Posted on 08/04/2008 9:06:17 PM PDT by jazusamo
We have forgotten so much about the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that many people may not remember the deadly anthrax spores that were mailed to various prominent people in politics and in the media during that time.
None of the intended victims was killed by the anthrax but five other people were, including two postal workers, who apparently became victims because they handled the mail containing anthrax spores.
In the instant search for someone to blame, biologist Steven J. Hatfill was publicly named as "a person of interest" in the case by government officials. He became, in the media presentation, the villain du jour.
The government was eventually forced to issue a retraction and agreed to pay a settlement of more than $5 million. But retractions never catch up with the original charges, which will blight this man's life the longest day he lives.
More recently, a federal investigation has focused on someone else who worked in the same scientific laboratory as Hatfill. This time the new suspect was about to be indicted, as distinguished from being tried in the media-- and he committed suicide.
This may mark the end of the anthrax story but the reckless destruction of people's reputations and the disrupting and blighting of their lives in the media is continuing on.
There is much to be said for the British practice of limiting what can be reported in the media about someone on trial until after that trial is over.
Once a charge has been made and publicized from coast to coast-- if not internationally-- later exoneration will never get the same publicity, so the damage cannot be undone. You cannot unring the bell.
A major part of what is reported in the media-- especially the tabloid media, whether in print or broadcasts-- consists of leaks, speculation and innuendo, all repeated around the clock, day in and day out, whether or not anything is ever proved.
What someone thinks is going to happen is not news. After it happens it is news.
The 24-hour news cycle may require that somebody be saying something on the air all the time. But that is the media's problem-- and it should not be solved at the expense of ruining other people's lives.
The loss is not solely that of the particular individuals singled out for accusation or innuendo.
If an informed citizenry is the foundation of democratic government, then a misinformed citizenry is a danger.
Individuals who have never been smeared can also be affected. Highly qualified people, whose knowledge and judgment are much needed in high places, may turn down judicial nominations, for example, or decline other high-profile positions in government, if that means risking having outstanding reputations for integrity that they have built up over a lifetime be dragged through the mud in televised confirmation hearings conducted like Roman circuses.
Such top-level people can always be replaced by warm bodies, as Judge Robert Bork was replaced by Judge Anthony Kennedy, after the smearing of Judge Bork by the Senate Judiciary Committee defeated his nomination.
But the whole country continues to this day to pay dearly for having Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, making intellectually foppish decisions.
One of the perennial crusades of the media has been to have more government business televised. Their self-interest in this is obvious. But the benefits of televising government proceedings-- if there are any benefits-- must be weighed against the enormous harm that this can do not only to individuals but to the country.
Television conveys false information as readily as it conveys the truth. Congressional hearings are not glimpses of truth. They are staged events to perpetuate some political spin.
Televising these political shows only impedes Congress' ability to get serious work done in private instead of spending time playing to the peanut gallery.
Both individuals and the country deserve more protection from publicity abuse than they usually get.
Well said, Dr. Sowell.
I couldn't read this piece without thinking of the disservice done to this nation and some of it's finest by Time magazine and Tim "Jihad" McGirk.
As usual, Dr. Sowell is right on. The media just loves to try to embarrass George Bush any way they can. It has sabotaged the security of our country time after time in an effort to get back at him for their misconception that he “stole the election.”
Agreed, Smooth. The media is often times unmerciful and in many cases if the facts don’t fit their ideas they simply ignore the facts. There’s no better example than McJerk and Time with the Haditha case.
Yes, there have been far too many incidences of the media printing classified material since President Bush was elected, there’s no excuse for it and they should have been made examples of.
Anyone remember Richard Jewell? He recently passed away.
Sure do, that was a very sad deal. There was a thread here about his passing if I’m not mistaken and not too awful long ago.
pING
Tom Sowell BUMP!
The perils of free speech are well known. The perils of unfree speech are well known to be much worse. I’m afraid the problems Sowell complains about cannot be remedied. They’re as essential part of our system, part of what makes it, as Churchill put it, the worst system ever invented - except for all the others.
There is much to be said for the British practice of limiting what can be reported in the media about someone on trial until after that trial is over.
I know this isn't the main point of the piece, but it's a freaking good point. I think this idea of forbidding names and ID's in the press until cases are resolved is a good one.
who is that guy?
well said indeed!
Let me refresh you....
