Considering all the fake news today, how subjective people can be in their account of an event, and how easy it is to manipulate information, how do historians discern fact from fiction?

Question

Curious because even today, there is so much fake gossip, misguiding news, and just people turning things around on each other that makes me wonder how we navigate that when looking at our history.

In: 3

Answer 1

They don’t.

They try to find corroborating evidence that suggests that their view is correct.

But, fundamentally, history is about people, and we never know their intentions. History is one giant crap shoot.

Plus, there’s an expression that “history is written by the winners”. Which is obviously right. Only the winners generally get to dictate that the version of the events is as they saw it. Which clearly suggests that there is often no objective reality, just different viewpoints.

History isn’t science.