Next stop, Nashville…A structuring fallacy…
What would happen if journalists actually operated most of the time as custodians of fact using the discipline of verification?
There are many ways to answer that question. Here’s one: Journalism might rid itself of a glaring fallacy: argumentum ad verecundiam–the argument to authority or expertise.
I do not believe, as some logicians do, that argumentum ad verecundiam is irrational (although it may certainly be used as propaganda). If that were so, there would be no need at all to confer degrees upon the learned. The fact of the matter is this: Some people do know more than others about certain things, and, if you want to know about those things, you should ask them. What you shouldn’t do is simply accept whatever you’re told simply because the teller is an expert. Experts can be wrong or even willfully deceptive (depending upon, for example, who’s paying the bills).
Argumentum ad verecundiam could be called a structural fallacy of our current noetic field. Experts are assumed to have acquired positive knowledge. And because the epistemology of journalism encourages reporters to believe they can record and transmit knowledge faithfully and accurately, the expert becomes a conduit between the reporter and reality just as the reporter would (try to) become a similar conduit for the citizen.
If experts disagree? Not a problem. Simply quote “both sides” and let readers figure it out. And my question to that has always been: Exactly how? (Well, now that the internet is making it easier to check stuff out, there’s a cogent answer developing.)
How long will be before citizens begin to wonder: Journalists won’t tell me who’s telling me the truth, so I’ll just figure it out for myself. Hmmmm…and maybe I’ll just publish what I find on my web site.
How long will it be before these individuals begin to form groups with the intention to do what they believe the news media fail to do (or to simply point out that failure)?
How long? It’s done been happenin’ for a few years now.
Professional journalists have much to offer the culture. One of the biggies: Covering politics and governance by operating as custodians of fact using a discipline of verification. Any yutz can do he-said, she-said stenography. The best weblogs have moved way beyond that tired and vacuous model of discourse.
It’s time to discard the argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy. Check out everything. Make them prove it. Tell citizens who is telling them the truth. That’s true objective reporting.
It’s a lovely ideal, but just try to do it on a three-hour deadline, in 20 inches or less.
Oh, I agree, journalism does a lousy job of this.
Right now, we tend to write, “Tom DeLay said X, but Nancy Pelosi said Y.” And readers, I suspect, tend to choose between them based on their prejudices about which speaker is more honest. By which they mean which is more like them.
Or we’ll write, “Scientist A says global warming is a dire problem, but scientist B says it is not that serious.” And then we’ll tell you that scientist B’s work was partially funded by an industry that pollutes. But that isn’t an investigation of the soundness of his claims.
Most of what we write about are matters about which the truth is damned difficult to ascertain — that’s why we’re writing about these things. Some “facts” we have to write boil down to a choice among not-too-well-educated guesses.
How many civilian casualties in the Iraq War? You’d probably fill half the newshole of a daily newspaper, and all of a nightly newscast, with the necessary background for a reader/viewer to determine whether the “Lancet” estimate of 100,000 was worth a bucket of warm spit or not.
Old-time newspapers made no fetish of objectivity. Modern blogs don’t, either. That’s a big part of their value. But an even bigger part is their willingness to wade into a topic, and puncture the lies and distortions of commentators they disagree with.
This works, because there is always someone from the opposite position, doing the same thing. Blogger X punctures Nancy Pelosi, Blogger Y skewers Tom DeLay. And they’re both available, for free, in the same medium — the Internet.
For one newspaper, or network, to do this on its own, in every case, would not be seen as a deeper commitment to objectivity, but as a sign of mental illness.
One of my gripes with he-said-she-said journalism, by the way, is that it often embodies the “excluded middle/false dichotomy” fallacy.
C- I’m sorry I’m just now be responding. I was away.
Some of the things that I write about would be difficult (impossible, really) to implement under the current model of print journalism. But, then, I would assert a new model in which print doesn’t try to compete with TV for immediacy. Print should finally become what it really is in the current media environment: a second-day medium.
“I would assert a new model in which print doesn’t try to compete with TV for immediacy. Print should finally become what it really is in the current media environment: a second-day medium.”
Why not do both?
Journalism’s 21st Century ‘Basics’?
S- re: why not both
For a converged print product, both would be great (with these exceptions in mind). When I use the term “print,” I’m usually confining that to newspapers and other stuff printed on dead trees. Although I consider the internet a print-based medium, or, rather, a converged medium with the “soul” of print.
re: dead trees
A horrible medium. Too constrained in too many ways. Non-multi-media. Non-interactive. Antiquated search and meta-data indexing. Doesn’t store well. And so on …
re: a converged medium with the “soul” of print
OK, I understand that. You have a print “soul” and see it in the internet. But consider that the internet’s print soul consists of three parts:
1. The content producer who writes text (and perhaps manually tags/indexes/other meta-data and performs other functions that aid electronic-specific performance).
2. The server/software that “enables” users to interact with the content, the content provider and the content producer.
3. The user interface and content consumer.
Does the internet have the “soul” of print? Sure. Of audio, too? Why not? Video? You bet. Virtual Reality? Getting there. Interactive, conversational, associative, social?
Hmmm … “Tocquevillian”?
If the “soul” of print, as Tocqueville described newspapers centuries ago, is associative in a mass/unidirectional manner, then yes, the internet can be a mass/unidirectional conduit. But it can also be so much more. Many communicative “souls” reside in the internet’s multi-media capabilities.
Should there be a convergence of “souls”, as well as media? If so, can we really say that the “soul” of print is (should be?) the foundation of convergence?
S- re: “Should there be a convergence of “souls”, as well as media? If so, can we really say that the “soul” of print is (should be?) the foundation of convergence?”
I’m using “soul” to identify something Neil Postman claimed about print: that it is the best medium for presenting propositional content because you can answer back, i.e. what Adler was talking about in “How to Mark a Book.”
Now this answering back used to be confined to annotation and discussion apart from the author. The text was an artifact that transmitted ideas for consumption and use at some later time and place.
The internet goes print two better: 1- It retains print’s privileging of propositional content, but it adds true interactivity and immediacy with all involved interlocutors: 2- Add in all the other stuff (video, audio, etc.) and you suddenly can do what Postman claimed couldn’t be done: create a rich media environment for propositional content that includes video and pictures.
My students are already there. They dislike reading stuff printed on dead trees.
re: create a rich media environment for propositional content that includes video and pictures.
ac, I want to reinforce our agreement, if we are agreeing.
The internet enables you to “answer back” in audio and video as well. That a smart academic who understands these things could write: How to Mark a Video, How to Mark Audio, and essentially How to Mark Multi-media in order to “own” it and add to its richness.
S- We certainly agree.