The Old Problem of Speaking Truth to Power

This week’s news has highlighted a situation that would not have surprised Plato or many of the ancient Philosophers in the slightest. A think tank aligned with the governing party commissioned an investigation into journalists who had exposed undeclared political donations. The inquiry, referred to as “Operation Cannon”, appears to have examined personal details about the journalists, including their religious beliefs, while suggesting their reporting might align with foreign strategic interests. The reporting that sparked this off concerned more than £700,000 in donations that had not been properly declared, breaches that were later confirmed by the Electoral Commission.

The accusation and defence may be quite modern but the situation is centuries old : someone close to power is questioned, the response is not to answer the question but to scrutinise the person asking it. Attention then gets shifted away from the facts and redirects the attention of observers to those who have made the allegation.

Socrates encountered precisely this mechanism. When he challenged the assumptions of Athens, the city did not systematically refute his reasoning, instead it placed him on trial. The accusations were familiar in structure if not in wording: corruption, impiety and nationall harm. These accusations were broad enough to resist clear defence and powerful enough to redirect attention away from his arguments. The issue was never simply what Socrates had said, it was whether someone like him should be permitted to say it at all. Unable to defeat the questions, Athens condemned the questioner to death or exile (the state would have prefered exile but Socrates as his last act of defiance chose death by poisoning).

Philosophy learned from this moment that direct confrontation with authority often proves dangerous, as a consequence of which imparting truth developed indirect routes. Plato wrote dialogues rather than manifestos, so that his arguments emerged through third party conversation, layered with ambiguity. The Republic never openly announces itself as a critique of democratic instability,instead, it constructed an imagined city and allowed readers to recognise parallels for themselves. The meaning intended by Plato survived because it was not delivered as an accusation.

Plato was for from alone, Erasmus criticised religious corruption through satire rather than denunciationn and Swift attacked political indifference by proposing something so morally grotesque that readers were forced to recognise the irony. Both understood a persistent political reality: power tolerates criticism more readily when it arrives obliquely; when it can be dismissed as fiction or humour if necessary.

The practice was not restricted to Philosophers, paintings depicting biblical or historical scenes often carried contemporary meaning just beneath the surface. Violence, injustice, and resistance could be shown without explicit commentary and viewers completed the argument privately. Even under openly authoritarian regimes the pattern continued. Composers and writers embedded dissent within officially acceptable works. Language adapted, developing coded forms capable of conveying criticism while maintaining outward conformity. When direct speech becomes risky, meaning learns to travel indirectly.

Journalism, however, lacks this luxury. A journalist cannot speak in allegory, it requires specificity: names, figures, dates, documentation. When a report states that hundreds of thousands of pounds were undeclared, the claim is literal. It cannot retreat into metaphor if challenged. Its strength is clarity, and that clarity is also its vulnerability. This helps explain why investigations so often target journalists rather than their findings. Facts are stubborn things, they cannot easily be negotiated or reinterpreted, but the credibility of the person presenting them can be questioned endlessly.

Philosophy recognises this as an old error, the 'ad hominem fallacy'. The truth of a claim does not depend upon the personal qualities of the individual making it, however the fallacy persists because it is effective. Many people will dismiss uncomfortable information once they are given permission to distrust its source. In the arts we have been particularly guilty of condemning a literary work because of the character of the author, or the composer of a piece of music because of his politics. It is an easy path to take.

Why does this pattern recur so reliably? Part of the answer is practical. Responding to evidence requires counter-evidence but questioning motives only requires suspicion. However, something deeper is involved; Power prefers opacity, it functions most comfortably when its mechanisms remain unnoticed, but journalism renders those mechanisms visible. It names relationships, traces influence, and converts quiet arrangements into public knowledge, and this exposure feels, from within power, less like scrutiny and more like attack. This 'attack' provokes an ad-hominem response.

Socrates insisted he was merely asking questions but Athens experienced those questions as destabilising. Both perspectives were accurate but honest inquiry unsettles established authority because it removes the assumption that authority need not explain itself. Truth-seeking and disruption often describe the same act viewed from opposite sides. A democratic society claims to welcome scrutiny and in principle, criticism strengthens legitimacy by forcing justification and transparency. In practice, governments frequently respond defensively, treating investigation as hostility rather than participation in democratic life. The tension between these two attitudes never disappears but must be negotiated repeatedly, generation after generation.

The present episode matters not only for its immediate political consequences but for what it reveals about this enduring conflict. When journalists expose uncomfortable facts and are met with personal investigation rather than substantive rebuttal, a familiar boundary is crossed. The focus shifts from accountability to deterrence and the message to the journalists becomes clear: with scrutiny comes risk.

Socrates’ fate stands as an extreme example, but the mechanism begins long before punishment becomes dramatic. It begins when questioning authority is reframed as disloyalty, when criticism is interpreted as threat, and when those who reveal information must defend themselves rather than their reporting. Journalism occupies a uniquely exposed position because it cannot hide behind metaphor or fiction. It must speak plainly or cease to function. That plain speech is one of the few tools the general public possess for understanding how power operates in their name and undermining it may offer short-term political comfort, but it weakens the conditions that allow democratic accountability to exist at all.

The deeper question is whether a society chooses to defend those who ask difficult questions or quietly accepts their intimidation. Every generation faces that decision anew and we like to imagine that the struggle between truth and authority belongs to distant history. Plato knew otherwise; the conflict is permanent. The only variable is how openly it is acknowledged, and how readily we are able to recognise it when it appears again under modern names.