Humankind has a propensity towards fiction over fact. The first forms of human narrative we have evidence of are all fictional: fables, legends, myths; all of which had the function of legitimating the standing of the tribe in the world and sanction its political setup.

One could argue that it is a form of behaviour that has remained constant throughout human history, till this very day. Perhaps the cause of legitimation has changed (since the American revolution, we substituted God with “the people”) and, rather than tribes, we speak of nations but the mythological-fictional nature of the discourse about legitimation remains.

And very much like those early humans we blur the lines between the fictional and the factual to the extent that we often ‘forget’ the distinction between the two.

This propensity towards fiction is so ingrained in the human that history as a science was only invented in the 19th century and, since then, it has persistently struggled against itself to ascertain the extent to which the historian can authoritatively speak of ‘clean’ facts in clear distinction from fiction perniciously disguised as fact.

Some historians even maintain that sifting ‘pure’ fact, clean from all residues of fiction, is an impossibility. As much as it is an impossibility to speak about objective journalism or the objectivity of the law.

The ‘human sciences’, for the very reason that they are ‘human’, will, therefore, always remain somewhere ‘in between’, having to negotiate with interpretation, unable to claim the certainty that switching on a light bulb can produce light.  

In today’s world, with the proliferation of connectivity, we are inundated with information. Like never before in human history, we are constantly exposed to information, most of which is literally thrown at us without our asking for it (like, for example, the unsolicited advertising are we exposed to on a daily basis).

In our world, the problem is not finding the information but sifting through it all and distinguishing the valuable and reliable from the drivel. It’s a tricky business, especially when fiction is presented in a way that looks more convincing than the real.

Adherents to conspiracy theories come from all social spheres and levels of education; one would be wholly mistaken if one were to dismiss them as hogwash only the uneducated fall for.

If it is hard for historians to discern the authority of a source to establish fact, one can figure what level of difficulty the untrained have to establish the reliability of their source of information.

The problem here goes beyond the fantastical world of conspiracies. Mainstream media, for example, is not immune from trading fiction for fact, not just by inventing ‘facts’ (remember Boris Johnson’s infamous bananas from Brussels?) but also by omitting or re/decontextualising them.

The problem is not finding the information but sifting through it all and distinguishing the reliable from the drivel- Aleks Farrugia

Since Giorgia Meloni was elected Italian premier, when reporting about her, The Guardian always inserts in the article a sly reminder about her post-fascist past, indirectly implying that her political decisions are somehow linked to that ‘fact’.

It’s not that her post-fascist past is not a fact, what makes it ‘beyond factual’ is the causal implication hanging on our understanding of the article.

It is such sly stratagems that are increasingly putting off people from mainstream media: the pretence of providing ‘objective’ journalism when evidently it is not.

That good journalism is ‘objective’ is itself a fiction. Besides the fact that narrating a fact can never be an objective endeavour since, by necessity, it involves an agent (narrator) that has to discriminate (make choices) and mediate (interpretation) to forge a narrative, it is also the case that some of the best journalism ever was actually activist journalism, for example from journalists campaigning for prison reform in the US.

Trainee journalists in Malta would certainly learn some lessons from Manuel Dimech’s reportage on his newspaper Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin about the trial of Rużar Mizzi ‘il-Lajs’, in which he meticulously dissected the case presented by the prosecution in what he considered to be a ‘frame-up’ by the police.

Here the journalist does not even pretend to be ‘objective’. His bias against the judicial system in place at the time is declared upfront and his journalism is intended to expose the corruption of the system with ‘facts’. Émile Zola did a similar exercise in his J’accuse...! about the Dreyfus affair in France.

The 3CL conference held last week.

Being partisan, as with all activist journalism, is not intrinsically bad; if anything it is honest because it presents you upfront with an interpretative tool. Partisan is bad when it trades truths for lies by adulterating facts.

In a world overflowing with information, it has become indispensable that we learn to read through information. It has become an essential life skill.

Last week, a very interesting conference about Disinformation and Young People was organised by 3CL Foundation, attracting academics, media people and youths. My takeout from the event was the urgency and the need for an education in media literacy, not just in schools but also among people who make and teach media.

Surprisingly, it is often the case that those whose profession ought to lead them towards the dismantling of myths or fictions are the ones who propagate them. It would be easy to say that they do so with an agenda but my inclination is that, in reality, it is more a question of laziness or ignorance.

This, however, poses a problem: who will be teaching the skills to young people (and even the not so young) to distinguish between valid sources of information and utter nonsense?

More than ever, media literacy should be taken seriously. The government has established by law a media literacy board, which I chair. It is a very important step forward.

However, more needs to be done, in schools and beyond, reaching to the public. There should also be more academic investment and more involvement from media houses.

It won’t be democratically healthy if media literacy remains just a state concern. It should be every citizen’s concern.