Fair and balanced

The New Neo Posted on by

The following is a portion of a comment I wrote during this discussion over at Roger Simon’s. Roger had posed the question “what is ‘fair and balanced’?” The context of the query was that he and others are engaged in setting up a new blogger consortium called Pajamas Media, and are signing up hundreds of blogs as part of it, and are making decisions about whether it’s possible to achieve “fair and balanced” representation there.

The phrase “fair and balanced” (at least, as I interpret it) is something of an oxymoron.

Why? Because “fair” means, to me, logical, well-reasoned, factual. And “balanced” means “giving equal play to advocates of all sides of an issue” (a sort of “one from column A, one from column B, one from column C approach). Unless you subscribe to the morally relativistic position that all truths are equal, then striving for “balance” will probably dictate that some “unfair” views will, of necessity, be given a platform.

So, I think “fair and balanced” isn’t really the goal–not in that way, at least. If you take all comers, you’ll certainly have some blogs that aren’t “fair.” And, if you don’t accept all comers, then you won’t have good “balance” (or, at least, it would surprise me mightily if you did, since I’m not a moral relativist).

All you can do is to strive for blogs that use reason, logic, and facts, rather than sophistry, as their main tools. And if this means that you end up with a somewhat skewed distribution in terms of political orientation (and I won’t say to what side I think that might be–let that remain my secret :-))–well then, so be it!

Whether or not you agree with me on which side could be the one that is overrepresented in the “fair” column (and reasonable people may differ on that) it’s still an interesting question: how to choose? Should you give a forum to anyone and everyone who wants in? Does a sort of “pure capitalism” approach work best–let the market (i.e. the reader) sort it out? Or, if you want to have standards, how to apply them? Do you try to accept only those blogs you think are well-written and/or well-reasoned? How do you avoid letting your own political leanings color your decisions about this? Or, should you even try?

As I believe I’ve said before, all journalists–and certainly all bloggers–have a political point of view, and it’s best to be up-front about it. Here’s a section of another comment of mine on the subject (from this fascinating discussion at Jay Rosen’s blog about the politics of the press):

Yes, the press is a political animal–or rather, animals. Each newspaper and periodical, and each journalist, has a political point of view which informs what it publishes, and what he/she writes. To pretend otherwise is to deny the obvious. The public can best be served by knowing the politics up front, and having the press drop the fiction of objectivity. So, to answer your question about what politics the press “should” have: transparent ones.

(How lazy can I get, eh? Reduced to cannibalizing my own comments on other blogs! Go easy on me–it’s a holiday weekend, and the first day of sun we’ve had in about two centuries.)

Aging boomers (and I guess I’m one of them)

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve gotten to the point that going to the doctor, any doctor, is something I hate to do. I never liked it, but now I simply detest it. After all, the best that can happen is that things have stayed the same. But the reality is that, as time goes by, it becomes more and more likely that the news will be bad.

Those of you who are of a certain age know what I’m talking about. Slowly, more and more of your friends are taking pills–high blood pressure, cholesterol. A hearing aid blooms here and there, blushing pale pink in a (usually masculine) ear.

You want to postpone the test, the check-up, the mammogram, the prostate exam, the colonoscopy, and sometimes you do. But sooner or later the postponement goes on too long, and fear takes over, and so you go.

All this is a lead-in to say that yesterday I had an eye exam. I don’t even wear glasses, except for night driving and the theater, or reading glasses for those intimate low-light restaurants. Oh, yes, and computer glasses for blogging. But in normal life I don’t need them, and I can even read books without them.

So yesterday it was a surprise to me when the technician looked into my eyes, prior to the opthamologist’s grand entrance, and said, “I’m going to have the doctor come in now to take a look before we dilate you.” And then he went into some arcane discussion of the angle of my iris and the fluid and the shape of my eye and something something something. When I asked whatever was he talking about, he tried to find a diagram of the eye to show me. I didn’t want to see a diagram of the eye, I said, I wanted to know what it all meant–did I have some eye disease? Oh no, no, he said, just something that might make it dangerous to dilate my pupils. And then he left me alone to ponder that thought.

