Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
I forget who talks about the bizarre phenomenon of reading a newspaper article covering something about which you're knowledgeable. You notice that the reporter has absolutely no idea what they're writing about and that they've made egregious errors of fact and have missed any nuance on the topic.
Then you turn the page and read the next article and say, "Oh, wow, that's interesting." You know enough to be skeptical about certain articles but then you swallow whole the next one.
I might have the opposite problem of having too highly developed cynicism about everything I read.
In any case, I was thinking of all this while reading this small news story about the exoneration of General John Allen. He was caught up in the whole Petraeus/Broadwell affair. Now, I could tell when reading every update of that story that each article was sourced from interested parties who were skewing the news. So, for instance, the whistleblower government employee who figured out that the CIA Director shouldn't be having an affair probably became a weirdo who had sent erotic pictures to someone he was pursuing. Which was true -- except for the part about him being a weirdo, the pictures being erotic, and the recipient being someone he was pursuing.
And when General John Allen was brought into the scandal, a government bureaucrat alleged that he'd sent tens of thousands of pages worth of absolutely scandalous emails to a lover. Which was true -- except for the amount of emails, the nature of his relationship with the person to which they were sent and their scandalous nature.
The Washington Post reports today:
Gen. John Allen cleared in misconduct inquiry
See, after letting anonymous sources claim, without any substantiation, that the emails in question were racy and flirtatious and questionable and inappropriate, the newspaper now tells us that they were nothing of the sort. He's been completely exonerated.
Let this be a lesson. Treat all anonymous, unsubstantiated claims with a high degree of skepticism. Consider the motivations of a prosecutor, bureaucrat, or other antagonist. And try to remember to follow up on stories to determine whether the initial allegations are true.
In other words, don't trust the man!
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Comments:
Mar '11
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Michael Crichton discussing the Gell-Mann Effect:
May '10
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
"No matter how cynical I become, I just can't keep up" Dorothy Parker.
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Percival: Michael Crichton discussing the Gell-Mann Effect:
11 minutes ago
Thank you!
Dec '12
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Problem is, while exercising proper skepticism about the original story, can I keep it up to be properly skeptical of the new "corrected" story?
What if it was just thousands instead of hundreds of thousands of nonflirtatious nonbusiness emails? OK for a man on active duty?
Jan '11
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Caveat lector ... let the reader beware.
Part of it is based, simply, on an appreciation of human nature. In any story, the people most likely to provide the most information are involved in the story. Who's a reporter going to interview? An involved person who knows what's going on, or an uninvolved person who knows less? The price of information must include the cost of trustworthiness.
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Margaret Sarah: Problem is, while exercising proper skepticism about the original story, can I keep it up to be properly skeptical of the new "corrected" story?
What if it was just thousands instead of hundreds of thousands of nonflirtatious nonbusiness emails? OK for a man on active duty? · 5 minutes ago
I 100% get your point, and it's a good one.
But I think we're talking about a few hundred emails spread over several years (a few dozen a year or one every few weeks) without anything in them disconcerting enough for even a mild reprimand? That would be different, no?
Oct '10
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Percival no doubt got the reference you were thinking of, but there's also a wonderful book-length treatment, John Allen Paulos' wonderful A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, that I highly recommend.
May '10
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Remind me why confidential sources are a cornerstone of respectable journalism.
If you can't trust a reporter, who can you trust?
Dec '12
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
I spoke to an admirable, charming young guy a few days ago who can't bear to watch tv because when he was a marine in Iraq at 22, enduring unbelievable stress and watching his friends die, he saw the reporters who were embedded deliver stories to their credulous audiences in the States that bore no resemblance to what was actually happening. Nine years later you can still hear the hurt, that they were distorting the news to make courageous, patriotic young Americans who were risking their health and lives for their country, sound like the bad guys.
Dec '10
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Don't trust the media, the bureaucrat or the man.. or anybody over thirty.
...Oh...ah...sorry, had a flashback. Shouldn't have eaten those mushrooms in college.
Oct '10
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Spent a few years working in a newsroom, as a recording engineer. My observation, from the early '70s? Reporters are lazy and stupid. Having so much fun proving their point that they become disconnected from the pursuit of truth.
Our lead writer, who rejoiced every time he posted on the Watergate affair, actually broke out a bottle of champagne to celebrate the Nixon resignation. A few months later, angered over the station's business managers rejection of his amorous advances, he ambushed her in the parking lot, pumped 5 rounds into her pretty legs, and was found dead in a motel room from an overdose of the drugs he had been on for years.
This is where credibility must be measured. His voice was prominent in the coverage of a news story that changed America.
Oct '10
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
MSM delenda est.
Really, the only differences between the NYT and TMZ are the sophistication of their audiences, the self-knowledge of their 'journalists', and the sustainability of their business models. (The NYT loses 3-zip.)
Feb '12
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
"
''Believe none of what you hear, and half of what you see''
Benjamin Franklin
Aug '12
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
In 1990, the LA Times ran a series of articles on Southern California military bases and their units that might be called on to deploy to the Middle East in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. When they got to George AFB, They had every pertinent fact about the plane, the mission, and the units wrong. About the only thing they got right was the location of the base. A 45 minute drive would have brought the intrepid reporter to the base, where he/she would have been greeted with open arms by the public affairs folks ambitious to tell the story. A few minutes perusal of the pertinent Janes volume would have clarified all the sloppy mistakes, but they could not be bothered to do either. From that day, I have rrusted almmost nothing written by a major newspaper reporter. I have also had the misfortune of being interviewed several times. Each time, even from the "friendlies", the product was at best distorted beyond recognition and normally completely false and filled with crafted statements artfully woven together from disparate snippets of the conversation. I agree with raycon and lindacon above that reporters are generally lazy and stupid.
Apr '11
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
We are in an era where the supposed media watchdogs and the powerful in and around govermnent, conspire together against the public for the purpose of securing their own power, wealth and influence.
The corruption of everything "DC" is profound... and beyond repair.
Apr '12
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Great blog-fodder if you do know about a topic, though. I got to tear apart a story about MMOs that was front and center of that section of the San Diego newspaper! (It was talking about gold buying in game, and opened with talking about World of Warcraft having player owned castles and such....Went down hill from there, and failed to mention that of the two named sources, the one that was defending the other drew a paycheck from him.)
Mar '11
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
Re: "too highly developed cynicism about everything I read"
That's me too. I don't trust any news story any more, to be honest. Well, maybe weather reports, and sports stories. Most of the time. ;-)
But news about politics, government, the economy, religion, unions, teachers and education, gay or race issues, global warming, just about any issue you could name, are all hopelessly corrupted.
Oct '12
Re: Don't Trust the Media, the Bureaucrat or the Man
I used to be a reporter for a small town newspaper. I always tried to approach my job with humility about my significance. Really who is more important somebody trying to do something or a guy with access to printer's ink?I was also generally humble about my intelligence. By the way I called myself a reporter-never a journalist. Reporters who called themselves journalists bugged me.