Random Blogging – Page 347

Because Fair Isn’t Necessarily Balanced…

National Public Radio has just adopted new ethics guidelines. We can only hope they signal the beginning of a wide trend in the media.

The new code stresses the importance of accuracy over false balance; it appears–finally–to abandon the “he said, she said” approach (what I have elsewhere called “stenography masquerading as reporting”) that all too often distorts truth in favor of a phony “fairness.”

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.

One of my gripes over the past several years has been the abandonment of precisely this tenet of good journalism. A good example has been environmental reporting–how many times have media sources reported on climate change, for example, by giving equal time and weight to the settled science and the deniers, without ever noting that the deniers constitute less than 1% of all climate scientists, and are generally regarded as a kooky fringe? That’s “balance,” but it certainly isn’t “fair to the truth.”

A few years ago, this sort of false equivalency was illustrated by one of my all-time favorite Daily Show skits. The “senior journalism reporter” was explaining the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on John Kerry to Jon Stewart. “The Swift Boat Veterans say this happened; the Kerry Campaign says it didn’t. Back to you, Jon!” When Stewart then asked “But aren’t you going to tell us who is telling the truth?” the response was dead-on. “Absolutely not, Jon. This is journalism.”

Far too often, reporters pursue artificial balance at the expense of truth. If a Democratic campaign plays a dirty trick, reporters rush to remind their audience of a similar transgression by Republicans, and vice-versa. This search for equivalency may be well-intentioned, but it misrepresents reality and misleads those of us who depend upon the media for accurate information.

NPR’s recognition of this pernicious practice, and it’s new Code of Ethics, are a welcome sign that at least some journalists might be returning to Job One: telling us the unembellished truth.

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Tilting at the Enlightenment

Some people go through life like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

Then there’s Rick Santorum. He wants to repeal the Enlightenment.

I’ve been mulling over Santorum’s recent attack on higher education, part and parcel of his rejection of so many aspects of modernity: evolution, reproductive autonomy for women, separation of church and state, equality for gays and lesbians…There really isn’t much about the 21st Century (or the 19th or 20th, for that matter) that he seems willing to accept.

I think Santorum’s hostility toward education is very real, despite his own MBA and Law Degrees, and it is at the very heart of his worldview (I hesitate to call it a “philosophy,” a word he would obviously consider “snobby.”) Many people have suggested that his own degrees are evidence that he doesn’t really believe his charges that colleges and universities “indoctrinate” young people, make them lose their religion and become more like the hated Barack Obama–i.e., intellectual. I don’t agree; Santorum’s degrees are professional ones–high order job training. (I”m not throwing rocks; I have a law degree too.)

What Santorum loathes and fears is education. Real education doesn’t “indoctrinate,” of course–it does something more pernicious. It questions.

Education is the arch-enemy of certitude.

If I do my job properly, my students will leave my classes a bit more confused, a bit less sure they have “the answers” and a lot more aware of the magnitude of the questions. They will encounter the diversity with which we mortals approach the uncertainties and complexities of the world we inhabit. They will have a greater appreciation of what they don’t know. If I do my job well, they will also have some “critical” tools with which to assess the credibility of the information with which they are increasingly bombarded.

That is the education Santorum detests, because he is cut wholly from Puritan cloth.

The Puritans came to America for religious liberty–defined as the right to practice the True Religion, and the even more important right to impose that Truth on their neighbors. They approached education much like TV’s Jeopardy–you started with the correct answer, which the Bible provided, and then you went looking for the explanations that would justify that answer. Usually, in the early colonies, those explanations came from the preachers and biblical scholars who’d preceded you.

The philosophical and scientific movement that came to be called the Enlightenment changed the nature of knowledge. You no longer began with the answer; instead, you examined the world around you, based some initial conclusions on careful empirical observations, and then tested those conclusions, which were always considered conditional and subject to change if new information emerged. The Enlightenment gave us the scientific method–as well as a more scientific approach to questions like “how should governments be constructed.”

The U.S. Constitution was a creation of the Enlightenment. So was ambiguity. If all truth is provisional, if all conclusions are subject to revision based upon new information, how can anyone really, really be sure of anything?

Education–real education, as opposed to job training–prepares students to live with that ambiguity.

Puritans find it intolerable.

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Essential Reading

This morning’s column by David Brooks is a dead-on accurate description of what has happened to the GOP.

I was going to excerpt a paragraph, but I couldn’t decide which one, because Brooks goes from pointed observation to perfect analogy and back. (He notes that the primaries haven’t been about policy differences; rather, they’ve been a “series of heresy trials.”)

David Brooks is exactly the sort of thoughtful conservative who used to exemplify the Republican Party, back when I was an active member of the GOP. Now–next to the raging troglodytes and the culture warriors and the know-nothings who want to keep kids out of college and repeal the Enlightenment–he is an anachronism.

He has a lot of company.

Read the column. And weep.

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The Difference Between Children and Adults

The facts are relatively straightforward:

In Afghanistan, American soldiers inadvertently burned several copies of the Koran. Apparently, it was an honest mistake; however–predictably–it infuriated many Muslims. Some of them have responded violently, and a recent attack that killed two Americans may have been prompted by the incident.

President Obama apologized for the burning of the Muslim’s holy book.

