Who watches the Press & other issues

TOM PAINE'S LOCKER: NOTES ON CONTEMPORARY POLITICS & THE PRESS 

Below:
I. Who Watches the Press? (2 pages)
II. Trying to Speak Truth During An Election (October emails) [emails to Politifact; FactCheck; Chris Matthews]

                                  Who Watches the Press? (Is Truth Neutral?)

     A shibboleth of the journalists and corporations covering politics is that they (personally) are or intend to be neutral or, even, objective. Of course, it is easy for some of us to dismiss such assertions when we hear them in the mouth of the minions of the capitalist warlock, Rupert Murdock. What are we to do, however, when individuals working with National Public Radio or some of the various “Fact Checking” organizations are unduly influenced by questionable and frequently unstated assumptions. After all, many of us of various political persuasion depend upon NPR, PBS, and FactCheck.org to give us “facts” which are not filtered by the “excessively” partisan lens which dominate much of our contemporary debate. Even CSPAN, with its relatively unfiltered presentation of political and historical presentations and debates from diverse and conflicting parties, is not always simply “above the fray. After all, CSPAN editors must decide which events to cover. But, before I get into my own value-laden argument proper, I must disclose some of my own bias. One of the things I most appreciate about NPR and CSPAN, for example, is that they allow me to hear the views and opinions of those with diverse political-ideological positions. But there is more to it than the mere presentation of diverse views — NPR and CSPAN frequently show those-whose-views-I-most-oppose at their most persuasive. NPR with its 5-10 minute audios shows disparate groups at their most human; CSPAN with its, typically, one-two hour presentations — allows a full airing of diverse and partisan political opinion.

SOME PRELIMINARY GENERALIZATIONS (expanded below):
    (1) Objective truth in politics and science is always ultimately unattainable. (In some cases this has immediate consequences.)
    (2) Genuine neutrality in politics — as in most human endeavors — is a mirage. (An observer of a political conflict may have no immediate interest in the winner of a particular party to a conflict. Indeed, the contending parties may agree to a “neutral” arbiter or judge or procedure to resolve a particular conflict. However, in such cases both the parties and the judges have real and value-laden interests in confining the conflict to the accepted mode of resolution.) (We may accept a Supreme Court decision as ‘final” not because we do not think it wrong — even scandalously wrong — but because we do not consider it to be a casus belli.)
   (3) We can aspire to be fair. In this context, “fair” means that our facts were collected, organized, and presented so as not to present any unfair advantage to contending parties. [That, of course, is the rub. Contending parties may think that the presented selection of facts is in reality a partisan emphasis which damages their own interests and/or]. In reality, whether an audience deems a presentation ‘fair’ depends upon the audience’s consensus about the reliability of the method by which the facts. (A journalist aspires to present facts which opposing parties might stipulate as “true facts” so that the parties’ conflicts would be confined to their differing values. Ideally, the journalist’s facts provide a basis for discussion by all. [Of course, the parties must be given an implicit opportunity to examine how the facts were found and verified.]
    (4) When an underground civil war exists, there may very well be no operating consensus about the derivation of the facts.
    (5) This writer believe that truth is not neutral and that justice is the proper end of political action. 

LCHj


Trying to Speak Truth During An Election October 2012

                “Those who speak cannot know; those who know cannot speak.”

                    [or, more precisely but not necessarily more accurately]

“Those who speak the loudest usually do not and, in fundamental ways, cannot know; those who know usually cannot be heard.”

     There is no value-free platform to speak from during a contentious election where issues of class warfare are embedded in a nation engaged in a cultural-political war. The remarks here are an attempt to uncover small, but apparently important components of the latest versions of the American love affair with plutocratic capitalism. The versions here have been mildly edited and some spelling and grammatical errors corrected.

An email to Chris Matthews (Oct 29): Big Bird, A trivial issue?
Email to FactCheck (Oct 4): Identifying a “Romney Position”??
Email to PolitiFact (Oct 8)  Philosophy, Ideology, & Hypocrisy

An email to Chris Matthews (Oct 29):
Re: Mitt Romney wants to get rid of Big Bird, Planned Parenthood, and FEMA

    Romney's comments about wishing to get rid of Big Bird are not trivial and should not be ignored and trivial. The amount of $'s are small, but the contemplated budget cut would be an act of pure vandalism. His comments about Planned Parenthood are fed by narrow intolerant religious zealotry. His comments about FEMA are foolish — Hurricanes are not limited to states. I know U want to focus on the "big Picture" - but his Big Bird comments provide a bird's eye view of a personal corruption even darker than the millionaire pride of his 47% remark. Like a small core into diseased tissue to check for cancer, his attempt to castigate an inventive and effective government program because it does not fit his ideology reveals the fundamental cruelty of Romney’s ideology.

LCHj


Email to FactCheck (Oct 4) Re: Brooks Jackson's use of the Word "Falsehood" in describing the Obama Truth Team criticism of Romney’s Abortion Decision.

