Speakers Need Research: The Case of Mr. Trump and British Intelligence

NY Public Library, Photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

I usually tell my public speaking students to have at least four good-quality sources for every speech. I also advise them that, when they speak about public issues of any kind, they need to get their news from more than one source. One of my students suggested that I should talk about this in a blog post, and this seems like the perfect week to do it.

President Donald Trump recently tweeted that former President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. This has been widely denied, leading President Trump to take a different tack and claim that former President Obama actually had the British intelligence services wiretap or surveil him, citing a report by Fox commentator Andrew Napolitano. In turn, Napolitano's main source may have been a report from the Russian news agency RT. Not a very reliable research base. A minor international incident resulted.

Well, other people are being pretty hard on President Trump about this, and I don't mean to pile on. However, there is a lesson here. When you are talking about something important, like, for example, United States-Great Britain relations, get your information from multiple sources. There are several reasons for this.

1. For one thing, a single source might just be wrong. People are fallible, and we all make mistakes. If you only rely on one source, it's possible that source could be wrong.
2. Also, individual sources often have motives other than the truth. A speaker might want to shock others. A TV announcer might simply be looking for ratings. 
3. Even worse, people sometimes lie. When you only rely on one source, there's a chance that you could be deceived.
4. It is important not only to look at different sources, but to look at sources that do not depend on one another. If three different news sources simply repeat something they saw on RT news, they are not really giving you independent opinions. Whenever possible, find sources that  do not duplicate one another. You are more likely to learn the truth. 

Aristotle once said the truth is more powerful than error. In the short run, false but convincing statements can sway public opinion. We all know that truth can be hard to find. In the long run, however, Aristotle was right. Truth is ultimately more persuasive than error. Speakers also have an ethical obligation to speak the truth. To speak the truth, you need to know the truth. A speaker is more likely to know the truth if the speech is based on multiple, independent sources of information.

So, research is good. 

On a tangential note, readers might want to look at my earlier post about conspiracy speeches.

See my follow-up post.