Alan Johnson (“The Orwellian eye,” January) writes that the themes of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, including the importance of objective truth, “remain acutely pertinent to our age.” But while the novel masterfully portrayed 20th-century totalitarianism, it is of limited use now.Orwell warns of an omnipotent state in control of the information its population receives. This is impossible today because of the internet and a globalised economy.
Misinformation threatens our freedoms, but this time the truth will not be banned: it may just be ignored. Populists delegitimise the media, and promote false equivalence between news sources which strive to be accurate and those which do not. Financial pressures make it harder for the media to carry out investigations. Unless a sustainable business model is found, proper journalism may become a niche interest.
The risk of using Nineteen Eighty-Four as a guide is that we wait vigilantly for an Orwellian state while objective truth fades into irrelevance for other reasons.