BY KAREN BOSSICK
Fake news wasn’t a topic of growing concern when the Sun Valley Center for the Arts decided to organize a BIG IDEA Project around what it called “The Unreliable Narrator.”
“We put our projects together two years in advance, and it wasn’t on anybody’s radar then,” said Christine Davis-Jeffers, The Center’s executive director. “Then, all of a sudden, it was all you heard about.”
The Center will make its contribution to the conversation about fake news on Thursday, Oct. 19, when Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James B. Stewart discusses “Truth Matters: How Fake News and False Statements Undermine America.”
Stewart, a bestselling author of “Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America from Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff,” will speak at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19, at the Church of the Big Wood, 100 Saddle Road in Ketchum. A few tickets are still available.
“He’ll look at how fake news affects our democracy and decision making process,” said Davis-Jeffers.
Stewart contends that America’s tendency to lie is threatening to become epidemic. It is, he says, symptomatic of an ethical breakdown that includes medicine and academia, as well as the country’s judicial system, business and government.
When practically everybody lies, as they did in the Barry Bonds case, the judicial system is brought to its knees, he said in an article in “The New Yorker.”
The major justification for lying seems to be loyalty. And, notably, that’s the code of the prison yard, said Stewart, a Harvard-educated lawyer and Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School.
“James Stewart’s lecture on fake news could not be more timely as our national conversation is increasingly influenced by unreliable information sources,” said Kristin Poole, artistic director at The Center. “Learning to distinguish truth telling from personal commentary seems essential to protecting this fragile democracy.”
Tickets are $35 for Center members and $5 for non-members. Tickets are $15 for students and educators, available at www.sunvalleycener.org or by calling 208-726-9491..
Some free student humanities club tickets were also provided by Robin Leavitt and Terry Friedlander.
COMING UP:
James B. Stewart’s lecture is the first of three in the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ 2017-18 Lecture Series.
Ruth Reichl will speak on “Protect What We Eat,” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 8. And Viet Thanh Nguyen will speak at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 8.