What Is Truth?

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not everyone is entitled to his own facts.”

Consider. In his article in TNR, “Shock Troops”, “Scott Thomas”, now revealed to be Scott Thomas Beauchamp, described the mocking of a woman soldier or contractor in Iraq who was disfigured by an IED, the desecration of the remains of Iraqi children by U. S. soldiers, and a U. S. soldier deliberately running over dogs with his Bradley in an Iraqi city.

On the other hand the senior non-commissioned officer in Beauchamp’s unit categorically denied Beauchamp’s assertions and characterizes the conduct of the soldiers under his command as “consistently honorable”.

Here’s another example (which I commented on yesterday). The Telegraph reported extremely harsh feelings between Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U. S. general in Iraq. Here’s a quote from the cited article:

At another meeting with Gen Petraeus, Mr Maliki said: “I can’t deal with you any more. I will ask for someone else to replace you.”

But on the other hand Col. Steve Boylan, MNF-1 CG Public Affairs Officer, replied in an email

Gen Petraeus and the Prime Minister have never had a stand-up shouting match, and only once has Gen Petraeus even raised his voice. This is a totally fabricated story, and you should have sought a comment from me, at the least to validate the information from your so-called aides as sources.

Gen Petraeus has never stated or even hinted at a “stormy relationship.” Saying that they do not pull punches is very different from stormy. That means they have very frank, open and perhaps direct conversations based on what is at stake here and what is needed and should be expected from both.

Senator Moynihan was wrong: in the future everything will be true for 15 minutes.

As I noted yesterday these stories are bound to be accepted or rejected as suits the preconceived notions of the listeners but I don’t think it’s enough to leave it at that. There are ways of evaluating testimony, of considering the relative likelihood of conflicting statements. All too frequently the sole refutation I hear is about the motives of those making the utterances.

This is, indeed, a way of evaluating the likelihood of a statement but it’s an extremely weak method, indeed, a fallacy, the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. While it’s prudent to consider the interests of the person making the statement in evaluating it’s likelihood, those interests are not dispositive. That’s the fallacy.

There are other things to consider. Is this a first-hand report? Hearsay? More distant yet? What are the characters and histories of those making the claims?

In the case of the Telegraph report there are no named sources. This itself should cause us to view the report skeptically. We have no way of knowing whether the source actually has first-hand knowledge or what his or her history or character are.

It’s been noted in support of the Telegraph’s version of facts that the Associated Press has repeated the story reported by the Telegraph. Since the Telegraph story relies on unnamed sources, we have no way of determining whether the AP story corroborates the Telegraph story or merely repeats it. It provides litle or no additional weight to the original report.

Unfortunately, because the conflicting reports, regardless of their veracity or credibility, will be taken as gospel by partisans with conflicting views, the harm has already been done. The stories will be added to the enormous mound of truths, half-truths, and fabrications that support your side.

6 comments… add one
  • Journalism has been my career since 1983. You quickly learn that reporting is the art of leaving things out. Of course no reporter can tell you everything that happened, even in the most minor traffic accident or township meeting — nor can any editor print every story written in that news cycle. Add that to the human tendency to find narratives and connect little pieces to big pictures, and you’ve got all the ingredients you need to tell slanted stories and pass them off as realities.

    Journalists try to avoid this. They don’t try hard enough. Actually, the more opinionated ones sometimes are more scrupulous in their reporting, because they are always conscious of their biases. The more hair-raising examples of slanted reporting and editing often happen unconsciously, believe it or not, by people who think they are telling it straight.

    If you read closely, you’ll often find that two articles that seem to contradict each other actually don’t quite overlap and they’re emphasizing different things, or ignoring different details. “Consistently honorable” doesn’t rule out “occasionally dishonorable.”

    But you learn to recognize that general statement as a more honest statement than the story which simply reports every nasty detail without reference to whether this is exceptional or typical — and leaving your red-meat-hungry audience to decide for itself based on prior biases.

  • I don’t object to journalists having biases, Callimachus. I think that’s a fact of life just as scientists having biases, postal workers having biases, and plumbers having biases are. To be human is to have pre-conceived notions. When the biases become a program, I think we’re in very great danger.

    If journalists are, actually, professionals (I tend to believe that journalism is a craft rather than a profession), then they have obligations to pursue the truth of the story more aggressively than I see being done in these two cases. I don’t see a hint of independent confirmation in either of them.

    Add to that my persistent kvetch about the narrative, point-of-view style of journalistic writing that’s overtaken reporting for the last 25 years or so and you have a formula in which it’s increasingly difficult to tell the news from the editorial page and the editorial page from fiction.

  • And in the case of Iraq, you have what amount to “news” stories based on third-party reporting that is unverifiable; or you have events that are obviously staged soley for the benefit of the press – something seen quite often in Gaza, where the “demonstration” doesn’t begin until the press corps arrives. Often these “news” reports amount to legitimizing propaganda and many people will take them at face value as honest reporting. And it’s all exacerbated by a general ignorance of military matters by journalists, who often get basic military details wrong (though after almost 6 years of war, the situation is much better).

    Micheal Totten has a good post (and comments section) on the subject:
    http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001476.html

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