Okay, my major project for this weekend somehow became a list of literature and nonfiction recommendations. It's highly idiosyncratic, of course, since the point is to list things I have found to be of particular value.
I'm a few days behind on this one, but still, it's good enough I want to give it some attention. David Wayne, a more doctrinally conservative and reformed blogger, wrote a great post this week called Emeril as Theologian. Dumb title so ignore that. But basically, Wayne is diagnosing the problem of taking issues that in the past have not been considered essential issues by many people and "kicking them up a notch" into essential issues. He brings up eschatology, adherence to six day creationism, and even one I've brought up in this forum before, namely women in ministry. This promotion of non-essential issues is a big problem in my opinion, as you may have noticed from posts here in the past. I'm just glad to see it getting more attention elsewhere.
Why is it that in this nation we believe that individual economic choice is a fundamental right, but we don't believe in pure democracy, instead adhering to that questionable substitute of representative democracy? I mean, you're telling me that I don't have to go along with everyone else if they choose to buy compact cars instead of SUVs or vice versa, but if a majority of 425 persons in Washington feels like making transporting kittens across state lines illegal or some guy elected by 51% of voters feels that launching nuclear weapons, say is a good idea, then I'm stuck? (Of course, technically I have to go along with a majority of 425 representatives, but we've conveniently dispensed in large part with even that pretense of democracy.) Not that anyone has actually proposed making the transportation of juvenile felines illegal, or proposed nuking anyone, at least not in the last 5 minutes, but you get the point. Frankly, I'd rather be able to vote on everything my representatives in Congress get to vote on than chose whether to buy at the Gap or Old Navy, but that's just me. And besides, if you have a truly democratic socialist country, isn't that in a lot of ways the same as having "economic freedom?" Probably not in the technical sense. Ah, I don't care, I just want democracy.
Incidentally, I do think people should be able to buy what is most relevant for them within reason, and I think people should have the right to seek employment where they want, or start their own business and work for themselves. I'm much less keen on the idea of corporation as individual entity. The idea of freedom is, you know, to give people freedom, not some soulless entities choice. The idea that people shouldn't be forced to go along with certain economic decisions made by others is distinct from the idea that anything that makes more money is a good thing. Not being intimately familar with the history of economics, I'm not entirely clear how all of this relates to the original economic ideas on which our nation's economy was supposedly built. No, I haven't read anything by Adam Smith. Yes, I know I should. It's on the to-do list somewhere, I think. (Consider it moved farther up the list.) Oh, and I did add "within reason" for a, well, reason. We happen to live in what political scientists call a liberal democracy. That implies, among other things, that you can't vote to kill me, for example, just because you don't like me. Similarly, you shouldn't be able to wipe out all the individuals of some species just because you own the land they live on - you don't have the right to take resources, in this case, biodiversity, from the rest of us. And, yeah, I think you might even be able that argument to extend that to whether you get to own handguns or a 2 mpg vehicle (though the application is not always trivial). I mean, I wish you could do whatever you want, but let's face it, sometimes things have consequences.
On a completely different nore, one of the commenters on the post by Fred Clark I linked to brought up "cognitive dissonance." It might be worth reading more about that, come to think of it...
By coincidence, after what I posted yesterday about media bias and such, I read tonight a post by Fred Clark, "The best lack all conviction" in response to an article in the Washington Post (which I'm inclined to think he was too hard on, but, that's irrelevant to the rest of this discussion). His timing was fortuitous because his post ties in quite well with some anyway of what I was getting at. Basically, in my very rough paraphrase, he claims that (1) while one should always begin by assuming good faith not bad faith (an idea he has addressed in the past) and that (2) the assumption of bad faith can lead to breakdowns in rational discourse, (3) if the assumption of good faith is made and yet the other side seems out of touch with the facts/reality, one might have a basis for questioning motives, and that at any rate, the facts do not cease to matter simply because bias and false assumptions are present. Thus, it must be allowed that persons can be wrong. Just because we know we will assume that as a result of inevitable biases doesn't mean that someone isn't wrong.