Next there was quite a bit more fussing with my eyes by several people, including the doctor. Measuring, putting numbing drops in, measuring again, being told to stare at little targets. Their conclusion was that yes, indeed, I have some relatively rare malformation of the eye that is congenital but gets worse with age (doesn’t everything?).

What does it all mean? Well, although it’s highly unlikely to happen soon, as the thing progresses, I would be at risk for sudden blindness if my eyes dilate quickly or forcefully, blocking off some sort of fluid canals and causing a clogged-drain effect in which the eye fluid pressure builds up alarmingly and speedily.

Huh? Not exactly what I expected to hear. That’s what he meant by “dangerous;” the eyedrops used to dilate eyes for the eye examination can cause an attack, requiring immediate emergency surgery to preserve the eyesight. Modern medicine being the relatively wonderful thing it is, however, there is a simple (they say; I hope!) laser surgery that puts a little hole in the iris and prevents any possible buildup.

The doctor then said he thought it would be okay now to dilate my eyes to examine them.

Now, one word I really don’t like to hear a doctor say is “I think” (actually, that’s two). So I inquired about this “think” thing, and he said if I was apprehensive (if?), I could just have the laser surgery soon, and postpone the drops for afterwards.

I made an appointment for laser surgery in three weeks. And then decided to write this little post to tell all of you that it’s not a bad idea to keep up with your regular eye exams. A cautionary tale.

Religious intolerance

The New Neo Posted on by

In the May 30th issue of the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg’s “Comment” piece on the Newsweek incident contains the following phrase that caught my eye: We have to be respectful of Muslim sensibilities and Muslim beliefs…

Which brings me to a single, simple question: why? Is it because Islam is a religion? Are all religious beliefs worthy of respect, no matter what they are?

I seem to recall that the Aztecs had a religion that required them to rip the living hearts out of human sacrifices. The Aztecs would undoubtedly have called the belief system that required them to do this a religion, and they would have been correct. The ancient Greeks murdered little girls for similar reasons, as I recall (Iphegenia comes to mind). The Hindus had the quaint custom of requiring widows to be burned alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres. Which brings us to my next point.

Here’s a favorite story of mine (I hope it’s not apocryphal, but it doesn’t really matter if it is):

When General George Napier was governor of Sind province in India in the 1840s, he vigorously enforced the ban on suttee, the practice of throwing a Hindu widow on to the funeral pyre of her husband. A delegation of Brahmins came to him to explain that he must not prohibit the practice at the funeral of a particular maharaja, as it was an important cultural custom.

“If it is your custom to burn a widow alive, please go on,” Napier responded.

“We have a custom in our country that whoever burns a person alive shall be hanged. While you prepare the funeral pyre, my carpenters will be making the gallows to hang all of you. Let us all act according to our customs” The Brahmins thought better of it, and the widow lived.

I actually have nothing against a custom that says that a Koran, or any holy book, shouldn’t be desecrated (leaving aside the question of whether this actually happened at Guantanamo). But I have no problem whatsoever with saying not all customs of a religion, or a culture, need be respected just because they are under the protective penumbra of the words “religion” or “culture.”

I’ll respect those aspects of any religion or culture that are worthy of respect. Those that are not, I do not. How do I make those decisions? I use my sense of what is admirable in human beings–based on, of course, my own culture and my own beliefs, but taking into account certain universal principles of morality: respect for human life, for example, and the right to basic autonomy (both of these principles rule out suttee). One could restate these two principles as the right to “life and liberty.” Sound familiar?

I also have a simple rule about tolerance: it’s fine, but it does not extend to tolerating intolerance. On that score, Islam almost constantly falls short, so Islam’s intolerance is not to be tolerated.

It must be true–after all, it’s in the FBI report

The New Neo Posted on by

One story, four headlines.

The story: in 2002-2003 some Guantanamo detainees told FBI investigators that guards had flushed a Koran down the toilet, and desecrated the Koran in other ways.