It's about the smears & life changing (& many times erroneous) charges brought against someone by the government against the innocent ie...Richard Jewel, Hatfield, maybe even Ivins...
Dr. Sowell. Always brilliant. Always right.
The perils of free speech are well known. The perils of unfree speech are well known to be much worse. I’m afraid the problems Sowell complains about cannot be remedied. They’re as essential part of our system, part of what makes it, as Churchill put it, the worst system ever invented - except for all the others.
Your point is apt, and I would have agreed with it fully if I hadn't (finally!) tumbled to the reason why journalism as we have known it all our lives differs from the newspapers of the founding era which were consiously protected by the First Amendment.In the founding era, Thomas Jefferson sponsored a newspaper in which to attack the politics of Alexander Hamilton - and to reply to the attacks on Jefferson's politics by the newspaper which Alexander Hamilton himself sponsored. So the newspapers with which the framers and ratifiers of the First Amendment were familiar were openly partisan, and would not freely allow printers of competing newspapers to claim to be objective without a rebuttal.
What happened between the founding era and our time, which made the journalists of our lifetimes so ready to accord the title of "objective journalist" to each other? When you think about it, the answer is obvious. No, it isn't radio/TV broadcasting - the answer is far more fundamental to journalism as we know it. The answer is the telegraph and the Associated Press.
Before the (1848) founding of the AP, newspapers were about the political opinions of their printers as much or more than they were about the news - for the simple reason that the printers of the newspapers of that time did not have a systematic source of news which was certain to be new to its readers. Consequently most "newspapers" were not dailies - most were weeklies, and some had no deadline at all and just printed when their printers were good and ready. With the AP, newspapers actually went into the "news" business with both feet.
With the AP, the printer of your local paper had a source of news from distant places that it knew that you the reader, lacking an AP feed, would not yet have known. The catch to that was that the printer of your local newspaper didn't employ - and didn't even know - the reporters who wrote the stories which came in over the wire. Those reporters worked for other, theoretically competitive, newspapers. So suddenly the business model of your local newspaper depended on the credence placed by its readers on reports written by distant, nominally competitive, strangers. And that is the source of the convention that reporters do not question the objectivity of other reporters.
Before the AP, "newspapers" were not really journalism as we know it. Journalism as we know it is obsessed with getting the story quick and interesting. That places the emphasis on short deadline superficiality and on stories which may not be representative of society and in fact systematically are unrepresentative. "Man Bites Dog" rather than "Dog Bites Man."
Your concerns about censorship are valid assuming that the public has a right to know, quick. But what Sowell is pointing out is that, within limits, the speed with which the public learns of events is less a function of the actual need for the public to be informed than of the need of the newspapers to attract attention with a sensational story which may ultimately prove (as in the example of the anthrax suspect, or the example of the Duke Lacrosse rape allegations) to be not information but actually disinformation.
How much substantive and significant information could have been conveyed to the public with all the ink and broadcast bandwidth which were dedicated to the disinformation put out by Michael Nifong in the Duke "rape" case?
Newspapers were mailed from city to city. And editors in other cities would, as the mood struck them, print stories from out-of-town papers as if they were dispatches. But that still fits with your thesis, as there was no monopoly on the content of those "foreign dispatches" as there is today. And the discretion and choice of the local editor still determined what his paper would contain.
Anyone who goes to Washington is welcome to go into the Periodicals Room of the Madison Library and read as many as you choose of the newspapers of the Framer's Era. I especially recommend the (NJ) Brunswick Gazette, S. Arnett, Editor.
Congressman Billybob
Tenth in the ten-part series, "The Owner's Manual (Part 10) -- The Remaining Amendments"
Latest article, "A Scandinavian Skeleton in a Southern Closet"
I thought of Mr. Jewell as I read the article also. Prayers for him and may he find peace and his heavenly reward. His name may have been dragged through the mud here on earth but may his name forever be written in the book of life eternal. Amen.
Thanks for the ping.
Your discussion of the newspapers at the time the First Amendment was being written and ratified, are spot on.
It is also my understanding that the Associated Press was successfully sued by a Chicago newspaper on antitrust grounds.It seems to me that the Fairness Doctrine presupposes journalistic objectivity - and that not is only journalistic objectivity a fact not in evidence, "journalistic objectivity" is a conceit which is promoted by an organization which exists in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Which conceit is central to the business model of that monopoly, and of its member newspapers.