Alright, so that's Fred Clark's argument. Even though he doesn't directly deal with media, or even the same type of bias I was talking about yesterday, his argument basically parallels my own: accusations of bias are irrelevant when the facts of the matter are clear. In my case I would also add if the morality of the matter is clear. (In fact, in the case of the war, I'm really not concerned about who knew what when and all that - if preemptive war is wrong, it's wrong, and however nice of a reason you have, if you can't counter that fundamental claim, what basis do we have for discussion? I'm going to stop there before I decide I agree with Alasdair Macintyre in After Virtue.)
Of course, to a certain extent one must be careful about what "clear" means. Perhaps instead of "clear" we should also consider the possibility of "very likely" or "the most likely given the available evidence" with a corresponding weakening of our own right cause in an argument. That is, if the evidence suggests that something is not just somewhat likely, but very likely, but not perhaps certain to the point where we would stake human life on it, or at least the universe's existence, then we might still take that side of the argument, though we need to acknowledge that there is the slight possibility we are wrong/some other side is right - but if some sort of action is required we should take that action, with constant attention to the idea that we could be wrong. This is the sort of end of things where I would consider, say, anthropogenic global warming, as opposed to the immorality of murder which we are all 100% certain of. (And before you become too smug with even that level of certainty, just ask yourself, what would I have done if I was Dietrich Bonhoffer? And I can think of many moral disputes that don't rise to anywhere near that kind of certainty.)
Now, I may be a little more cautious than Fred in that I am, at least at the moment, rather wary of anything that looks too much like ideology. Though, of course, in fact, a lot of my complaints are ideological, but I hope in my case those are usually claims involving morality, in which case ideology is unavoidable. I mean instead, in practical matters. Which isn't to say that I've entirely purged myself of ideological convictions (anti-corporatism?), or even that I necessarily intend to. But where my opion is influend by ideology, I must be aware of that, and I must be even more willing than usual in that case to consider the possibility that my idea is inaccurate or unnecessary.
(And yes, all of this does suggest I would be wise to consider the very remote possibility that opposition to war will bring about some evil world dictatorship ("The City on the Edge of Forever", anyone?) but that doesn't mean, given my disclaimer above about very likely things, that I have to operate under the assumption that possibility is a likelihood. It remains only a possibility, and even less applicable in the case of preemptive wars. And, I have to consider the possibility that for us to base policy on the idea that freedom of movement and freedom of government choice might lead to an overwhelming influx of immigrants that would somehow crush American civilization as we know it thus having the immoral effect of creating additional poverty and suffering. But, that sort of far-fetched outcome with little empirical support is not something that I have to assume will happen, either. It also means that those of us opposed to abortion should be clear on the fact that we don't really know with 100% certainty when "life" begins. And I already mentioned the Bonhoffer dilemma. And so on and so on. )
Okay, so I've strayed very far from my original point, which remains: I don't care what bias any given media entity seems to have, as long as they are correct.
Do you think you can handle a glimpse into my thought process? If that's too scary, turn back now...
First, let me begin by reproducing here something that I almost posted:
I just read again, for an arbitrarily large numbered time, that CNN is left-leaning. (In this case it was at least in a context where it was admitted that Fox News "leans to the right.") Now, to me, CNN feels very moderate, if not even just slightly conservative, as do most of the established entities in journalism, The New York Times and The Washington Post included. But, of course, I have something of a reputation for radical, leftist views. Now, there are people who study - and actually attempt to measure - these things, and like most things in life, the political bias of various media entities turns out to be rather complex. (And, of course, many people believe that sensationalism, not politics, is the driving force behind most television news. But that's another whole discussion, and it doesn't really deal with printed news sources quite as well.) But, it can at least apparently be studied.
For the moment, I'll leave such arguments to the professionals. In fact, I'm not especially interested in whether CNN or any other source is moderate or centrist or anything else on the right-left political spectrum. I don't find those measures to be particularly useful in this case.
