Ours is a society in which facts matter. As we face a growing number of intractable economic and political problems, we analyze hard data to form our opinions. Right?

Maybe not. The fact about facts is that they are getting a lot squishier. And the implications for people working in politics and public affairs are enormous.

The first major reason for the change is our growing distrust of institutions we once counted on for reliable information. The government, the news media, organized religion, Big Business - all have suffered dramatic declines in public trust. Scandals have certainly contributed to this, but so have the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, which have exposed institutions to much higher levels of scrutiny.

A recent Pew Research survey, for instance, showed the public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is at its lowest level in more than two decades. Only one in four Americans thinks news organizations are careful to keep their political reporting free of political bias.

Instead, says Clay Shirky, a writer on the impact of Internet technologies, people are entrusting "algorithmic authority" - which captures the collective wisdom of a large group to tell us what is true and what is false.

These aggregators and filters, which include Google news, Wikipedia and Twitter, not only provide helpful information, they also are widely used. That's a major advantage because, as Shirky notes, "It's impossible to be right all the time, but it's much better to be wrong on good authority than otherwise, because if you're wrong on good authority, it's not your fault." In other words, when newspaper sales are declining and most people think they are biased, it's a bit hard to hang your reputation on the fact that you read something in The New York Times.

In addition, because we now have unlimited information choices on the Internet, we can abandon traditional authority figures and search out new evidence to support our views. If we don't like what we find, we just keep looking until there's a good fit.

As author Farhad Manjoo says in his excellent book, "True Enough," technology now allows us to customize our version of reality. And political partisanship only encourages this polarization. "No longer are we merely holding opinions different from one another," he argues, "we're also holding different facts."

Manjoo points out that our policy disagreements are increasingly not about what we should be doing - in the Iraq War, on global warming or about other tough issues - but instead over "what is happening."

All of which leads me to the most recent illustration of this phenomenon - Sarah Palin's book tour. (What? You thought I would be the only blogger in America not to talk about Sarah Palin?) Last week, we learned the Associated Press had assigned 11 reporters to read an early copy of "Going Rogue" so it could produce an article listing the errors. Democrats were convinced she'd be forced to explain the missteps or face public embarrassment.

Whether you love or hate Palin, you have to admit that she understands how opinions are formed and reinforced. Rather than debate AP's fact-checkers, she accused them - via Facebook - of doing "opposition research" and behaving irresponsibly. Though Palin will still need to address some of her book's inconsistencies sooner or later, there's enough ambiguity in the discussion now to keep her supporters loyal.

How is our "post-fact society," as Manjoo calls it, affecting the practice of public affairs? Well, if hard data are no longer effective in a public policy debate, it changes everything. The distrust of facts, for example, makes it more difficult to win the war of ideas by using your own economic analysis or industry financial data.

And unless you have a well-known and respected authority backing up your side of the issue, commissioned research from a think tank won't gain you much support either.

Advocates will soon discover, if they haven't already, that they need more than data on their side - they need a compelling story and a loyal following. That means everyone will spend more time communicating at the grassroots level, cultivating allies and engaging the public on a personal basis.  Social media are just some of the tools available for that purpose.

The declining value of facts will also make it more difficult for companies facing a corporate crisis. One of the first rules of crisis management is to stick to the facts and resist the urge to speculate about causes or outcomes. A company with a good reputation might get credit for sincerely reciting the facts when communicating with an angry public. But a company that hasn't invested in building a good reputation, or that has earned a bad one, will have a much tougher time convincing people that its facts are right.

Back in 2005, Steven Colbert introduced the term "truthiness" to describe something a person claims to know intuitively without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts. It means, said Colbert, that people should trust simplistic ideas that come "from the gut" more than complicated ones created by the news media, government, business or anyone else.

Colbert's point makes for great satire, but it also says a lot about the way people think during hard times. We live in a difficult, low-trust world. And, until the challenges get easier and big institutions earn back our trust, it will be daunting to win unpopular arguments - especially if you think you have the facts on your side.

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