It is becoming increasingly difficult in an ever-fractured society to find uncontested facts with which to make judgments on the critical issues of the day.
It is hard to maintain a functioning democracy without civil discourse. Working against such civil discourse are social media platforms and unrepentant politicians who have no compunction about openly lying if they think it will help keep them in office.
In addition, the so-called legacy media—print, broadcast and even cable—are rapidly losing audiences and influence. In their place, social media, in all its manifestations, has become the primary source of information shaping politics and governing.
That wouldn’t necessarily be bad. But the major social media platforms, particularly the behemoth Facebook, under pressure from President Donald J. Trump, have abandoned any commitment to monitoring information for accuracy or truthfulness. In the digital world, anyone can be a publisher and can distribute their views to the world, regardless of any basis in fact.
Often, the more outrageous the views expressed, the more attention a post gets. The truth is often like roadkill on the side of the highway.
Instead of helping to provide the truth, the Trump Administration outright lies and obfuscates the truth.
For example, despite massive cuts to personnel at the Social Security Administration, a department spokesperson strongly denied that telephone service for telephone callers had been impacted. One TV network put that statement side by side with a Social Security’s website graphic stating that the wait time was 4 hours and 45 minutes. There have been reports of callers waiting on the phone for up to six hours and then being disconnected without ever reaching a Social Security representative.
During President Trump’s last campaign, he vowed to deport “millions” of undocumented immigrants. Once in office, he talked about deporting one million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States during his first year. If he reached one million, it would be two and a half times the high point reached during the Obama Administration
But, without initially providing any detailed breakdown, through nearly the first three months of his administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that 100,000 individuals were deported.
DHS later clarified that the number was a mix of counts from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency within the U.S. and Customs and Border Protection agency, which historically denies entry to undocumented individuals at the nation’s airports and borders.
ICE appears on track to arrest 240,000 undocumented immigrants this year, more than double the number from 2024. But while arrests may be up, deportations are not keeping pace, according to the Migration Policy Institute. At the current rate, 60,000 fewer undocumented immigrants will be deported in Trump’s first year in office than President Joe Biden’s last year.
Why is it so hard to get to the truth?
In part it is because DHS has stopped publishing detailed monthly reports of immigration enforcement activities. Additionally, an independent, Congressional office that regularly issues similar enforcement reports has failed to issue any since Trump took office.
The news media and the public often get access to government documents by using the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which, with certain exemptions, provides that the government must release most government documents. The theory is that the public has a right to know what the government is doing with its tax dollars.
While it claims it is transparent, the Trump Administration actions defy that pledge. Most recently it gutted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agency that manages FOIA requests, purportedly to centralize in one office all such requests received by more than a dozen agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Other FOIA offices shuttered include: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget. The latter office manages the federal budget for the White House, oversees agency operations and performance, coordinates regulations and reviews legislative proposals.
Does that look like transparency?
I understand people voted for President Trump to be a disrupter, to shake things up. He has promised to reduce prices, taxes and grow jobs. But how can we judge what the administration is really doing if we don’t have accurate information?
The president asks us to just believe him. But nearly 100 years ago it was comedian Chico Marx who said “Who are you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”
Bob Rawitch is a former L.A. Times editor and former chair of the First Amendment Coalition
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