I happen to remember back to 2003 when such supposedly leftist publications as The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories (and editorials, I think) that in my estimation went out of their way to argue for the presence of non-conventional weapons. Now, I've also seen stories that were more skeptical, but on the whole my impression was that these publications felt that the argument for war based on the presence of such weapons was sound. Rarely was mentioned the obvious point that it really didn't matter whether there were non-conventional weapons in Iraq or not. I'm not saying that these publications were wholly behind the invasion, but on the whole, as they have consistently done in my memory, mainstream media sources tended to go along with an administration's argument for war. (In libertarian or anarchist terms, this goes a long way toward implicating the mainstream media as essentially statist. Obviously, I'm sympathetic at least somewhat to that claim, but that's not really what I'm saying here.)
(This is independent, by the way, questions of competence of mainstream sources. This includes the practice of giving "equal time" regardless of the factuality or logic of the claims of two or at most three arbitrarily-chosen perspectives; the practice of reproducing press releases as news stories; shoddy research, especially for science stories. Again, those are all problems with much of popular mainstream media, but largely irrelevant here, especially since they don't apply to the most commonly chosen bogeymen of the large national entities.)
What I'm getting at here is... I don't care if The New York Times, The Washington Post - and whomever else to the right of The Nation that is being accused of being liberal these days - are conservative, moderate, or liberal. Whatever they are, the aren't liberal enough.
Fortunately (or, actually, in a way, unfortunately), many of these news media entities have chosen to take a more independent path, I imagine as a result of the hard times of the Bush administration. And I'm not just talking about war: questions have been raised about extraordinary rendition and torture, privacy abuses in the name of national security, and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists (including citizens like José Padilla), and I'm sure other things which escape my memory at this moment. Of course, all the while questions were also being asked about the traditional business of politics (say, Social Security reform and Medicare and taxes and health care arguments and so on) which is not something that "the press" has tended to give free passes on in the past (though, just for the record, I don't find CNN or The Times or anybody else's coverage to be particularly left-leaning on these issues, but again, my perspective is admittedly skewed). What I hope is understood by all, though I recall having seen statements suggesting it is not, is that when media sources raise such questions, they aren't exhibiting liberal bias - at least not beyond what being a news publication in a democratic society entails endemically. What they are doing is their job by any reasonable definition of journalism I can think of. Perhaps first and foremost a news publication's job is to give its readers or viewers the information they need to make decisions, but that certainly entails knowing what one's government is doing, even if, especially if, such doing is likely to raise ethical caoncerns. If ensuring that individuals, whether in this country or others, are protected from the occasional over-reaching of our government is liberal, then so be it. Let the press be liberal.
May violence, injustice, usurption, and oppression always be questioned regardless of place, time, or perpetrator.
I wrote that all out, but I knew I had made some strong statements, and I thought that I might think the better of it later. So I saved a draft and went off to do other things. And then I decided to see if I could find some specific accusations of why CNN was left-leaning. I didn't real find anything (not surprisingly). But wthin about five minutes it had occurred to me why I hadn't felt completely comfortable posting it.
So, why didn't I post it? Well, first off, it's not written all that well, but that doesn't usually stop me. This journal is as much about content as form. The real reasons are that it is (1) likely an overstatement of a claim, and (2) a claim that I don't necessarily know I back completely.
Now, for point (1) that this is an overstatement, or that is to say, somewhat "over the top": I do indeed sometimes make strong, emotive statements, on immigration for example. But for me freedom of movement and human dignity are things that I'm pretty certain are moral absolutes, so I can afford to be cavalier about those things. And while telling the truth and reporting injustices and even perhaps rational inquiry are things that I think are absolutes, the suggestion that journalism should have a certain inherent bias runs more toward a pragmatic claim in some ways, it seems to me (at least, at this moment.)
As for point (2), why am I not certain I believe the press should have a liberal bias in the sense that I presented? Well, in my argument I concerned myself largely with national security issues, where it is hard in my estimation to stick to the truth and morality without being labeled "liberal" or "leftist" (and of course that is by my measure of truth and morality, so...). But, certainly on issues that don't involve killing or dying or search warrants, that is not true. In fact in such circumstances one should be as pragmatic as possible, it would seem, which involves considering all options. And if someone's bias causes them to assume the conclusion, that's a problem. One should be, I would suggest, open to whatever is the best solution (in light, of course, of moral concerns, as always). And that will sometimes result in one being associated with being too far to the left, but also often too far to the right. That's a problem that has been often observed in the context of all moral discourse, especially in the realm of Christianity (I've seen several times statements to the effect that "being Christian" in a moral sense will sometimes entail siding with those on the left and sometimes siding with those on the right - a claim that I've seen even more often in light of much recent discussion about William Wilberforce who is somewhat hard to characterize with modern terms).
