disinclination to hit hard leads me to tell

other people that “NPR” stands for Namby-

Pamby Radio.

I single out the right not out of prejudice but because it’s accurate. Much of the right wing, particularly neoconservatives and the crasser variety of Christian right ideologues and God-profiteers, seems to have decided to grant themselves permission to lie for a “higher good”, to further their cause or manipulate public opinion. Neocons and their philosophical mentors explicitly advocate in their books and journals a policy of lying to the masses for their own good, to implement an agenda that most people would object to because they’re too stupid to realize the sublime wisdom and infallibility of the neocons and their political allies. They have a radically anti-enlightenment philosophy which accords with the anti-secularism and anti-humanism of the Christian right.

Recall the famous quote from the Seymour Hersch article on the neocon and Christian right elements dominating the Bush administration, where a White House official says that journalists, academics, mere mortals in general belong to a “reality-based” community, which the official sneers at because right-wing ubermensch like himself operate in a faith-based or vision-based world, where they are the great actors creating reality. The hubris and self-aggrandisement fairly drips off his words, and the ongoing debacle in Iraq and general state of chaotic breakdown that marks most everything else the Bush admin touches makes the official’s claims of godlike powers all the more laughable.

But the point is, people like that feel no obligation to truth telling, don’t even recognize the value of “truth” or don’t feel that it will do any good to let the publich access the truth — on the contrary, they regard truth as a dangerous thing to give the public, because they don’t feel the public has the capacity to understand truth and will only react irrationally to it. They feel much safer if the public only gets crafted propaganda carefully designed to manipulate and create a world image that they want the public to have.

The more regressive elements of fundamentalist religion have similar fears about the effects of raw truth on the unwashed masses, a sentiment dating back centuries to their opposition to the enlightenment itself and its challenge to the church’s exclusive right to dispense and define “truth”.

So when these sort of folk exploit the standard journalistic mandate for balance and not favouring either side to gain a platform for signing out the right’s party line regardless of its relation to truth, they should be called on it by the reporter explicitly in the interview and/or in the article. If Dick Cheney declares that Saddam Hussein was directly linked to 9-11 after it has already been established by investigators and even admitted by the Bush Whitehouse to be utterly false, the reporter shouldn’t just report Cheney’s blatant lie without comment. That’s being dishonest.

This is the specific kind of case where mechanical imposition of “balance” does not serve the truth or the readers. Otherwise, journalistic balance and objectivity is still a valid principle, and does not preclude the author having and expressing an opinion or fact-checking and calling out falsehoods in interview statements.

That’s all fer now….

I am glad to see the philosophers weigh in.

Even a minimalist epistemology (how we know) obliges us to acknowledge that we select a subset of the world to examine, that in examining we interpret and weigh the data, and in making sense of these interpretations to draw conclusion we often use more than simple deduction. And we repeat this process. People can, do and should argue with each step in what has been called a “ladder of inference.” This linear description moving from facts to conclusions doesn’t capture the iterative repetitiveness of the actual process.

In addition to the pool of data we have access to, our pre-existing models of the world (our biases, previous conclusions, models and expectations) and our abilities to gather information influence the data we select, the interpretations we make and the conclusions we stand on and report. Most of our arguments are at the level of conclusions. More interesting, our conclusions drive our next steps in ways that can result in actions that reinforce them. Much reasoning is rationalization.

This doesn’t have to mean that we construct our truths from whole cloth. But it illuminates how a barrage of stimulation overwhelms a press corp who all want to keep their jobs, bring their own class and professional jealousies, have to file stories quickly and are drowning in a flood of spin.

How often is speaking truth to power merely speaking facts to power? Being naive about facts doesn’t really capture the challenge of reporting. The examples from the show, American institutions of torture and global warming, illustrate all of this really well. I actually think that Fox news illustrates this beautifully. O’Reilly going to Guantanamo to check for himself demonstrates that with the right model you can gather facts, interpret them and conclude what you set out to conclude… and he an his producers may actually do this without cynicism but merely as a benefit of soaking in his own myopic stew. (They may have gotten their talking points from a Rove… but I don’t think you have to posit that.)