Now, the headlines:

Yahoo news: FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

The Boston Globe: FBI records cite Quran abuse allegations

The LA Times: Guantanamo Detainees Had Alleged Koran Desecration–Government documents reveal perceived abuses

The New York Times: Documents Say Detainees Cited Abuse of Koran by Guards

So, we have one story and four headlines. We all know how important headlines can be, since a certain percentage of readers hardly read beyond them. There is a difference in the impact of the headlines: the first two headlines could easily lead a reader to conclude that the allegations may have had some substance or independent corroboration, while the latter two make it clear that the allegations were made only by the detainees themselves.

But then we have the overarching question: why report this particular story at all, and why now? After all, what does it tell us? It is virtually a non-story; the equivalent of “Osama Bin Laden alleges the US is out to destroy the Moslem world,” or even “11th century Christians allege Jews stick pins in host.” Each of these statements might end up being quoted in an FBI report (well, maybe not the second), but that doesn’t mean the claimants are speaking the truth. And it isn’t as though detainees at Guantanamo are unbiased sources without an ax to grind.

So, why bother to report this story at all? My guess is that it’s an attempt to say “where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Here’s the smoke.” A subtle–or perhaps not so subtle?–way to circle the wagons and support Newsweek, and to drive home the point that, as Amnesty says, the US is running the Gitmo Gulag.

Tracing the use of the anonymous source

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, it turns out you can blame it on Watergate.

The recent prominence of anonymous sources in the Newsweek Koran-flushing story tweaked my curiosity about the history of the practice.

To the best of my recollection, the newspapers of my youth attributed every quote to an actual named person–not that I was paying a whole lot of attention at the time to subtleties like that. Now, however, it seems as though articles are often merely glorified gossip columns full of anonymous commentary–a sort of “he said, he said” kind of journalism–especially any article written by Seymour Hersch, which usually consists of nothing but a long string of such tidbits.

The only thing we know for sure is the identity of the article’s author. We are asked to take the facts on trust, without a chance to evaluate the source of the remarks. This over-reliance on the anonymous source gives both the journalist and his/her informant an overwhelming power, and takes away our ability to judge the veracity of what we are being told. I believe it’s one of the most pernicious trends in journalism.

This practice seems to be the logical development of a phenomenon that started with Vietnam and became stronger with Watergate. As I’ve written earlier, during that era many people’s attitudes towards the government and the military became more negative, while their attitudes towards the press became correspondingly more positive, in a sort of reciprocal seesawing movement. As trust in the press grew, it seems that the time-honored journalistic methods of sourcing, previously acting as a system of checks and balances against the power of the press, were now considered unnecessary.

The most famous anonymous source of them all, of course, was Deep Throat of Watergate fame. He was not only a seminal (pardon the pun) figure in Nixon’s denouement (and thus a hero to liberals everywhere), but he was so renowned that he had his own nickname, taken from a popular porn flick. It turns out that Deep Throat had another claim to fame: he was the trailblazer in the practice of relying on anonymous sources, now so commonplace in today’s journalism.

I had suspected all along that Watergate might be at the heart of it, but it was difficult to document when I first tried to do some online research on the subject. I finally struck pay dirt with this article from American Journalism Review. It’s hardly up-to-date (it was written way back in 1994), but it was the only discussion of the history of anonymous sources that I could find. It turns out Watergate was indeed a watershed in the use of this practice:

Although confidential sources predate Watergate, they were infrequently used before that celebrated story, which produced the most famous unnamed source of all time. Deep Throat, whose identity remains a mystery, helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein bring down Richard Nixon in 1974. After that, the use of anonymous sources flourished, with many reporters considering it sexier to have an unnamed source than a named one.

Unfortunately, it’s only gotten worse since then. See this, if you want to remember the good old days:

“Of course, you talk to everybody when you begin a story,” says Philip Scheffler, a senior producer for CBS’ “60 Minutes.” “Off the record. On the record. In the record. For background. Not for attribution no matter what. But it’s not the raw notes we are talking about. We are talking about what goes on the air.” And “60 Minutes” does not use anonymous sources on the air.

