Journalistic Truth & the Search for Evidence

Philosophers, theologians, scientists and average citizens all have ideas of what constitutes truth. In the past decade, public debates about truth have become disturbingly heated. In fact, civil societies around the world are finding that citizens are increasingly unable to agree upon even basic facts, much less a larger truth that could be derived from those facts

Some people even worry that we are entering a post-truth era. The Oxford Dictionaries made “post-truth” the international word of 2016, defining it as a situation “in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

American comedian Stephen Colbert anticipated this development in 2005 when he satirized the growing battle over facts by coining the word “truthiness.”

It's shown in the inaugural broadcast of his previous late-night talk show, The Colbert Report. (Note: some naughty humor in this clip, but no cursing)

It's notable that after Colbert's broadcast, the word "truthiness" was defined in the dictionary soon after as

"The quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true"

It later became Merriam Webster's word of the year in 2006.