Historical Truth
“[Howard] Zinn wanted to write a people’s history because he believed that a national history serves only to justify the existence of the nation, which means, mainly, that it lies, and if it ever tells the truth, it tells it too fast, racing past atrocity to dwell on glory. Zinn’s history did the reverse.”
—Jill Lepore, Harvard history professor and New Yorker staff writer,
remembering Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States
remembering Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States
Editor’s Note: With rare exceptions like Zinn, history (and “truth”) is framed by the powerful.
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Today’s winter wonderland photo
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Pease is teaching a media literacy class this semester, and sent the following to his troops, who are engaged in a project on "truthiness" to evaluate how we know what we think we know about current controversial issues as reported in the news media.
ReplyDeletePease writes:
Dear Smarties:
If you didn't see this morning's Today's WORD on Journalism, check it out on the blog, including the first comment from an unhappy WORDster. Note that "truth" is in the eye of the beholder (corresponding to which of the mass comm theories we've been discussing?), and that people can get easily riled if your "truth" doesn't jibe with their "truth." This is instructive as you think about your truthiness projects, and consider how the heck audiences are supposed to figure out the "real truth."
Historians, by the way, are just journalists who missed deadline. Like journalists, however, historians' version of "truth" is as skewed and subjective in many cases as that of journalists, who are said to write "the first rough draft of history."
TP
Just as a healthy individual is one who is willing to question, and tell the truth about, his/her own actions and motives, the healthy democracy must to the same. And when it fails to do the same it finds itself in a trance so deep that the likes of Sarah Palin and Glen Beck are believed.
ReplyDelete--John