Congressman Billybob Sez: Don't Trust My Words

HIGHLANDS, N.C., March 21 (UPI) -- This here's the 342nd Report ta the Folks Back Home from the (More er Less) Honorable Billybob, cyberCongressman from Western Carolina.

Newspaper articles ain't jus about sports, celebrities, car crashes n astrology. Nope. More important stuff is bein printed these days. How accurate r the papers onna subjeck ov the UN n war?

Since ma able assistant, J. Armor, Esq., takes truth in ink azza serious matter, I'll turn this over ta him.

We are at war. It is more important now than at any other time that we as citizens have access to accurate information. How can you separate the wheat from the chaff, spot bias, spot missing facts, and obtain the truth from the print media? (These days, that includes electrons on a monitor as well as ink on paper.)

When I was a professor of political science, I told my students on the first night, "Do not trust what I or any other 'expert' tells you as an opinion. Read history. Read the original documents. Reach your own conclusions." The same advice applies to all of you in reading any daily newspaper, especially in time of war. Let's apply that premise.

The first critical event of this week was the failure Monday of the U.N. Security Council to take any further action of any kind against Iraq. That led to President George W. Bush's address to the nation that night committing the United States to war within 48 hours. This was conditional on Saddam Hussein's leaving Iraq voluntarily. The condition failed. The war is under way.

We examine the subject of accuracy on the U.N. in print media, from the examples of five articles and eight letters to the editor in the Sunday editorial section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

First, a word about the AJC, as it calls itself after absorbing its smaller rival, the Journal. As Atlanta grew into a great city, the legendary editor Ralph McGill turned the Constitution into a great paper. I met him in 1963, in a small group where a pompous college junior had the nerve to ask, "How can you publish a great paper in Atlanta?" McGill replied simply, "I do not write my paper for people who move their lips when they read." The question on the table is whether the AJC has now fallen below that standard of journalism.

The "At Issue" Section of the AJC on March 16 poses the correct question in the title on its front page: "Does the U.N. matter?" It follows that immediately, however, with a correct quote from Bush which is false in context. The quote is, "I believe ... free nations will not allow the United Nations to fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society." The president said this on Feb. 14, when he was still seeking to get the U.N. to honor and act on its own Res. 1441, from last fall.

The correct quote to use, with the U.N. on the verge of failure which did happen the following day, was the president's caution when he spoke before the U.N. General Assembly last fall. He warned the U.N. that it would become "irrelevant" if it did not act effectively.

Seven quotes follow this lead quote. They, too, demonstrate the bias of the AJC. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, accuses the United States of "violating the U.N. Charter," and seeking "a fig leaf for war." Both Ratner and his organization have a long history in the hard Left as opposing most American policies.

Two other quotes are entirely predictable, given the organizational sources. The Interhemispheric Resource Center asserts that the credibility of the U.N. is "measured by its subservience to Washington." The Globalist asserts that the only way an action is legitimate is "via a vote by the U.N. Security Council."

One quote is from an "online forum" which says the United States should "kick the U.N. out of the U.S." This is not an analysis, it is a bumper sticker. Using a grossly oversimplified quote from the opposition is a classic way of downgrading the arguments of the other side.

The AJC quotes from the U.N. Charter, Chapter 1, Article 2, that "All nations shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means ...." The paper neglects to quote the "right of self-defense" that all nations possess per Article 5. It also neglects U.N. resolutions 1441 and 687, the latter being the conditions of disarmament accepted by Iraq as a condition of the truce that ended the Gulf War in 1991.

Only three of the quotes come from sources seeking to analyze the facts and reach a reasoned conclusion. The Eisenhower Institute favors continued U.N. effectiveness. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace asserts that the U.N. requires self-examination to make "deep-seated structural and policy changes." And George Will asserts that the U.N. has failed utterly.

In short, the AJC has stacked the deck in favor of the continued (apparent) relevance of the U.N., using largely fact-free opinions. The bias continues on the inside pages. The review article, entitled "Bush can't persuade U.N. ...," notes that the UN is not going to approve the British resolution, but makes no mention of any of the 17 prior resolutions. It refers to the United States "going it alone," without mention of the 30-plus nations that have publicly joined the effort. This article, and a sidebar one, feature poll results on Iraq from several sources, as if this president on this critical issue should or would permit his decision to be driven by polls.

Another discussion article has longer quotes from assorted "experts," three of them law professors. Only one of eight different comments even mentioned the League of Nations, which preceded World War II, and failed over its inability to deal with German and Italian aggressions prior to all-out war. And even that comment did not discuss the details about the League's failure then, compared with the U.N.'s failure now. In my UPI column last week, I provided more details about the League's failure, and the U.N.'s failure, than a total of five different articles on the U.N., filling most of the AJC's editorial section.