Would that that last sentence were still true!

And how about this guy:

There’s not a place for anonymous sources,” says Allen H. Neuharth, founder of USA Today and chairman of the Freedom Forum. “I think there are a few major historical developments that happened in journalism ”“ the Pentagon Papers, maybe Watergate ”“ where anonymous sources had a more positive influence than a negative impact. But on balance, the negative impact is so great that we can’t overcome the lack of trust until or unless we ban them.

Where is Mr. Neuharth now? Retired to Florida and eighty-one years old–which makes him something of a dinosaur, I guess. As recently as 1998, though, he was still speaking out against the use of the anonymous source, which he calls evil. Here’s an excerpt from a 1998 interview with Neuharth:

Traditionally journalists were taught to believe in accuracy above all else. And that changed. I think it changed with Watergate, and I think the anonymous source is the most evil thing that newspapers and the media have adopted or adapted in the last 25 years. It started with Watergate, (when) journalists coming off college campuses (were) determined to be (Bob) Woodward or (Carl) Bernstein. They believed that because of Watergate’s successes there was dirt under every mat in front of every office. They came out as young cynics. The journalists of my generation were taught to be skeptics. And there’s a hell of a difference between a skeptic and a cynic. All you need to do is be accurate and fair.

Sounds about right to me.

Back when that 1994 American Journalism Review article was written, there was apparently a great deal of variation in the rules for using anonymous sources–some papers used them liberally at the time, and some vary sparingly or not at all. I wonder whether some papers have kept their integrity in this regard, and resisted taking the low but easy road.

Reading the article, I waxed nostalgiac for those pre-9/11 concerns that we all knew and loved. It’s all about things like the OJ trial, and Janet Cooke’s bogus Washington Post story about the imaginary 8-year-old heroin addict. No international repercussions are even dreamt about, no terrorists or Islamofascists waiting in the wings to pounce on any story (although, of course, they were there all the time).

My impression is that the use of anonymous sources seems to be something like alcohol–seductive and habit-forming. In that 1994 article, everyone keeps talking about going on the wagon and curbing the practice, but very few have actually done so. Apparently it’s too enticing to give up, for so many reasons–getting a sensational story, beating the competition, laziness, habit.

Is there any hope, short of Mr. Neuharth coming out of retirement? Well, in 2003 a group of eighteen well-known journalists were brought together by Poynter to make recommendations about improving journalism. They came up with this set of extremely sensible-seeming rules for the use of anonymous sources. If followed, they would eliminate a lot of trouble:

Ӣ Anonymous sources should be encouraged to go on the record.

”¢ We should weigh the source’s reliability and disclose to readers the source’s potential biases.

Ӣ The more specific we can be in describing the source in the story, the better.

Ӣ Anonymous sources should not be used for personal attacks, accusations of illegal activity, or merely to add color.

Ӣ The source must have first-hand knowledge.

Ӣ Journalists should not lie in a story to protect a source.

I don’t know why these guidelines haven’t been widely adopted. I guess the bottom line is that journalists have become far too addicted to the easy fix that anonymous sources provide them.

Like all addictions, this calls for a 12-step program, right? I even have a name for it: ASA, Anonymous Sourcers Anonymous.

Journalists: experts in what?

The New Neo Posted on by

I fear I’m getting boring here, carping on the MSM again ( getting boring? ask my critics. You’ve been boring for a long time now.)

But here it is again. Via Michael Totten, I read this recent fisking of a story that appeared in last Sunday’s Washington Post and was itself a critique of Lebanon’s upcoming elections.

The fisker is described by Michael Totten as “my friend in Beirut at the Lebanese Political Journal.” So I guess he knows a thing or two about Lebanese history and political life. And he says that Annia Ciezadlo, who wrote the Post story, has gotten a great number of her facts wrong. Maybe the fisking isn’t quite up there with Mary McCarthy’s famous description of Lillian Hellman, “Everything she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the'”–but it’s close.

When one reads this fisking and its point by point rebuttal of most of Ms. Ciezadlo’s claims, it is truly astounding to see how wrong she gets it, even for one such as myself who has lost faith in the MSM in recent years.