Friends,

    This is my second email on this topic. …
    Mr. Jackson seems to assume that because on several recent occasions former Governor Romney has not explicitly adopted the position that the Obama team has attributed to him that the Obama team are uttering falsehoods about Mitt Romney. To come to this conclusion Mr. Jackson has to make several assumptions. The first assumption is that Romney has a single identifiable, non-contradictory, and sufficiently stable position that we can call it his unequivocal position. [I personally do not see that Mr. Romney has promoted a sufficiently consistent message for his message on abortion to merit any one of these 3 attributes.]
     A second implicit assumption is that Romney's public position's would be a reliable guide to his future actions (or, intentions, as any President will be frustrated by various political realities). [Again, I do not share such a trust in Mr. Romney's public pronouncements. I do not discount them, but I see them as an undefinitive guide.]
     By using the terms 'latest falsehood' Mr. Jackson's third assumption appears to be that those-who-are-critical-of-Romney are in fact either consciously or unconsciously lying when they - contrary to Mr. Jackson — infer that Romney would, given a receptive Congress or a suitable venue, permit the outlawing of abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. [These critical inferences are perhaps mistaken, but they are based on common sense inferences from Mr. Romney's (1) statements about a "'Human life' amendment", (2) his support for Supreme Court Justices who might overthrow Roe v. Wade, (3) his action as a governor in deeming a morning after pill as a form of infanticide, and (4) his rather secretive manner on some controversial public issues.] I could elaborate on those factors which predispose many of us to be suspicious of Mr. Jackson's rather innocent interpretations Governor Romney's position on abortion. [Even NPR [Sept 3] had a brief report on Mr. Romney's unstable abortion position…etc., etc.]
     In Mr. Romney's specific case there is a deeper issue. The public is quite concerned that — if elected — Mr. Romney might well pursue a very private, partisan, and sectarian agenda on several fronts. That appears to be the most pertinent implication of the 47% tape. For a person such as myself — one who does not claim to be free of moral or political bias — this tape suggests a darker side that I am not at liberty to ignore.
     FactCheck has done a public service in trying to illuminate the tensions, contradictions, errors, and falsehoods present in out political discourse. However, there is no free ride in the search for truth. When you seek to establish moral norms by attending only to simple minded-interpretations of public pronouncements you can destroy your moral credibility. Colin Powell damaged his reputation forever with a single UN speech which relied on information channeled by his President; Dan Rather damaged his reputation forever with a single TV report. I believe that both Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama are flawed men who overspin their messages. Neither is — as far as I can tell by my limited lights — immune to bending or even breaking the truth. However, I don't need for you to add your own distorting simplifications.

     A FINAL PURELY PERSONAL NOTE. I grew up in a South where miscegenation was painted as an evil which necessitated "segregation." Nighttime killings by the Ku Klux Klan were ignored or deplored but the evils of racial 'mixing' were continually condemned. Today — especially in political dialogue — abortion is frequently used as a "moral" cause or shield to allow us to ignore or downplay other more present evils that afflict those already born into our inequality-riven society. I do not expect FactCheck to get into the weeds of that particular debate — but I don't need any distractions either.

LCHj


Email to PolitiFact (Oct 8): Some Poorly Demarcated Distinctions between Philosophy, Ideology, and Hypocrisy

     In some of your half-true and partially true/false ratings, the actual value depends wildly upon assumptions about political reality that are more value-dependent than usual. Thus, you probably need a "Anywhere from, say, 20% to 80% True" or some equivalent reading. For example, I usually discover — upon examination — that arguments proposed by the Cato Institute about the consequences of economic policies are about as reliable as the 1950 and 1960 arguments by Southern white politicians were about the long term benefits of segregation. The unspoken plutocratic tint of such these current economic conservatives often appears in - and contaminates the reliability of - much 'mainstream' commentary and news. In other words, the economic class issues of today are as pressing as the racial issues of my youth and a "factual" interpretation of policy-laden issues is simply not possible in any simple sense. The shared and usually unspoken fears of miscegenation have been largely replaced [at least in the younger generation] by other fears and contentious issues (abortion, gay marriage) which are just as problematic.
     Almost all Americans think it is an objective fact that Hitler was a Bully. In my own mind, he was worse than a bully — but I make that statement knowing that it is a value-laden statement. Many Americans, especially but not exclusively Republicans, think we have a "free economy." I personally thinks that is an incredibly misleading statement. We have some economic mobility. But when Mitt Romney speaks of "Freedom" for the makers of wealth it reminds me of Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett and his followers telling me in 1964 that they 'loved their nigras.' I don't expect most Americans to agree with me on much of what I have just written. However, I think that on some very contentious issues you are 'crazy' if you think 'half true' is always an accurate or helpful reflection on the GENUINE FACTS OF INTEREST. One's attempt to decide which facts are most relevant should lead you — in some cases at least — to declare that the meter fluctuates wildly because there is no consensual basis for deriving a conclusion.
      LCHj