Newt Gingrich and other Republicans criticized the President for apologizing even before the recent attacks. Locally, Gary Varvel’s cartoon on the matter showed caskets covered with American flags and the President off to the side apologizing–defiantly suggesting, with the attitude of five-year-olds everywhere, that “they’re worse than we are, so we shouldn’t apologize.”

Let’s (patiently–in the manner of parents of small children everywhere) use this as a “teachable” moment. A couple of lessons come to mind.

First, let’s try putting ourselves in the other guy’s shoes. How do you think the bible-thumpers in the United States would have reacted if bibles had been accidentally burned by Muslims? With reason and understanding, acknowledging that “accidents happen”? Of course not.

Now, let’s talk about appropriate/inappropriate behavior. Violence is never appropriate; it is a sign of immaturity and lack of discipline. It doesn’t matter “who started it”–fighting doesn’t solve anything. It makes things worse, and it doesn’t persuade anyone of anything. So the Afghans’ response was wrong.

Lesson three is important. Adults apologize for their mistakes. Those apologies are not a sign of weakness; quite the contrary. As we constantly admonish our children, admitting when you’ve done something wrong–accidentally or purposely–and saying “I’m sorry” when that is appropriate are signs of honesty and maturity.

And as I used to tell my children, you apologize when you’ve done something wrong even if the other guy is a jerk who doesn’t accept that apology. Because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s what separates the children from the adults.

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Over the Top? Or Not?

I’ve never been one of those feminists who sees patriarchy in every corner of the culture, or a sexist leer in every male smile. While I certainly consider myself a feminist–defined as one who believes that men and women should be entitled to equal legal rights and judged on our individual abilities–I’ve always assumed that resistance to a fuller role for women in society is mostly a product of the more general resistance to change and nostalgia for a bygone (largely imaginary) past.

But I’m beginning to think that “the war on women” may not be hyperbole.

Yesterday, Slate Magazine had an article on the now infamous attack on Girl Scouts by Indiana Representative Morris. That article included the following paragraph:

“The escalating hysteria around modern Girl Scouts is due to the increasing polarization in this country around the concept of women’s equality. In an era where the right is putting contraception back on the table as a controversial topic, girls getting together to build self-esteem and learn skills that might make them competitive with boys and men in school and the workplace is bound to get the right wing freak-out treatment. We’re talking about the same movement perpetuating the argument that the purpose of sex education is to get teenagers and young adults “hooked” on sex so that the non-profit Planned Parenthood can rake in the big bucks. Of course they look at little girls gathered around the campfire and fill in lurid fantasies bordering on the Satanic. We’re watching the death throes of male dominance, and no one should expect such a thing to look pretty.”

Before this year, I would have dismissed this as an over-the-top reaction to an attack by one clearly disturbed lawmaker. But I have to concede that this bizarre incident can’t be viewed in a vacuum.

There’s the effort in Texas and Virginia to condition a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy on her submission to an invasive, medically unnecessary “transvaginal” probe. In the twilight zone we currently inhabit, this requirement is being voted on at the same time that Republicans like Rick Santorum are on record opposing funding for prenatal testing. (They’re willing to invade my body to punish me for wanting an abortion, but ensuring the health of my fetus is too expensive??)

The assault on Planned Parenthood has been ferocious, and despite the predictable rhetoric, it can’t be attributed to abortions, which are 3% of what the organization does. Republicans have been vicious in their efforts to de-fund Planned Parenthood entirely, despite the fact that thousands of poor women depend upon it for reproductive health services, breast exams and family planning.

Irrational and improbable as it seems, it is now clear that “family planning” (aka birth control) is actually what they are attacking.

The so-called “Personhood” bills being introduced in several state legislatures would classify a fertilized egg as a “person,” making the most-used methods of contraception “abortions,” and thus illegal under most circumstances. The manufactured hysteria about requiring insurance companies to cover contraception–portrayed as an affront to the “religious liberty” of employers–confirmed that there really is a concerted effort to deny women the right to control their own reproduction. (I’ll admit to being stunned that there really are people living in the United States in the 21st century who believe that “religious liberty” means they have the right to impose their religious beliefs on women who do not share those beliefs. Shades of the Taliban…)

In 1971, I was one of a small handful of women in my law school class. I was the first woman hired by the law firm I joined, and thanks to a progressive mayor, the first woman to be Corporation Counsel of a major American city. I was the only skirt in the room more times than I can remember, for more years than I can now count. But during that time–despite the patronizing behavior of male colleagues, despite the female “friends” who warned me that children of working mothers all turn out to be drug addicts, despite snide remarks about castrating females or offensive suggestions that the only way I could have gotten these jobs was by “putting out” –I never doubted that women would continue to make progress. The old guys with the archaic attitudes would die off, the increasing participation of women in the workforce would make us less of an anomaly, and we would provide healthier, more capacious role models for our children, male and female.

Time and patience were our allies. Progress–however incremental–was inevitable.

I still believe in that progress. I still believe male privilege and domination are inevitably doomed. But I had no idea how hard the troglodytes would fight, and how ferocious the backlash would be.

Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney keep insisting that this year’s elections are about competing visions for America. They’re right. And one element of those competing visions is the role women will play. It’s becoming increasingly clear that when Romney and Santorum talk about “restoring” the future, they are talking about returning to a time when Father always knew best, and Mother played a decidedly second fiddle. (That retrograde vision is why so many male Republicans trash-talk Michelle Obama, while consigning their own wives to supporting roles as devoted and adoring props.)

I’ve been there and done that, and I’m not going back.

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