Which leaves me wondering how any resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine withstands challenge of the foundational premise that there is an objective standard of contemporaneous speech - when the core reality underlying the First Amendment is that the government must not define what speech is objective. Considering that the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment protect the unverifiable claims of religious doctrine from adjudication by Congress, how does Congress have the right to judge which speech is "conservative," or Republican, or Democratic, or "objective?"
And without such a determination, of course, a requirement for balancing is absurd on its face. What is "balanced" in such case?
The raw power reality is, of course, that SCOTUS would have to stand up the Associated Press journalism in order to rule sensibly on such a case - and that would mean each justice having to read in the papers what a meanie he is, for the rest of his days. The only justice not subject to the flattery and derision of the papers being Justice Thomas, who gave up on journalism upon his confirmation. He is actually, therefore, the only justice who should not recuse himself from such a case.
Thank you both for your informative posts.
I noted that also and have thought a lot about it because the Canadians enforce it and it seems to me it practically eliminates the sensationalism in these type case.
I find myself disagreeing with that last statement of yours. Always right? This time, at least, I think not. He wants us not to televise Congress's deliberations, so they can get on with the business of the nation in private conferences. Why in the world would we want our congress critters to do their wheeling and dealing in private?
I would much rather they stop preening for the cameras and do their work. The congressional record records their activities.
The USA functioned just fine before television.
The classic of guilt built up in the media was Ollie North .. and his appearance that shot that all to hell was the best televised Congressional hearings ever!
The USA functioned just fine before television.”
I agree that they should stop preening and get with their work. The Congressional Record only records what they do when in session, not in those private conferences, however, so I disagree with you there. As for how well the USA functioned before television, I believe it depended on how interdependent the congress critters were. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn't. When they got as seriously partisan as we see now, it did not work well at all. See the "caning" incident in pre-Civil War history, for an example.
Well said! Col. North is a true hero in spite of the enemedia.
The power of the government to convict without a trial is fearsome. The ability of the feebs to smear someone is jaw dropping. The evidence against Ivins seems thin, e.g. it was rumored that he had developed a vaccination against anthrax and was expected to hit the lottery on the patent. Only trouble is, the vaccine became available after the release and government employees are limited on the amount of royalties received for patents they develop.
You and me both, actually! ;)
However, the caning incident I'm speaking of resulted in the senator who committed the caning receiving over a hundred replacement canes from supporters. He was a Dem, btw. (assuming I remember the numbers correctly.)
I find myself disagreeing with that last statement of yours. Always right? This time, at least, I think not. He wants us not to televise Congress's deliberations, so they can get on with the business of the nation in private conferences. Why in the world would we want our congress critters to do their wheeling and dealing in private?Dr. Sowell. Always brilliant. Always right.
It is a chimera to propose that our congresscritters are ever going to restrict their discussions to televised hearings and floor debates. They don't want to, and they absolutely cannot be forced to. Period.And the upshot of that is that televised Congressional hearings/debates are for show, because the participants in them know that they are on TV.
“And the upshot of that is that televised Congressional hearings/debates are for show, because the participants in them know that they are on TV.”
So, do you mean we shouldn’t TRY to make them discuss things where we can see the discussion? Or do you just mean it’s hopeless, so why bother?
I mean that we should know better than to take things at face value. My cynicism about journalism and the Democratic Party is essentially total.
I'm going to take that as a “why bother” then. How do you feel about the Republican party?
I'll give you a hint on how I feel: No better or worse than the Dems (as a party). Some individuals in both parties are what I want in a congress critter, but not very freaking many. That would be why I want them to get the idea that we are watching them. Like hawks!
I'm going to take that as a “why bother” then. How do you feel about the Republican party?“I mean that we should know better than to take things at face value. My cynicism about journalism and the Democratic Party is essentially total.”
I'll give you a hint on how I feel: No better or worse than the Dems (as a party). Some individuals in both parties are what I want in a congress critter, but not very freaking many. That would be why I want them to get the idea that we are watching them. Like hawks!
