So who is going to put their hand in their pocket for Dr Christian Jessen, the down-on-his-luck TV doctor who says he has just £20,000 in savings and might need to declare himself bankrupt?
Jessen is facing the consequences of a tweet libelling the former DUP leader Arlene Foster. His tweet was a lie, and I’m not going to repeat it here. It’s in the public domain.
Foster sued him and was awarded £125,000 in damages plus costs. It was an open and shut case, Jessen was clearly in the wrong. The total bill for the doctor, who shot to fame presenting Channel Four’s Embarrassing Bodies, is understood to be in the region of £250,000 when legal costs are taken into consideration.
Now she is out of a job, I imagine the money will come in handy, but I am sure Foster would rather not have gone through the ordeal.
Jessen, who could have limited the damage by admitting his mistake early on, has now set up a crowd funding campaign in the hope that the cost of his folly will be carried by others. At the time of writing he had secured just under £8,000.
There will have been many who took delight in Foster’s discomfiture when the attack on her broke in December 2019. She has many enemies (including members of her own party), and many more who have rightly criticised her decisions as a minister and first minister.
Some will have eagerly spread the slight: some wanting it to be true; others hoping it was true, but not caring if it was true or not.
That sadly is the world in which we now live. It was once said a lie is half way round the world before the truth has its boots on – and that was in the day when we communicated by pen and paper, and licking a stamp was the equivalent of hitting ‘Tweet’ with your cursor.
Today you can take a half truth and turn it into a full-scale lie within seconds.
From the comfort of our own sofas we can pump out whatever nonsense we like: conjure up conspiracies, malign individuals we don’t care for, and even start insurrections.
Faked news abounds. Millions still believe the United States presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden; and millions more fell for the lie that if you voted Brexit, the NHS would be better off by £350 million a week – enough to cure more Embarrassing Bodies than Dr Jessen could shake a stethoscope at.
Journalists are criticised for falling down on the job, and there is no question about it, mistakes are made. But in the main, editors take their responsibilities very seriously.
What you read in these columns will have been read first by an independent eye and been tested against the strictures of the law and the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
That is the case too for other newspapers and magazines. Broadcasters face even more constraints than the press.
But it is not the case for social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others, which – so far - have successfully dodged responsibility for what they put out into the public domain. These organisations make millions on the back of tweets designed to undermine the very fabric of society.
Jessen’s gossip had a profound impact on Foster and the people closest to her. At least she had a remedy, and the resources and incentive to call him to account in the courts.
But most of us are powerless in the face of the unrestrained assault on the truth by malign players – many of them sovereign states – who sow lies for political gain; or the shady extremists who prey on our fears; or the racists, homophobes, anti-Semites and Islamophobes.
Those best placed to deal with them are the platforms that profit from their content – platforms incidentally that do not invest in news, but lift it unashamedly from publications such as this.
They must be forced to live up to their responsibilities.
Most of us think we can spot a dodgy story when we see one. But it is not as easy as that. This week a study in the US demonstrated that those of us who are most confident about being able to tell the difference between fact and fiction are also the people most likely to be taken in by fake news.
If we don’t face up to lies, they will destroy us.
