Ruth Marcus

2 articles

Opinion

Opinion: When All News Is ‘Fake,’ Whom Do We Trust?

After post-truth comes all-fake. The election of Donald Trump has seen the flowering of the post-truth landscape. Emotion outranks fact; believing makes it so. We are all Tinker Bell now. Clap if you believe in voter fraud. Clap if you doubt a human role in climate change. So when the president-elec

Presidency

Welcome to the Post-Truth Presidency

Welcome to — brace yourself for — the post-truth presidency. “Facts are stubborn things,” said John Adams in 1770, defending British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and ev