I was talking recently with a contributor to the blog, and we were talking about the "Barack Obama is an Indonesian trained terrorist" story run by the Fox News Channel. It brought up the old rehashing from my contributor friend of how biased the FNC is, but a more interesting point (and the focus of this entry) is the source the FNC reporter "gave up". I read that FNC attempted to justify the airing of the atrocious Obama terrorist story by citing the source of the information as a member of the Hillary Rodham-Clinton camp. The contributor immediately propositioned that this would be a brilliant idea, thereby shining a negative light on both the FNC and Obama in a single blow. If someone were to bring up the possible conspiracy theory, it could be dismissed out of hand as "absurd". I like a good story, but I likewise dismissed the idea from the contributor out of hand as--absurd.
News came down recently this past week that the airing of the story has earned Fox News the fine of... no more Obama. He apparently is going to try to cut FNC out of the loop. I currently believe that Barack Obama is intellectually and psychologically strong enough to take on the misinformation of any news sources. This is, therefore, a bad idea. FNC may not be universally respected for journalistic integrity, but it serves in providing a key portion of America with their information/misinformation. To cut yourself off from potential voters is never a good idea. There does exist swing voters who watch FNC for their information, and the missed face time could cost him. Granted, the amount of time spent abstaining from FNC has not been quantified (at least to me, at the time of posting) by the Obama camp.
This all leads me back to the introduction: Hillary and her now certain attempt to discredit both Obama and the FNC with one master stroke. It seems like a beautiful piece of work crafted only through years of practice playing Diplomacy (best game ever invented). No, I don't believe Hillary Rodham-Clinton was the second shooter from the grassy knoll, but conspiracy theories are supposed to be just a little but nutty.
Insight first broke the story, and cited the Clinton campaign team at the time. Some networks investigated further, others just repeated it as is. Insight has since clarified their position, pointing out that they didn't do anything wrong, because they aren't really journalists anyway.
ReplyDeleteI had just watched Primary Colors, which portrays the Clinton research team as the most thorough investigators in the world, and the Clintons as skilled and calculating media manipulators. More generally, it suggests primaries make Diplomacy look like the Giving Tree family Christmas.
Either the Clinton campaign leaked it, or Insight was lying. Each possibility might seem nutty on its own, but like Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote, sometimes, implausibility simply abounds.
Bush on Global Warming
ReplyDeleteRemember a few years ago, when Bush said we need more research on global warming before going forward? Remember how everyone was upset by this, seeing it as characteristic of Republican efforts to ignore or relativise science so they don't have to grapple with issues that are hard on their supporters (evil, Earth-hating megacorps)?
I hope Bush's acknowledgment of the problem of global warming in the State of the Union has gone some way to debunk that myth, and endear him to his detractors (dectractors like me!).
Sure, you could revise your model, say that Bush will ignore science that doesn't fit conveniently in his world, unless it hits a threshold of overwhelming certainty. But that's not sinister anymore, that's what we all do, and it's not clear that greater credulity is always the best approach.
The Principle of Charity
It's really easy to recast any statement by any speaker with sinister motives. Such a move is usually plausible, and usually shuts down further discourse.
Davidson proposed a solution with his Principle of Charity: you should always try to maximize the truth and rationality of a statement you are critically examining.
As nice as this principle sounds, it's often hard to apply: we often emphasize different parts of our opponents' arguments to make the contradictions stand out. Is this being uncharitable? Sometimes it's hard to tell.
But whenever you accuse anyone of ill motives in a discussion, since personal motives are basically inscrutable, you have probably abandoned the principle of charity, and should speak with the utmost of care.
Um, what was your point again?
I don't think my claims about the Hillary campaign were outlandish, but Eric was right to push back against them anyway, to warn me I was abandoning the Principle of Charity when I began discussing the driving motives behind the leak, and thus on tenuous ground at best.
Now that my source/contributor has been revealed, I no longer need to hide behind the "Reporter's Shield" law. Indeed, it was Thomas and I that had the discussion, and my original point was that it would be absurd to believe that Clinton campaigners were behind leaked "information" regarding Obama's terrorist activities.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, I was trying to give Senator Clinton and her aides the benefit of the doubt because I will likely come down in future discussions as one of her biggest detratctors. That was the principle motivator behind giving the conspiracy theory in question a merely brief mention, not the veracity of any of Thomas's arguments.
The Principle of Charity has been restated as Hanlon's Razor:
ReplyDeleteNever attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.