The New World: Nothing but the Truth certainly made for a provocative start to the week.
It began with a montage featuring (a) the £350 million figure (which Jo Fidgen later said "Was THE Fact of the EU referendum campaign"), (b) Donald Trump claiming that some US Muslims celebrated after 9/11 and (c) Michael Gove on experts.
It began with a montage featuring (a) the £350 million figure (which Jo Fidgen later said "Was THE Fact of the EU referendum campaign"), (b) Donald Trump claiming that some US Muslims celebrated after 9/11 and (c) Michael Gove on experts.
These were the programme's opening "post-truth" examples (all coming from the political Right/pro-Brexit camp).
The £350 million figure featured again later.
The £350 million figure featured again later.
"I'll come clean. I'm a liberal. I'm flipping terrified", said Jo Fidgen.
A series of experts - all left-liberals - duly followed, backing up her line of argument that we can't handle the truth because of our psychology.
"We all live in bubbles, not just liberals", she said (reacting against the internet).
The closing message was: We (liberals and conservatives) need to doubt our own beliefs, stop living in echo chambers and start really listening to people we disagree with.
Clearly there's a good deal of truth in that, and the programme was interesting and persuasive in that regard.
I also smiled at "liberal angst"-suffering Carl Miller of the think tank Demos being made to realise that he followed no right-wing think tanks on Twitter - something he himself didn't seem to realise and which he was now going to put right.
I also smiled at "liberal angst"-suffering Carl Miller of the think tank Demos being made to realise that he followed no right-wing think tanks on Twitter - something he himself didn't seem to realise and which he was now going to put right.
But then Jo's programme was pretty much entirely an echo chamber too (if a somewhat self-questioning one).
All of her 'talking heads' were liberally-minded types, just like her - except for one former US politician (the non-expert 'talking head'), and he was only on because he's a conservative who brought down the ire of conservative America by changing his mind and becoming a believer in man-made global warming.
Plus she herself works inside one of the UK's biggest and most influential echo chambers: the BBC.
Plus she herself works inside one of the UK's biggest and most influential echo chambers: the BBC.
And it's just the kind of 'echo chamber' that would put out a left-liberal-dominated programme like this and then (as Ozfan noted on the previous thread) immediately follow it with a "leftist, progressive" Turkish journalist on a programme on another new series, Imagining the New Truth, who also had a dig at Trump and Brexit.
