[MD] the news, or lack of it...

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Arlo had said]
I think our culture (America) values "truthiness".

[Squonk]
I'm not sure what you mean, but as i think about it i'm thinking that 
you think your culture values truth-likeness?

[Arlo]
Going with the Wikipedia entry, truthiness is "things that a person 
claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to 
evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts." I think it 
derives from our soundbite culture that spins complex issues into 
pithy ideological slurs in order to gain a consensus by bypassing 
"evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts" (often by 
appealing to "fear" and "outrage"). Often these are things we "want 
to be true", ideological premises that make us "feel good" to 
believe. This is what our culture demands, and this is what we are 
fed. "Evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts" just takes 
too damn long, is the domain of the pointy-headed wretched, takes us 
away from American Idol and Jerry Springer.  As Colbert commented in 
christening his "word", "Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal 
was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that's my right."

[Squonk]
If information has truthiness then the information may be said to 
remind one of the truth while not actually being true? And this is sufficient.

[Arlo]
Absolutely. Peirce may have referred to this as something like 
"tenacity validated by selective authority".