So I’m wondering, what gives here? Ms. Ciezadlo is probably intelligent. She also appears (from a brief Google search I did that turned up a paucity of information on her) to be an American who reports quite a bit from Beirut. So it’s not a case of her doing the equivalent of a quick term paper from afar, and coming up with this article. She ought to know better; she’s had the time to study the situation and do the proper research. Is it bias? Blinders? Sloppiness? Bad sources?

I don’t know. But I think it matters, very much. Newspapers are the way the vast majority of people get their information, and how their viewpoints are shaped. If the papers are getting it wrong, the consequences are vast. And this isn’t about opinion; these are simple facts that Ms. Ciezadlo has misstated here.

It reminds me of something I read somewhere once about journalism (I Googled this every which way to find the actual source, but I came up empty). It went like this: The more expert you are on a subject, the more clear it is when you read a newspaper article about it that everything in that article is incorrect.”

Although that’s of course hyperbole, I’ve noticed the phenomenon myself. The people I’ve known personally who’ve been quoted in an article–misquoted, as often as not. If the article is about something I know a bit about–therapy, dance, social science research–I find glaring errors as a rule. What is this about? Is it willful? Is it stupidity? Is it speed? Sloppiness?

My answer at the moment is that sometimes it’s any of those things, all of those things, or some combination of those things. But I have a theory that sometimes the following factor is also operating, either in concert with these things, or alone: I get the impression that many journalists nowadays (as opposed to in the past) are first and foremost writers (I don’t know about Ms. Ciezadlo, since, as I said, I was unable to get much biographical information on her). As such, they may not really be experts in anything, except writing and journalism itself. Perhaps they were English or literature majors who may have then gotten a graduate degree in journalism school. Writing, writing, writing.

Now, I’m not down on writers–some of my best friends are writers! I’m a writer, even! But I think that writers who come to writing with a solid grounding as experts in something–history or economics or the military or law–or who have training in the discipline known as “critical thinking,” might be less likely to make so many errors (especially when writing on a subject within their field of expertise).

Journalists sometimes remind me of the line from the “My Fair Lady” song “Why Can’t the English”: “The French don’t care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.” Perhaps some journalists don’t care what they say, actually, as long as it’s well-written. Bias is always a possiblity (and, in some cases a probability), also. But again, I’m not talking about opinions here, I’m talking about simple and verifiable facts. Why can’t the journalists get them right?

Time to complain about the weather

The New Neo Posted on by

It is cold, dark, dank, and rainy. Much of this spring has been like that, and now they say it will continue for the rest of the week for northern coastal New England, with temperatures in the balmy (“balmy” as in “crazy,” not as in “mild and pleasant”) 40s and 50s.

It reminds me a bit of two summers ago, when there was a three-week period of rain, heavy humidity, and fog in August. The foghorns made a continual moan, which was pleasantly atmospheric for the first day or two, and then began to grind on the nerves most gratingly. One morning I noticed that the muted gold-colored fabric on my dining room chairs had taken on a moss-green sheen. How odd! When I went to inspect, I saw that the moss-green sheen was moss-green because–well, because it actually was some sort of green moss/mildew/mold. And then I noticed that, virtually overnight, various and sundry organic relatives of that green stuff had sprouted over many of the surfaces of the lower floor of my house–on walls, cabinets, wood, and fabric.

I’ll spare you the details of what was necessary to remove the visitation, but suffice to say it involved a lot of bleach and a lot of work, and was the stuff of early Twilight Zone episodes, including nightmares featuring the return of the dread and humongous fungus.

As for the present rain, which has not yet reached those proportions–well, the flowers probably like it. But right now they all are bowed down by the heavy barrage, the tall tulip heads bent so low that they arc to nearly touch the grass.

And we people most assuredly do not like it. We didn’t bargain for Seattle. Spring is usually a very nice season in New England–although a rather short one.

There’s an old saying here, though: there are two seasons in New England–winter, and the Fourth of July. I guess we’re in the winter part.

