Jorge Lanata on Post-Truth, the Rift, and Journalism

This conversation with Jorge Lanata (1960–2024), one of Argentina’s most influential journalists, takes up post-truth, social media, political polarization, and the role of journalism in a society shot through with informational manipulation. It is a dialogue that speaks directly to the doctrine of the anticipated verdict: how judgment precedes proof, how passion replaces reason, how the algorithm organizes belief.

The interviewee’s opinions are his own; the Conversations section does not imply doctrinal agreement.

Jimmy: What is post-truth?

According to the Real Academia Española, it’s the deliberate distortion of a reality that manipulates beliefs and emotions in order to influence public opinion and social attitudes.

Jorge: Ah…! I’ve actually been wanting to make a doc about post-truth, of all things — look at that. It cracked me up when you brought it up, because it’s one of the subjects we’ve got lined up for H2.

Jimmy: And you see how we’ve got all this exponential growth in intelligence — where maybe artificial intelligence is just an extension of us and not something autonomous and independent. But on the other hand, we’ve got all of this we’re living through with post-truth, which started with Brexit in England, then we had that whole stretch of the U.S. elections with Trump, and it’s as if it were a regression of intelligence. That’s how it feels to me sometimes.

Jorge: That’s a fair way to put it. Look, to talk about Argentina — we could talk about the world — but to talk about Argentina, it started with Kirchnerism. It’s the same thing. We were saying back then, years ago now, “the facts have disappeared here,” and it’s insane for the facts to disappear, because the facts exist! It’s not that any fact whatsoever is open to interpretation.

This is a lighter — it can’t be a horse, it’s a lighter, there’s nothing to argue about. And yet there’s this whole business around post-truth where any delusion gets a hearing.

In Trump’s election this was terrible, and I think it’s what handed him the win. You’ll remember — well, there were examples in Argentina too — but in Trump’s case, Obama’s birth certificate, where they claimed Obama had been born somewhere else. Ridiculous! And besides, there was no way. I can promise you that today you can talk to Trump supporters who’ll still tell you Obama’s birth certificate is fake.

Why is the discourse of what we call post-truth so easy? Because it’s a discourse that has more to do with passion than with reason. So people tend to get worked up in the argument and to try to identify with their own group.

The internet helped that along; social media helped. Because something that started out as friendliness toward the consumer ended up being a trap. They give you the things you’d normally want to read, but of course, you can never come across something you don’t want to read.

Well, the internet made all of that disappear, and so each person is talking inside an elevator where they’re shut in with their own people.

Jimmy: In their silo, in their own bubble.

Jorge: And I also think post-truth had a lot to do with hate speech, above all with antisemitism, but in plenty of other discourses too. The conspiracy about some millionaire or mega-millionaire — Soros, this one, that one — they’re all plots that aren’t so different from the ones in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion forty years ago in Argentina.

It has to do with the lie, but it also has to do with the speed of the networks and this readiness people have to sign on to emotional rather than rational discourse.

Jimmy: And hasn’t it always been this way? When culture begins, isn’t culture based on making up stories?

Jorge: No, fair enough. But I think you have to distinguish the fable from history. The fable isn’t the same as history, myths aren’t the same as history — myths are in history, but they aren’t history.

We know that such-and-such battle, back in the days of the Roman Empire, took place in such-and-such year, and why? Because there’s indirect testimony — from people who wrote on the subject, poets who sang that battle’s praises, pots from that era showing that… There’s a whole pile of testimony!

Jimmy: And then there are a million possible narratives.

Jorge: Yes, but the narrative always has to be set against the facts, against some fact, against an approximation of the facts. Narrative is also religion, in any case, any religion. But religion has facts too. There always has to be some reason when you communicate a fact. You can’t communicate just anything. Actually you can — the problem is how long the thing you communicate lasts.

This forced us — journalists — to work more seriously. To have to check things before we put them out.

The way to fight post-truth is with information — there’s no other way. And when does information work? It works when it’s true and when time passes. As time passes, the truth ends up coming to light.

Jimmy: Now, the journalist’s role — to what extent are you also under pressure to break the story a certain way?

Jorge: With the internet there’s something developing — I think the internet, after the appearance of the printing press, is the most important invention in the history of man. It’s the most democratizing. Today we’re two seconds away from a global library. That never happened, never. But like everything, it’s made by man. It has bad things, it has good things. Machines have no morals — machines are good or they’re bad.

There’s something that developed in journalism that you could call “the ideology of the click.” If you run “the prime minister screwed a pig,” everyone’s going to read it. If you run “there was a NATO meeting,” nobody reads it. That depends on what kind of outlet you want to run, but it’s always a choice.

For Google to index them, the way you headline the news has to obey a certain algorithm, and if it doesn’t, Google won’t index them. So free headline-writing is finished — nobody can headline the way they want anymore. You headline according to the algorithm, which is insane, because the algorithm ends up suppressing journalism.

Print newspapers are already gone — we’re at the wake for print papers. We’re at the wake for broadcast TV. Everything else is Made to Measure. Tailored to the consumer.

Jimmy: Because on top of post-truth there’s also painting the press as the enemy, the way Trump does all the time…

Jorge: Obviously, that always happens. In populism, when you’ve got a narrative, the best enemies are us journalists. Because the guys have everything — they have power, they have the cash, they have everything — and we journalists have nothing.

Jimmy: And how does journalism defend itself against that?

Jorge: Look, the only defense we have is the public. The internet pulled off something that’s very striking. Individuals today are equal to institutions. A journalist — just one person — can have the same number of followers as The New York Times, or more. That had never happened in history, never! Today a person is more important than a corporation.

It depends on how you build your credibility. It depends on what your relationship with the public is.

What is our capital? Our capital is the people.

The conversation continues with a discussion of the rift, education, the role of the State, Argentina’s decline, and the need to think critically.

Three lines Jimmy adds in closing:

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
— Alexandre Dumas fils

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
— Daniel J. Boorstin

“Biological blindness keeps us from seeing; ideological blindness keeps us from thinking.”
— Attributed to Octavio Paz (no primary source located)

In memoriam Jorge Lanata (1960–2024).