxes. These are stories, told by storytellers at the height of their craft. But we are not helpless as we attempt to craft our own understanding of the world.
Journalistic bias and fake news achieve their greatest success when we neglect to critically examine the assumptions we make about the world, so it remains imperative for us – as learners, as critics, as leaders, and as voters – to be honest with ourselves about those narratives and stories that we desperately want to be true. Only then may we begin to discern where reality lies amidst the minefield of biases, hoaxes, and alternative facts that confronts us.
By being honest with ourselves, we can uncover the false prophecies within our midst and build a community based upon mutual dignity and trust.
— Rabbi Josh Knobel