You probably saw this coming, but here it is. \u201cPost-truth\u201d\u00a0is the\u00a0word of the year, according to editors of the\u00a0Oxford English Dictionary.<\/p>\n
The term, which is defined as \u201can adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals,\u201d\u00a0popped up during the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, but more infamously during the recent U.S. presidential election. Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries, said\u00a0in a statement,<\/p>\n
\nAfter what felt like\u00a0years of campaigning, facts have never taken such a beating. President-elect Trump was far and away the bigger liar (though his supporters are certain Hillary Clinton was the real liar in the matter) but somehow those lies weren\u2019t\u00a0able to stick to him as they might have in elections\u00a0past. As a result, Trump was able to paint \u201ccrooked Hillary\u201d\u00a0as the least\u00a0trustworthy of the two candidates, though the opposite has been proven to be true.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Even having things on video was no guarantee that he would be exposed\u2014or rather, that anyone would care. Everything became relative, and one controversy led to the next, until controversy fatigue set in and onlookers couldn\u2019t remember what happened yesterday, let alone last week. Surrogates and supporters spun the lie\u00a0and\u00a0defended it until nobody could remember the actual incident.<\/p>\n
The blame, of course, is not only on the candidate, but also on the current media climate. While traditional media that puts a premium on fact-checking and neutrality declined in revenue and employees year after year, upstart sites, along with the power of\u00a0social media, have made the truth harder and harder to come by. In the post-truth world, censorship is no longer as potent as it was, but\u00a0floods of information that relativize and obscure the facts now\u00a0rule of the day.<\/p>\n
The Oxford English Dictionary\u2019s selection does not have to be a word that has been coined this year, but rather a word that captures the public mood, according to Time<\/em>. Last year, the dictionary chose an emoji (the laughing face with tears) as the word of the year. This year, things don\u2019t seem so funny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You probably saw this coming, but here it is. \u201cPost-truth\u201d\u00a0is the\u00a0word of the year, according to editors of the\u00a0Oxford English Dictionary. The term, which is defined as \u201can adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals,\u201d\u00a0popped up during the campaign for Britain to leave the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}