Losing Trust In Reality Television

Given the abundance of news options in modern society, it’s unlikely that we’ll be wholly deceived about something for very long. Whether I feel deceived when I learn that certain articles in the New Republic were fiction or whether I feel deceived when I learn that sometimes lines have been fed to the subjects of a reality television show, in either case, I am duped. Losing trust in reality television is one thing. Whichever news outlet we prefer, be it one in print, on television, or online, we depend on journalists to convey information about local and world events to us. Forbes.com formed an effective check on the New Republic, for example. Yet Stephen Glass was able to pass off outrageous stories as fact for years before anyone, at the New Republic or elsewhere in the media, caught on. Further, while it’s easy enough for a newspaper to go back and recheck the articles of a mendacious reporter, our opinions aren’t so easily vetted. If it’s possible that some of the facts that underlie our judgments are untrue, can we be sure we’ve supported the right candidate, advocated the right decision? These hypothetical questions played out in reality in the wake of the Iraq War. When it was learned that Iraq did not, in contrast to media reports and government assurances, possess weapons of mass destruction, the entire rationale for the war came into question. In this case, it didn’t take a Jayson Blair to compromise the veracity of respected news outlets. The New York Times, for example, admitted that some of its reporting on Iraq’s weapons had been flawed.

In Your Corner

And when it came to assigning responsibility for the misinformation that had been parroted and reported, a game of pass the buck ensued, sadly reminiscent of what occurs when a memoir turns out to be fake. As individuals, of course, we can’t find out the news of the world for ourselves. In the end, we have to rely on journalists to bring us news, much as we rely on friends or coworkers to tell us the weather or if our tie is crooked. We can’t function as informed citizens without some degree of trust, any more than we could function as neighbors or community members without it. It seems clear, though, that healthy skepticism is in order. Even the most trusted media outlets are, in the end, staffed by individuals, and some individuals, as we have seen throughout The Liar in Your Life, simply can’t be trusted at all. But as we have also seen, these individuals are the exception. It’s reasonable to hope that the bulk of people who commit themselves to ethical and objective reporting have every intention of upholding that commitment. In 1999, a major drugstore chain paid $1.5 million in a settlement over allegations by a California district attorney that it had sold expired goods, including baby formula and contraceptives, at dozens of its stores. Eight years later, the New York State attorney general announced plans to sue this same drugstore chain for selling expired food and drugs at, according to his investigation, 43 percent of its locations. MetLife, among the largest life insurance companies in the United States, settled a class action lawsuit for 1.7

That's The Way

billion. And he served on the board of a New Jersey drug company. There is probably no single anecdote or story that epitomizes the deception that occurs in the business world. As the examples above suggest, lying in the workplace can take myriad forms. Sometimes the lies occur through an institutional practice, such as a pharmacy selling expired drugs in nearly half of its stores. Sometimes the institutional lies are perpetrated by a sales force and directed at customers, employed as enticements to get them to buy life insurance or a used car or a Rolex watch. Workplace lies can be told in the context of job performance, as when a public relations officer assures a financial reporter that a company’s earnings will be good news for stockholders, when in fact they will be anything but. Just as it is varied, lying in the business world is also widespread. It is not limited by industry or market, by size of company or structure, by culture or geography. Even industries that place an emphasis on honesty can be hit with scandals over deceit. Perhaps no place of work holds honesty more sacrosanct than academia. Yet recent years have seen numerous examples of outright fabrication on campuses.

Life Will Throw Curve Balls At You

A scientist at Purdue University, Rusi Taleyarkhan, attracted national attention when he reported in Science that he had achieved nuclear fusion through the manipulation of big bubbles. The results came into question when others could not duplicate the experiment, and a Purdue panel eventually concluded that Taleyarkhan had falsely claimed independent verification of his work. Instances of plagiarism in academia are becoming so common that their revelations sometimes seem mundane. Businesses in which a strict adherence to the truth is not even given the benefit of lip service often have even higher incidences of deception. The nature of the work done in public relations involves shading and tailoring to present facts in a particular form. It’s essentially the same thing a salesperson does when glowingly describing a car or vacuum cleaner or piece of real estate. The law defines this sort of embellishment and exaggeration as puffing, and makes a distinction between it and outright fraud. But the line between deceit and puffing can be easily crossed and, indeed, can sometimes be difficult to identify. Since money is the common element in the many forms of human employment, it makes sense to consider it the common element in the many forms of deception related to that employment. Indeed, some of the most prominent business scandals of recent years seem driven almost solely by the lust for profit. Yet it would be a mistake to consider workplace deception as merely a means to a few more dollars. The complexities of lying on the job resist a simple, singular explanation too.