Nowadays, we like to pride ourselves on the improved accuracy of what we record. The perspective of many different types of people, from various social, political and economic backgrounds, can be put into print and distributed on a mass scale. This does not completely prevent non-facts from leaking into the literature, but it does give more information that future generations can use to make comparisons and find out a reasonable model of the truth.
Unfortunately, even though the ability to create accurate representations of history has progressed, new technologies give new loopholes which people can exploit, knowingly or unknowingly, to create false facts. I am speaking about the internet, of course.
There is a growing trend on the internet for people to outsource their web content, hiring others to do research and create databases of factual articles that others may reference in order to gain knowledge on a particular subject. I know from personal experience (I work for more than one of these companies) that the integrity of these fact-finding writers is not always top-notch. A tendency to think of maximizing cash-flow over doing good research is a huge problem within the content-building industry. Check the internet for a subject, any subject, and look through a dozen of the first sites you see. Chances are that half of them have been farmed out to content-building sites and chances are also that you’ll find conflicting information across the spread of articles you view.
While this may seem superficial, only a few lies among tens-of-thousands of words, it still begs the question of whether this will eventually cause a distortion of truth. Misinformation has always been present in television and other media, as people seek to hide the truth or spin it to fit their needs. This misinformation is now being conducted on a massive scale and by thousands of average citizens.
The ultimate question is: Will the abundance of information on the internet lead to enlightenment or ignorance?