A quick test that anyone can apply in reading any article, on any subject, is this: How factual is the article? How many pieces of information does it contain that anyone with an internet connection can easily check for truth? The less factual an article is, even if it is studded with direct quotations from "experts," the less likely it is to be reliable.

Next in the AJC are six letters to the editor from readers of former President Jimmy Carter's essay published the week before, "The case for a 'just war' doesn't hold." I will not embarrass any of these writers by quoting them. Suffice to say, all but one of these letters are entirely fact-free, either praising (mostly) or attacking Carter. Just one refers to a single fact, Carter's "debacle ... negotiated with North Korea in the 1990s."

The last two articles in the AJC's editorial section are the syndicated columns of Thomas Friedman and George Will. Friedman manages to talk about Iraq at length without once mentioning the U.N. George Will discusses only the U.N. and its lost legitimacy. Not surprisingly, Will's column is the most factual of all the AJC's articles.

The general theme presented by both the reporters and editors of the AJC is that the U.N. is a good idea, and that it is still relevant to the subject of war and peace. The most common word in all the AJC's articles is "multinational," without discussing what kind of nations are involved, and with what motives.

Is George Will correct in saying that "communities" involve shared values, and therefore there is no such thing as the "international community"? Who are the members of the U.N.? Most of these 191 nations are dictatorships. Of these, a few are kingdoms, a few are theocracies, and the rest are political dictatorships. Most of the U.N. ambassadors represent governments that were not elected in any way. How can such a body reach decisions that can fairly be called democratic?

The House of Representatives is the most democratic part of the U.S. government. Its voting members are elected from 435 districts every two years. While some face no opponents, in theory every one could be challenged by members of several other parties and independents in every election. The House, for all its warts, is a democratic institution.

What if the members of the House were like the nations in the U.N.? What if more than half of them had either shot their way into power, or been born into power, or were the children of those who had gained power by force? What if more than half of them had never faced their constituents in an election? Would the House still be described as democratic?

The iron law of computer programming is, "Garbage in, garbage out." You cannot get better results out of a system than the quality of its inputs. The same law applies to every system invented by mind of man, including the United Nations, and in two ways.

The plain fact, which appears nowhere in the AJC's discussion of the U.N., is that a majority of U.N. ambassadors represent dictators of one stripe or another. They are, themselves, non-democratic. As Thomas Jefferson asserted in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the legitimacy of any government rests on "the consent of the governed." Such consent is absent in any majority vote at the U.N.

The fact that the ambassadors vote by majority in the Security Council and in other U.N. bodies does not convert the actions of the non-democratic ambassadors into democratic decision-making. "Garbage in, garbage out."

The second way that applies is the legitimacy of the U.N. itself. If most of the ambassadors do not possess "the consent of the governed," how can the U.N. itself possess any greater legitimacy? "Garbage in, garbage out."

More specifically, an organization which represents primarily nations that do not meet the standards of civilization, including respect for the individual, respect for the rule of law, or in some circumstances merely refraining from mass murder, cannot itself be expected to be a civilized organization. "Garbage in, garbage out." The extensive coverage of the AJC ignores such factors.

I am not picking on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution here. Like most Americans, I have daily access to only one major city newspaper; the AJC is mine. Each of you can and should read critically the newspapers available to you. More important than the details of the U.N.'s failure this week will be the progress of the Iraq War in the next two weeks. You will need to separate the wheat from the chaff in that coverage --- and based on prior experience, the wheat will be a small fraction of all that you read.

Via the internet, I read articles from more than thirty newspapers a week, most of them American. Sadly, I think my criticisms of the AJC are applicable to most newspapers.

Back to the question posed by the title of this column: Can you trust what I write? Can you trust what the AJC writes? Reach your own decisions. And let me, and them, know what you think.

(About the author: Congressman Billybob is fictitious, but prolific, on the Internet -- the invention of John Armor, who writes books and practices law in the U.S. Supreme Court. Comments and criticisms are welcome at CongressmanBillybob@earthlink.net).

Great time at the Rally for Freedom in Raleigh, NC. After the Rally, found that the following was up on UPI.

Think that Freepers will appreciate this.

I tend to take everything with a grain of salt. In times of war news moves fast and furious, so it takes an effort to not jump to conclusions. However, there are some sources I consider more trustworthy than others. This mostly comes out of long timeframes of experience. Repeated experience is a type of research, just over time rather than in depth.

4 posted on 03/22/2003 6:12:37 PM PST by P.O.E. (God Bless and keep safe our troops.)

5 posted on 03/22/2003 10:22:15 PM PST by PeaceBeWithYou (De Oppresso Liber!)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.