Peddling poppycock: Why should editors be surprised at made-up stories?

The same week that The New York Times admitted that one of its reporters, Jayson Blair, made up or plagiarized some 36 news stories (see p. 5), another disgraced journalist published a novel about how he made up the news. The novel, The Fabulist, by Stephen Glass, demonstrates how the underlying problem in America's newsrooms is their worldview.

Mr. Glass was a 25-year-old wunderkind writing for The New Republic, once the nation's liberal journal of record (though it now sometimes surprises with an occasional hip neo-conservative position).

He once wrote an article, "Peddling Poppy" (June 9, 1997), in which he told about the First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ. This, in his words, is "a circuit church run by a handful of evangelicals who hold that Bush is the reincarnation of Christ."

Since his editors evidently knew nothing about evangelicals—who would never believe in reincarnation, let alone the deity of a president—they let this howler pass. Apparently, it accorded with their own ignorance and bigotry so they never questioned the story's authenticity.

In a later story, "All Wet" (Feb. 16, 1998), Mr. Glass again took a shot at Christians. He told about a group called Truth in Science, a supposed Christian organization that rejected global warming. He wrote that the group issued a press release, which he quoted: "Today God stuck out His tongue at the environmentalists.... He proved that it will be warm or cold at His discretion."

Another time he covered a Conservative Political Action Conference, embellishing his account with descriptions of these staunch Republicans trolling for sex and snorting cocaine.

Mr. Glass was caught only when he wrote about a conference of the National Assembly of Hackers, something he completely made up. Computer hacking was apparently a subject his editors cared about, so they caught him red-handed.

Now, Mr. Glass has written a novel about what really happened. Mr. Glass had been writing fiction that presented itself as being true. Now he is presenting what was true as a work of fiction. In an introductory note, he says that some may consider the tale to be "just one more lie." "On one level," he admits, "it is."

That is to say, it is a postmodern novel. Postmodernists believe that all truth is nothing more than a construction. What people believe to be true—religions, ideologies, moralities—are all cultural or personal constructions. There really is no essential difference between truth and fiction. Thus, postmodernist fiction writers purposefully blur the boundaries between truth and fiction, casting doubt on them both.

G.K. Chesterton observed that if you have dinner with someone who says that he does not believe in traditional morality, you would do well to count the silver after he leaves. Editors interviewing prospective reporters might remember to ask whether they believe in objective truth. Otherwise, the editors should not be surprised to find their news stories to be nothing more than "constructions."

Is the even bigger scandal at The New York Times simply a matter of a young journalist taking what he learned at college seriously? One might suspect so, but then again, Mr. Blair only said that he graduated from the University of Maryland. This turned out to be another one of his lies.

The reason the Times is taking these revelations so hard is that it is a bastion of modernist journalism. Its editors believe in facts and objectivity, with a high view of expertise. This is why its editors are so angst-ridden to learn that one of their reporters had been fabricating important stories.

But the Times editors have unwittingly been infected by postmodernism. You don't have to make up facts to construct a story. You can do that by selecting some facts while ignoring others, or by spinning facts in a particular direction. In its coverage of the Iraq War, abortion, homosexuality, and Republican policies, the so-called objective news stories in The New York Times tend to be close echoes of its left-wing editorial pages.

And in its aggressive affirmative-action policy—which gave a pass to Mr. Blair, an African-American, even after his fabrications became known—the editors were also embracing postmodernism, which holds that since truth is culturally constructed, fairness demands cultural diversity.

Diversity would indeed be a good thing for the Times. But in the canons of postmodern political correctness, diversity has to do with skin color, rather than diversity of ideas. People are supposed to look different but think alike. A true concern for diversity would look for conservatives, evangelicals, pro-lifers, and even the occasional Republican to throw into the mix of liberal modernists and liberal postmodernists.

In addition to the goal of having a newsroom "that looks like America," editors should aim at having a newsroom that thinks like America.

How to detect lies in your newspaper re Anonymous Sources! (USA TODAY OWNER PUBLISHER/23 MAY 2003)*

* The anonymous source, if in fact one exists, generally is a coward who tells more than he or she knows.

* The reporter permitted to use such sources often writes more than he or she hears.

*The only sure way to separate fact from fiction is to ban all anonymous sources. If your newspaper uses them, be very, very skeptical.

The reason Glass and Blair were able to get away with their lies for so long is simply because they wrote the stories the editors wanted to read.

Blair worked on the NYT piece "How race is lived in America". The NYT wanted stories confirming the evils of "racism" then Blair gave them the stories they wanted.

The NYT wants to believe that racism is an evil force oppressing "people of color" and they simply print only the stories that fit their template.

This is what happens when you live in your own self-made bubble.

"Unnamed sources". Easy agenda "journalism".

'Tis mere fact-checked truth of the incest of the major media and Democrat Politburo's Deliverence. (Banjo pickin' porch warmin' is too unsophisticated for these national leaders.)

Why should anyone believe the NYT again? Because they're "of record" that you should care what they write? Wrong.

As Veith points out, Postmodernism is based on the assumption that there is no such thing as an objective fact, no such thing as reality, and therefore no such thing as truth.

This kind of pernicious thinking infests our universities and schools, and has made its way into politics and the media as well.

Basically, reality is a social construction. Therefore you take over society and reconstruct it as you think it should be. In this effort, anything goes.

In 1947 Sartre bluntly wrote: “Il n’y a pas de nature humaine.” There's no such thing as human nature; people can be formed into whatever you choose to make them.

With Derrida it became: “Il n’y a pas d’hors texte.” Culture is linguistically determined, so whoever controls and alters the texts controls the culture. Combine this with Gramsci's advice to seize and control the levers of power, and you have what we see today: Postmodernist journalists who manipulate words in order to transform the culture into their own way of seeing things.

The rot has reached the highest level. Similar language can be found, for example, in the Supreme Court's Casey decision. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, and has the right to remake the universe according to his liking. Especially liberals.

Well, at least one justice hasn't succumbed to virulent postmodernism, as Scalia's dissent in Casey demonstrates:

. . .That is, quite simply, the issue in this case: not whether the power of a woman to abort her unborn child is a "liberty" in the absolute sense; or even whether it is a liberty of great importance to many women. Of course it is both. The issue is whether it is a liberty protected by the Constitution of the United States. I am sure it is not. I reach that conclusion not because of anything so exalted as my views concerning the "concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Ibid. Rather, I reach it for the same reason I reach the conclusion that bigamy is not constitutionally protected - because of two simple facts: (1) the Constitution says absolutely nothing about it, and (2) the longstanding traditions of American society have permitted it to be legally proscribed. [Fn1] Akron II, supra, at 520 (SCALIA, J., concurring). [505 U.S. 833, 981]. . .

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.