Recently the New York Times has taken to criticizing the newly ‘conservative’ U.S. Supreme Court for rulings that respect and enforce Constitutional limits on the authority of the Congress and of regulatory agencies and of lower courts and of individual citizens to extract money and penitence from “powerful” individuals and corporations for perceived misdeeds. […]
The perception and appreciation of analogy – of discerning the common characteristics that make two superficially dissimilar situations or events essentially similar, or the divergent characteristics that make two superficially similar situations or events essentially dissimilar – is one of the fundamental skills of human reasoning that allows us to learn from history, to avoid the mistakes of the past and to progress despite those mistakes. It has been my observation that in our modern approach to education we no longer emphasize the teaching or the learning of those skills – and that therefore those skills have atrophied in Western culture – or at least in American culture – to the point that we are in danger of losing their benefit entirely.
In the aftermath of the Iraqi election, as the new parliament worked through the political compromises and alliances required to form a stable government, The New York Times ran a “news analysis” describing the difficulties and dangers induced by the relative split among the various political constituencies in the vote – by the lack of a clear mandate for one group to rule.
Although the analysis itself was unobjectionable and even somewhat balanced – labeling something “analysis”, even in the news section, reduces the need for a veneer of objectivity – I found it objectionable because of the way it was labeled: the headline placed on the story communicated a clear and critical bias against the notion that the election had been successful that was not supported by the report itself.
A health-news story in The New York Times set me thinking about the kinds of biases working in the background that affect both reporting and headlines.
When the commission investigating the events leading up to the World Trade Center attack released their interim staff report headlines across the country declared that it “contradicted” what the President had said about Iraqi involvement in the attacks – and when the President and his staff disputed that contention the story became the “dispute” between he and the commission rather than what the commission had actually found.
After looking at what the report actually said I concluded that there was not, in fact, a dispute: what the report said and what President Bush had said were consistent; the only contradiction was between what the report said and the words that the news media, against the evidence, insisted on putting into the President’s mouth. I believe that represents a kind of bias that ill-serves us. When we are debating such important matters as war and peace we need and deserve the unblemished truth.
Richard Clarke’s charges that the Bush administration ignored the growing threat of Al Quaeda – and ignored his own prescient warnings about that threat – in the months leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center became a cause celebre among those who wished fervently to believe both in the incompetence or venality of the President and his policies and in the capacity for government to keep us safe from such atrocities. If we only listened to smart and dedicated people like Richard Clarke (and his old boss, Bill Clinton) then we could have back our golden age.
That is certainly the story that was told by the news media. But notwithstanding subsequent revelations about Mr. Clarke’s apparent epiphany on the dangers of Islamic Fascism between his services on the Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams, is it really reasonable to expect that a new President and a new administration – even if they have both a vision and a mandate – is going to turn around decades of policy thought and practice in their first nine months in office?
During the last presidential campaign John Kerry scored populist points castigating “greedy corporations” who avoided paying their “fare share” of taxes by “sheltering” their profits in foreign countries. In an era of corporate downsizing and record budget deficits that topic resonated with many people, and the charges were repeated widely before disappearing under the weight of other criticism more easily tied directly to George Bush. But before they disappeared The Boston Globe ran a piece by Stephen Glain on the topic in their business section. I sincerely believe there is a lot of questionable – or downright dishonest – stuff going on behind the corporate veil in support of avoiding taxes. But I also believe that a business reporter should consider the possibility that some practices characterized by populist politicians as malfeasance may actually have a rational and legitimate basis in business principles – and that a reporter writing a story on the topic should at least talk to some people in business who are using those practices before writing the story about them.
This sounds to me like a success of ethical government. It sounds to me like a refutation of the clamor we’ve heard for the last six months from the news media and the Democrats that the Bush administration is “in Enron’s pocket”.
I understand that James Garcia doesn’t like George W. Bush because he is a (shudder!) Republican, and (worse!) conservative, but please: George Bush is evil because he did what Mr. Garcia wanted him to do, but without sufficient sincerity?
I found the press coverage of the Monica Lewinsky story abhorrent. The fact that it focused on the tawdry and the titillating was merely an annoyance; the glee and excitement with which journalists and politicians seemed to savor the prospects of destroying reputations and careers, of bringing down the chief executive, of throwing the government into chaos, were frightening; and the fact that it was all based on what, for seven months, amounted to second-hand and unsubstantiated allegations was a moral affront.
I actually believed, even before Mr. Clinton’s mea culpa (such as it was), that there was more fire than smoke to this story, and what it says about the character of our president — not in his libido, but in his willingness to use the power with which we have entrusted him for personal aggrandizement — is appalling. But more appalling is the recklessness and vitriol with which the press pursued him: his misconduct, after all, reflects the failings of a flawed individual who will, in the end, be held to account by those who elected him; the misconduct of the press was systemic and unrestrained, and it will still be with us long after Bill Clinton is history.