See the AP headline; read the AP story

The New Neo Posted on by

Our old friend Jennifer Loven reports on what was essentially a cooperative meeting between ally Karzai and President Bush, and tries her best to spin it into a quarrel.

I know that reporters generally don’t write their own headlines, so I probably can’t blame her for that, but I can blame someone at the AP. Take a look: the headline reads “Bush rebuffs Karzai’s request on troops.” Then read the story, and decide whether you think the headline accurately portrays the gist of the situation, and the tenor and spirit of the meeting and the press conference.

Ms. Loven also writes:

Karzai thanked Bush for helping to put his country on the path to democracy. But he also came to their meeting with a long list of grievances.

I always imagine that journalists know the meaning of the words they use, and choose them quite carefully. I would suggest to Ms. Loven that the proper word would be “requests,” not “grievances.”

A couple of days ago, the headlines about Karzai all read something like this (I can’t find the links, but this is what I recall), “Karzai blasts US for Afghan prison abuse.” But, if you look at the transcript of today’s press conference, you read something quite different from Karzai:

On the question of the prisoner abuse, we are, of course, sad about that. But let me make sure that you all know that that does not reflect on the American people.

Right now in Afghanistan there is an Italian lady that has been kidnapped by an Afghan man, while there are hundreds of Afghan women demonstrating outside in the streets of Kabul demanding the release of that woman, the Italian lady.

So the prisoner abuse thing is not at all a thing that we attribute to anybody else but those individuals. The Afghan people are grateful very, very much to the American people, and recognize that individual acts do not reflect either on governments or on societies. These things happen everywhere.

Karzai–a devout Moslem–shows the same sort of common sense on the subject of Newsweek and the Koran-flushing story:

[The riots] were more against the elections in Afghanistan. They were more against the progress in Afghanistan. They were more against the strategic partnership with the United States.

We know who did it. We know the guys. We know the people behind those demonstrations. And unfortunately you don’t, here, follow the Afghan press. But if you listen to the Voice of America, the Radio Liberty and the BBC, the Afghan population condemned those acts of arson in Afghanistan.

Of course, we are, as Muslims, very much unhappy with Newsweek bringing a matter so serious in the gossip column. It’s really something that one shouldn’t do, that responsible journalism shouldn’t do at all.

But Newsweek story is not America’s story. That’s what we understand in Afghanistan.

So, Newsweek is losing credibility all over the world. I can’t say that makes me weep. Sometimes I think that, if the MSM can’t be objective, and can’t put things in the proper context, they should just publish the transcripts and call it a day. Let us be the judges of what people are actually saying and meaning, and be done with the middlemen/women oh-so-helpfully “interpreting” it all for us.

And yes, the usual suspects will probably call Karzai an American puppet and Bush’s willing tool. I find it hard to understand how anyone can look at the man and listen to him, and still doubt his deep integrity and sincerity, not to mention his sheer courage.

It’s a moderate start

The New Neo Posted on by

Good news–I think.

Apparently, according to the Boston Globe, there is a middle-of-the-road coalition being formed in the Senate, and it has some chance of tempering the polarization there. Could this be the start of something big?

An excerpt from the article:

The group of about 15 senators has been quietly forging a compromise even as their more partisan colleagues bludgeon each other daily on the Senate floor. They comprise at least six members of each party, the current margin of power in the Senate, and thus could decide any vote that falls along party lines.

Close Senate observers say the coalition’s work could shift power from the majority and minority leaders and revitalize the political middle, with moderates who have found themselves out of the mainstream of their own parties enjoying heightened influence on major legislation.

If they are able to work productively together on other issues, their influence could expand, with the docket including such contentious issues as Social Security, stem cell research, reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and John Bolton’s nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations.

Here are the names of some of the Senators involved:

The Democrats include the longest-serving senator, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, and one of the newest, freshman Ken Salazar of Colorado. They are joined by Democratic centrists, such as Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

Those on the Republican side include such moderates as Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island and Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, as well as independent-minded conservatives, such as John W. Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina.

I don’t know about you, but I like the sound of this development.