Fails to explain how to live in a post fact society. I hate when books tell me that they plan to solve a problem for me - propose a way to navigate the divided streams of information (liberal, conservative, independent, wacky) and then spend less than 10 words on it. ( )

A look at how Americans care more about "truthiness" than truth. As defined by Stephen Colbert, truthiness is "the quality of a thing feeling true without any evidence suggesting it was." The book uses far more examples of the Right using these tactics, but does give some examples on the Left. I would recommend the book to anyone who cares about the media and political discourse in 21st Century America. Don't expect, however, to read this and be encouraged! ( )

While the conclusion of the argument came across as a bit overextended, there is an interesting point to what he is saying. Sheltering ourselves through selective input is not something I would consider to be a new occurence, and limited only to new media. ( )

In his first broadcast, Stephen Colbert introduced a new word to the American lexicon: truthiness (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colb...). This is the idea that something needn’t have facts to support it. Something needs to feel true for us to believe it.

This concept of believing what feels right is the backbone of Manjoo’s book, True Enough. He peppers his book with current and historical cases showing how humans strive to accept information that jives with what they believe. For instance, if you believe that George W. Bush is an American hero and John Kerry is a traitor to the country, you are more likely to want to believe the Swift Boat story. But if you think that Republicans would do anything to help Bush win, you might believe that Bush stole the 2004 elections. Not all of his examples are so heated-my favorite is his example of a study done during World War II in which housewives were being convinced to serve organ meat to their families to help counter-balance war related shortages.

He is not trying to prove that humans are purposefully deceivable or that hoards of idiots are ignoring the facts right in front of their faces. He uses psychological research, examines media examples, and parses statistics and politics to show that we really do think we’re consuming facts-unbiased and good facts-even when we’re listening to a partisan hack job.

The main problem with this book is that I’m being constantly forced to confront my own biases and distrust the messenger, which made parts of his book difficult for me to accept. I’ve always been a distrustful and jaded news consumer (not to mention any other print or electronic media source), and this book only serves to exacerbate that mistrust. But maybe that’s not a bad thing. I wish he had given suggestions on how to combat this trend of spin, half-truths, and distortions or how to improve our ability to spot it (one take-away message from this book-spin and distortions are insidious and hiding everywhere). But maybe knowing is half the battle.

An excellent movie to watch after reading this book is Thank You for Smoking (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/).
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"True Enough" by Farhad Manjoo, is another in the long line of books that argues that new technologies are changing the way we approach knowledge. Manjoo's contention is that the new media has made it much easier for people to selectively choose what information they process. This allows them to develop their own versions of the truth which are essentially impervious to any outside information. It's an interesting argument, but he does a pretty poor job of actually supporting it.

Manjoo provides lots of case studies ranging from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to 9/11 Deniers, to those who think that the 2004 presidential election was fixed. In themselves, these case studies are pretty interesting, but he never really convinces me that any of this is essentially different than what preceded the new media. He asserts that the right-wing talk network is different from what preceded it, but provides little in specific proof. Father Coughlin in the 1930s had his own little right-wing network. He compares the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists with the 2004 election conspiracy theorists, but never really shows the difference between the two.

I'm skeptical that Manjoo can ever make his case -- I firmly think that the whole apocalyptic approach to new media is overblown and alarmist. Still, I'm open to the idea that it might be the case. But the author never really makes the necessary logical connections. He provides lots of specific information and he makes lots of interesting assertions, but if you examine the text closely, he never actually links the two together in any meaningful way. Given the author's presumed defense of some sort of objective truth and logic, this is a rather startling oversight.

There are some pretty broad assertions in the book that took me aback as well. He argues that conservatives are more prone to filter out information that contradicts their ideological mindset more than progressives. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm a progressive. But I've known plenty of fellow leftists who are as dogmatic and closed-minded as any conservative. I've also known some pretty open-minded conservatives. He cites one university study as proof. In the end, I think True Enough is as "true enough" as some of the items he tackles in the book. ( )

Very short and incomplete review on my Blog. ( )