Contending With Truth Deniers

These are tough times for truth tellers. It seems far too many people nowadays refuse to let facts stand in the way of their positions on various issues. Two examples revolve around President Obama: his birthplace and his religion. There are so-called "birthers" who insist Obama was not born in the United States despite concrete evidence to the contrary; and then there are those who happen to be more in the news lately, who insist he is Muslim when in fact he is not. What's the deal? What is it about certain people who simply refuse to be deterred when facts are dropped in their lap that refute their initial claims? Why do they continue to insist black is white, up is down and, in this case, the President was born somewhere he wasn't or follows a religion that he doesn't?

Hard evidence is non-negotiable. As the late U.S. Senate Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "People are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own set of facts." Nevertheless, this twisted phenomenon seems to be the case in this disturbingly polarized country of ours. It is one thing to argue over matters of policy or decisions that leaders make, but to argue over established facts goes beyond rationality. What's a person to do? More to the point, what is a communicator to do? What strategies can and should a communicator follow to contend with publics that seem to be driven by and dwell in their own alternate realities? These are tough questions that do not reflect well on the times in which we live.

While I do not have a surefire response, I do have a couple of suggestions. Firstly, communicators should not give up on the facts or discard them in any messaging they do attempt simply because the facts are being ignored by particular publics. Secondly, communicators should not give into any pressure to shade or alter what is true. One strategy communicators might consider is how they package facts they wish to share with hard-headed publics. For instance, some people process information more completely when it is communicated in writing, while others when it is presented in a more visual format. Another strategy revolves around emotional appeals. While there is nothing wrong with this, communicators must proceed here with caution because this particular strategy, while oft-used, is easily abused. Sadly, there are unethical communicators who devise emotional strategies at the expense of truthful information to generate support. (The run-up to the Iraq war is an example of this.) But combing emotional appeals with hard facts is a powerful combination that can help turn around even the most stubborn of people. The challenge for communicators is to be creative, be persistent, be ethical, and remember that no one message or set of messages guarantees one hundred percent support or agreement. There are those so driven by their own bias and ideology that they will simply not ever let the facts stand in the way of their own narrative.