So truth with edge could be self-reflective about the process of moving from information gathered to interpretations and conclusions. Reporters can not be experts in all the stories they must cover, we must not ask them to conclude for us. We can ask them to shed a light on motivations (e.g. qui bono as one of the blog entries advised), and ask their experts how they move from information to conclusions.

This can be especially helpful when covering science where the experts are often not too self-critical about this process (as all the stories about single genes for this or that complex trait attest). It can also take a he said/she said (or more often the administration said/the marginalized victim said) and illuminate how they came to their conclusions.

Much of our national discourse has been debased. We don’t merely have differently crafted, internally principled conclusions, banging into each other but rather a cynical use of balance and a willingness to say anything as long as it manifests particular “facts on the ground.â€? The multiple rationalizations for the war on Iraq, the sense that any and all facts lead to the inevitable conclusion that we should lower taxes on the rich, …

Though even this could be reported on from a point of view that examines and critiques the lame conclusions that x repeatedly drawn. Why does only John Stewart’s Daily Show (in one of their most dependable bits) demonstrate the organized use of talking points by cutting from one talking head to the next across all the networks saying the SAME thing. This joke makes its point very quickly. And should be part of the armamentarium of the news.

I don’t think that a conversation about this topic can happen without a short excursion into epistemology, but it can be short and we quickly return ready to apply what we learned.

June 16th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

Thanks, jdyer, for your point about the “common good.�

“As in the NYT deciding in the 1930’s to stop presenting “both sidesâ€? of lynching, it was just obvious at a certain point what was in the common good–or what was commonly thought bad.”

But lynching is murder. Murder is a crime and when covering a crime story one has to follow certain rules. Presumption of innocence, etc.

I have no idea why the NY Times ever covered lynching as a crime free story. I also have trouble understanding their current coverage of stories about suicide bombers who are also engaged in mass murder. These are not political acts with a point of view. They are acts of war whose aim is to obliterate the enemy. They are or should be war crimes.

I don’t believe the NY Times should be used as a standard about what is and what is not good reporting.

I don’t understand your idea of the common good as an adjective, btw. What exactly does it qualify?

I think you are groping for a way fo justifying what used to be called the societal needs such health and welfare. But isn’t that why States (commonwealths) exists to begin with? Isn’t this what the “social contract” is all about.

I didn’t mean to oversimplify the “common good” or make it seem as if it was something not prone to perspectives. Of course that’s true. It’s just a very complicated topic to try to write about in a blog.

But now that you’ve commented, I’ll say a word more. The meaning, as I used it, at least, is that “common good” is not a noun or easy to read adjective that we look for, find, and present. There are many conflicts over what the common good is.

But I guess I am suggesting that there are some “common goods” (see my list, e.g., environment health) that we don’t have to debate endlessly. As in the NYT deciding in the 1930′s to stop presenting “both sides” of lynching, it was just obvious at a certain point what was in the common good–or what was commonly thought bad.

And your point about individual rights speaks directly to this point; I’m glad you mentioned it. Protection of privacy is a common good which many agree is now being treated too carelessly and without proper limits. So…the news media should not wonder aloud about “Big Brother’s side of the issue,” I take it.

June 15th, 2006 at 3:32 pm

“The point here, Chris, is this: when journalists seek “truthâ€? they are seeking evidence relevant not to some misbegotten notion of “balanceâ€? or “political neutralityâ€? but to evidence which serves the common good.”

Dr. David Hildebrand should know that the “common good� is a reference neutral term. For those who believes that abortion is evil outlawing abortion is justified as a moral act undertaken for the “common good.� Islamic regimes legislated for the “common good.�

The common good often excludes individual rights especially tho

I prefer news programs that strive for objectivity rather than those which set themselves up as broadcasting for the “common good.�

I do not believe there are “two sides” but many perspectives. I listen regularly to NPR to hear the “safest” news around but I would applaud them airing thoughtful and earnest voices from a variety of views.