From an early age, my life’s goal was to get at “the truth.” There were only two obvious career paths: Science, or investigative journalism. I went the first route, becoming an academic researcher. Proud of the path I chose, and always admiring the other one.

Until now, when both academe and the news media are in peril, the integrity of both institutions either dangling from a cliff edge, or already plummeted off it.

Sure, reporters have always had to maintain access to politicians, mainly by the tactic of not pissing them off too badly. But in 2025, big corporations with no interest in accurate reporting are either buying up the news media, or kissing up to Washington for permission to acquire still more traditional news organs.

Are you wondering why the “mainstream media” go so easy on Donald J. Trump, one of history’s greatest villains? It’s because big money wants the news reported its way, not the factual way. DJT flies into rages, or perhaps pretends to, at softball queries. No reporter bothers to ask a follow-up, much less a hardball question. So much for not pissing him off.

Reporters banned from the Pentagon if they don’t toe the government line have refused to toe the line, but don’t seem to have challenged the ban, or to have cultivated “deep throat” sources within the DoD. So we still don’t know who was “in the room” when the order was given to bomb those little boats off Venezuela.

The braver university presidents and trustees have rejected DJT’s ultimatum – to uphold the Trump administration’s views in all curriculum, or else lose federal funding – but other universities have knuckled under, or are about to. One of my good academic colleagues thinks a Texas university’s anti-woke standards* seem sensible. What he won’t find sensible are the as yet unspecified punishments for violating the standards, or the inevitability of faculty denouncing each other for real or imagined violations, in good ol’ USSR fashion.

I guess that’s that for tenure and for academic freedom. Universities sure are home to a lot of ultra-woke nonsense, but you don’t fight dogma by imposing other dogma. You fight it by pursuing the truth.

Do you suspect I’m passionate about truth because someone lied to me when I was a child? No, not true, the passion does seem to be innate. It’s taken some funny twists and turns, though.

Sixty-five years ago, my family traveled from our Philadelphia home to New York, for the funeral of an uncle. My younger sister and I were shocked, to put it mildly, when the deceased walked into our grieving aunt’s kitchen! Everything we thought we knew about the world was suddenly in doubt! No one had bothered to tell us our uncle had an identical twin brother.

My path to professorship was sidelined for a dozen years as I worked for a company. The boss had a research PhD, but had spent his earlier career with the Mad Men right there at a Madison Avenue ad firm. In a meeting, someone mentioned truth. The boss slammed his palm on the conference table, exclaiming, “There is no truth!” My mouth opened of its own accord, and said, “That’s true.” I was sure my mouth had cost me my job, but for some reason I was indulged.

Truth is slippery, philosophically, politically, and socially. It can’t be pursued naively, but it must be pursued. The institutions that pursued it, if corrupted, must be either defended or technologically obsoleted.

*“’Effective immediately, faculty must not include or advocate in any form course content that conflicts with the following standards,’ [the university president] wrote.  The banned list includes ‘advocacy’ of what it calls race- or sex-based prejudice, teaching that an individual is inherently racist or sexist by virtue of their race or gender, and that individuals bear responsibility or guilt for actions of others of the same race or sex.” https://lnkd.in/g-vTDtcW