For 10 years, "The Real World" has shaped this inversion -- that people would behave most honestly on camera, and that television truths are the substantive ones.
Whatever tabloid newspapers would have you believe about the supposed glamour and luxury of the "flat screen" television, the truth is we're now we're living in an age where it's possible to start replacing your DVD collection with discs offering 16 times the resolution of that format.
Earlier in the campaign, Timothy Snyder, the historian and author, pointed out that Trump, the inveterate con man, had reason to envy Putin—"the real world version of the person Trump pretends to be on television". The truth, however, may be darker: What if it turns out that Putin is the tactician and bluffer, who only plays the lunatic, and the real strongman, volatile and impulsive, is Trump?
Rising from the ashes of his own pain, loss, and enduring memories of that night, he quietly and candidly shared with us on national television, the truth of appalling insensitivity by the police, bystanders, hospital services, the magistrate and government politics.
Since "the events are happening in Syria," she added, "only Syrian television tells the truth, no one else".
Such examples reveal another truth – television is getting harder to generalise about.
At the end of her lecture, she told the BBC correspondent Lina Sinjab: "The events are happening in Syria, by the way, and only Syrian television tells the truth, no one else".
He did a lot of television before The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Booty Call and the wacky football film Any Given Sunday, where Foxx outclassed a lot of veteran and hammy actors (Al Pacino onwards) and looked like a real athlete.
To borrow another television catchphrase, the truth is out there.
Finally, on November 6, an hour-long television film, titled Truth or Square, debuted on Nickelodeon.
A few weeks ago I was watching television, or in truth just flipping channels.