So, while perhaps my now-not-posted post might have made some relevant claims with regards to media coverage of national security issues, I don't think it really helps the discussion much in general. So what I'd like to offer instead is a more specific formulation of what I think journalism should be like. The first thing is moral. A journalist should assume that all humans have dignity, for example. Obviously in contested areas like abortion, it's not going to be as clear what that means, but the vast majority of the time it will be clear. And there's plenty of other lesser moral issues. The second thing journalism needs to be is rational. That's sort of like "objective" but that word gets abused so badly I wouldn't stand by it. Besides, that just means the reporter doesn't take sides. But if one side is obviously factually wrong, it should be said. And journalists should be free to do real actual research instead of just relying on things people tell them about things. Sometimes, these things happen. But lots of times, they don't. "Equal time" is not rational inquiry... Now, I tend to think that rationality entails pragmatism (on issues outside of morality, of course). So I'm inclined to think that reporters should be seeking the truth about political issues including what solutions are practical and efficient. Sometimes, if there is a clear side (obviously there isn't always, or else we wouldn't have "objective" journalism in the first place), that may entail a slant that appears to some conservative; doesn't bother me. Follow the trail of what's true and what makes sense, and who cares what they call you, because the people caught up in the game will always call you something, whether good or bad. So, that's more what I want to say than, "be liberal!" (You may notice here that I don't hold to traditional notions of objectivity in journalism, not strictly anyway. What I want are for reporters to use their brains, even if that means taking a side. Some issues require expert input, and some are just too complex, so a journalist shouldn't always - I don't want them to be politicians. But I also don't want them to sit back and assume that the discourse that comes off the Capitol Hill, for example, is somehow the entire body of things that needs to be said about any particular issue. How I wish that politicians were allowed to occasionally not have opinions as well, as a matter of fact.)
Incidentally, what got me started on this whole thing specifically was a post by Patrick Ruffini on Hugh Hewitt's blog (Hewitt of course being a prominent conservative blogger and personality) which makes a passing reference to CNN and Fox and their relative prespectives, as well as the reader responses to the post. I think one of the comments got more directly to the point than I did; it makes reference to sources that are "non-conservative" sources being considered "liberal" or "anti-conservative." And while that might be a slight exaggeration, some of the comments on that post (for example, one questioning Fox's conservative credentials for running a special on global warming) suggest exactly that (not that I think blog readers are strictly representative of conservatives as a whole). But, still it is a claim stronger than perhaps I want to make. As usual, I'm inclined to think that are level of discourse is just too base to really get to the essense of the issues. So, I'm going to stick with my claim for a moral and rational approach to journalism. Give me that, and I don't care about claims of bias.
(More specific examination of what moral and rational journalism looks like will have to wait for some indefinite time in the future.)
I was just watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing held today on immigration reform from February 28th. Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez were providing testimony. Near the end of the hearing, one of the senators (I've forgotten who it was, but it was someone from out west) asked why the administration has not been supportive of promoting English as an "official" language. Gutierrez responded that we needed make it clear to immigrants that they need to learn English otherwise "we do them a disservice," but at the same time that it was in our best interests to encourage everyone to learn a second language, and we shouldn't do anything to send a signal that knowing only English was best. While I think he may have overstated slightly the need to learn English (though I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage people to learn English!) I think his second point was dead on. I've said similar or implied the same thing in the past, of course, so I am biased.
(I also find it interesting that with as much as I disagree with this administration - on nearly every issue, as a matter of fact - I find their immigration policy to be, well, better than nearly everyone else's, which isn't saying much (Immigration is one of the most regressive political issues in this country) except when they cave in to belligerent factions in Congress. Bush started out more progressive on immigration than he has ended up, at least as I remember it, and I'd lay the blame on last year's House. Still, the administration, and everyone else, could be a lot more progressive on this issue, and I wish they would.)
