Director’s Corner

May 2024

Dear Tech & Public Policy community:

A great irony of our time is that we live in an information age and yet we are starved for facts. 

We lack crucial details to guide our thinking about some of the most important issues of the day. The U.S. government, for example, has refused to declassify why it believes the country should take the extraordinary step of banning TikTok, an app used by a third of Americans. The conflict in Israel and Gaza was quickly distorted by political messaging and rampant misinformation, making an already nuanced and complicated situation even harder to parse.  At the same time, some media outlets have obfuscated the substance of recent student protests by framing them as a reboot of 1969 or by reducing them to a mere tally of arrests (here, here, here, here and here). And, through it all, a thread of misstatements, lies and general incoherence (along with disinformation of course) has characterized a presidential race led by two unpopular candidates who have both refused to release information relevant to voters.

Our access to unbiased facts is not a condition that is adjacent to a functioning democracy; it is at the very heart of it. Beyond informing our viewpoints, when a public shares a common set of facts, it shares a common reality that allows it to recognize a common set of principles. This commonality can hold together an identity such as the one that has defined America for 247 years. We may not always agree on every principle or interpretation of facts, but we must hold some truths to be true (or, in the words of others, we must hold some truths to be self-evident…). 

Without a sense of foundational truths, and without entities that we can trust to freely deliver information about the world, this commonality is eroded. Our ability to see and hear each other as rational beings is eroded. Instead, we are easily divided by messaging designed to distort, obfuscate, frame and mischaracterize; messaging designed to keep us engaged and online; messaging meant to push us toward one vote or another, rather than keep us educated and informed. 

As you head into summer, I hope that you consider where you get information about the issues you care about and how you decide where you stand on those issues. I hope you will think carefully and critically about how that information is presented to you, what’s missing from it and why. And I hope that you will see the scaffolding and framing, and that you will look beyond them to cobble together the facts.

And if you decide to stand up for something, let it be in pursuit of truth. 

Until next time,

Michelle De Mooy 

Director, Tech & Public Policy Program