What good does it do to watch them do exactly what you already know, and they already know that you know, that they are gonna do?That sounds like a counsel of utter cynicism and disengagement in politics - exactly what the pols want. But that is not my meaning. My point is that journalism has succeeded in wildly overhyping its own importance. Journalism styles itself "the press" - of which it is I admit a component, tho not the only component - but that omits some important points:
In this article, Thomas Sowell is merely arguing that one of the defining characteristics of journalism - its rush to judgement - is not in the public interest. No matter how useful journalists find it for the purpose of interesting the public.
- Journalism self-defines itself as being objective and - see for example "The National Press Club" - self-defines itself as constituting "the press" of the First Amendment. But the First Amendment plainly restricts the government from requiring "the press" to be objective - and if the government certifies that journalism is objective, and constitutes "the press," the government is thereby violating the First Amendment.
- Journalism as we and our grandparents have always known it - tracing back a century and a half, to the middle of the Nineteenth Century - is a creature of the telegraph and the Associated Press. It was only with the advent of the AP that "newspapers" actually began to rely on publishing news which the general public could not know until the newspaper printed it. We take such a steady stream news from distant locales as being the central, defining characteristic of the newspaper, the very heart of its business model - but news in that sense scarcely even existed at the time of the ratification of the First Amendment. The printer didn't have sources to which the general public could not be privy, and consequently there was no point to operating on a short deadline to try to put out the word to the public before they learned the news from other sources. Most newspapers were not dailies but weeklies - and some had no deadline at all, and just went to press when the printer thought he was good and ready.
- The business model of pre-Associated Press newspapers was not that of the AP newspapers but was much more like that of The Nation or National Review - they depended for their audience not on their news gathering/dissemination but on their interpretation of events - the perspective of the printer. They made no pretense to objectivity; they couldn't do so with a straight face, and their competitors were not about to accept any such imposture without engaging in the heaviest ridicule of which they were capable. They were not independent of the political parties; indeed I would argue that the paper which Jefferson sponsored to attack the politics of Alexander Hamilton - and to respond to the attacks by the paper Hamilton himself sponsored for reciprocal purposes - was possibly the embryo of the Democratic Party.
- The rules which journalism proposes as constituting their objectivity do not reflect the public interest but rather what interests the public - and that is quite a different matter. "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" is a counsel of superficiality, "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man'" is a counsel of unrepresentativeness, and "If it bleeds, it leads" is a counsel of negativity. IOW, there is always news, and the news is always bad, and the news is always important even if it doesn't really signify anything enduringly true . In that sense, what defines newspapers is not the public interest, it is actually radicalism. Consequently there is no reason for so-called "objective journalism" to be independent of the Democratic Party, nor vice versa. In fact there is a powerful symbiosis between the two, which explains why there is a revolving door between journalism and Democratic, but not Republican, political operatives.
Ping.
BTTT
I appreciate being included on this list - thank you!
I dunno. Has Sowell ever had a bad column?
Thanks for the ping and the post.
Solzhenitsyn’s remarks on the media...
The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?
Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.
Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.” But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.
Thanks to raymondpronk...here...
http://raymondpronk.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/solzhenitsyn-on-writers-and-lying/
from “Live Not By Lies” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn...
“Will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea which he can only see is false or a distortion of the truth whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science, or music.”
“And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, but not with any help from me.”
from...
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/livenotbylies.html
Thanks to FReeper Fred Nerks for the link.
Not that I know of, all that I’ve read are well thought out and informative.
That opinion is widespread but not true, IMO. A tactic used by the Left, the Communists, worldwide is to try to first steal an election but failing that to then accuse the winner of stealing the election. They keep that up along with calling the legally elected winner to be illegitimate. They do that until they can actually steal an election and gain/regain power.
To them, everything is about getting and keeping power. It is known that Senator Jay Rockefeller went to Jordan and Syria just prior to our buildup to invade Iraq and using the inside information he had, information shared with Congress by the President, that Bush was serious and was really going to invade Irag. This gave Saddam the information he needed to spirit the WMD out of Iraq.
Rockefeller did this to make Bush look bad and help the Democrats regain power. He didn't care about the country or the safety of out troops. He cared only about power. There are many like him.
My only disagreement with you is as to whether the Democrats/Left/Media really think Bush stole the election. I think they only pretend to think that to affect the Useful Idiots, who probably really do believe it
It was the media who sponsored all the investigations of the Florida election, the investigations which all proved that Bush won fairly. So, they know that no election was stolen, they just want to leave that impression on the impressionable. That is just one of their many deceptive practices.
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