Opinion |

Discerning fact from fiction grows more difficult — and more critical

As the parent of three grown children, I can say with certainty they have asked me hundreds of questions over the years on many different topics. I can also say they never once asked me about anything having to do with pop culture.

Knowing that, you might question my interest in the recent Hasan Minhaj controversy. If the name is unfamiliar (which it was to me, until last week) Minhaj is a Muslim Indian American comedian. He’s known for telling stories that have social justice overtones and point to his own experiences with racism.

Minhaj uses television clips, mixed with personal photos, that add to the authenticity and appeal of his storytelling. He was considered a leading candidate to be the next host of “The Daily Show.”

Here’s the controversy, which caught my attention: It turns out Minhaj has been lying. A New Yorker exposé, written by Clare Malone, found that his stories are often embellished, or didn’t happen at all. When Malone met up with Minhaj (after weeks of sleuthing), Minhaj acknowledged the fabrications but stood by his work. He said, “Every story in my style is built around a seed of truth,” describing his comedy as an Arnold Palmer: 70 percent emotional truth and 30 percent hyperbole, exaggeration or fiction.

The author of the “On Comedy” column in The New York Times, Jason Zinoman, said the nature of Minhaj’s deceptions was “peculiar.” Minhaj, he wrote, didn’t lie to make himself funnier — he did it to raise the stakes “in the easiest, most self-regarding way possible.” Zinoman believes that lying in comedy isn’t necessarily wrong; the way Minhaj lied is what matters.

In his 2022 Netflix special, “The King’s Jester,” Minhaj told a story about opening a letter with his wife that had white powder in it. The powder spilled on their young daughter, who they rushed to the hospital, fearful it was anthrax. It was not — nor was the story true.

In another tale, Minhaj said his prom date reneged on the day of the dance because her parents didn’t want her seen in photos with a “brown boy.” The woman told Malone that she’d turned down Minhaj (then a close friend) in person, days before the dance. If you’re thinking that’s not so bad (as lies go), the woman said she and her family were subjected to online threats for years.

Stories like these have broader consequences. Noor Noman, an MSNBC columnist, wrote, “Minhaj is the boy who cried racist wolf. Lying about racism does a huge disservice to racial and ethnic minorities, and it will likely only buttress white supremacy, an apparatus designed to belittle and deny racism as it is. Having a high-profile brown person build his career in part around fabricated experiences with racism will only feed into this narrative.”

Zinoman properly concluded, “This genre of fiction is a shortcut to sympathy, an unearned tug at the heartstrings. It’s not a capital crime, but it’s an unnecessary and risky one. Treating trust carelessly has steep costs.”

As a communications professional, I see the Minhaj story as part of a broader trend. We are less able to discern the truth and critically analyze the information (noise) that bombards us daily. A UC San Diego report estimated that Americans consume 11.8 hours of information each day, on average, from digital and analog sources. We’re spending 7.5 hours looking at a screen.

That’s bound to make it harder to distinguish fact from fiction, as was borne out by a 2019 study by the Stanford Graduate School of Education. When asked to look at a website about climate change, nearly all of the high school students surveyed failed to consider how ties to the fossil fuel industry might affect its credibility. When shown a grainy Facebook video of ballot box stuffing (that was actually shot in Russia), more than half felt certain it constituted “strong evidence of voter fraud.”

The findings are particularly worrisome when you consider that today’s high school students are tomorrow’s voters.

Some states are taking positive steps to address the situation. Earlier this year, New Jersey became the first state to mandate instruction on media and information literacy in grades kindergarten through 12. The curriculum will cover the research process and methods for creating and producing information; critical thinking skills; and the difference between facts, points of view, and opinions. It will also address the economic, legal and social issues surrounding the use of information and how to ensure its ethical production.

When it comes to his stage shows, Minhaj told Malone, “the emotional truth is first. The factual truth is secondary.” Thinking about his comment in a broader context, we can’t accept this as reality. And we must become better equipped to tell the two apart.

Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group working to create solutions to challenging issues, including intolerance and incivility. To learn about NCRC’s programming, visit ncrconline.com