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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
sysprog
Published Letters: 2957 Editor's Choice: 2
I swear that the numbers on my tax return are true, accurate, and complete, in accordance with Dick Cheney's analysis of John Yoo's understandings of Goedel's theories about the impossibility of mathematical truth, accuracy, and completeness.
I swear that I shall be faithful to my spouse, forsaking all others, in accordance with Alberto Gonzales's interpretation of Jay Bybee's discovery, while smoking DMT, that we are all part of a one-ness, and there are no "others" in the 8th (quantum non-local) level of inter-galactic consciousness.
Jim wondered, "Is this story-fixing process an actual process, or are these publications part of a journalistic nervous system that simply knows without discussion . . . "
Herd behavior is as natural as a bunch of five year olds chasing a soccer ball.
People hesitate to enter a restaurant that's empty at 7:30 on Saturday evening.
People avoid "wasting" a vote on the candidate they like best, when they learn that other people won't vote for the candidate. (Polls can be partly self-fulfilling.)
People buy books that are on best-seller lists.
Crowds attract crowds. Blog commenters attract blog commenters.
We humans aren't completely different from a school of fish or a swarm of gnats.
Herd behavior, in moderation, is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It's an aspect of democracy (and it doesn't require an authoritarian leader to steer the crowd).
Unlike fish and gnats, we humans can become conscious of herd behavior, and we can be aware that there are times when the herd benefits from some herd members, e.g. Charlie Savage, who strike off in a different direction.
Paul Rosenberg's analysis of perception and cognition is too much for my lil noggin. Here's a simpler version: A lot of people were (and too many still are) too scared to think straight.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-gup.asp
COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
2002, Issue 5: September/October
An Uneasy Quiet and a Sense of Mission
by TED GUP. . . twelve months after the searing events of September 11, Washington is an altered place. Changed, too, in many respects, is the journalism that comes out of there . . . The city is not only a logical target for another attack, but headquarters of a war on terrorism that is still being defined, and the place where that war’s next moves — Iraq? — will be shaped . . .
Working in a Wartime Capital
The first signs that 9/11 has brought about a change in Washington journalism greeted me the moment I stepped off the elevator onto the fifth-floor newsroom of The Washington Post. An announcement beside the elevator reminded the staff that there would be an evacuation drill at eight, and another at midnight.. . . I had worked twenty-one years as a reporter in Washington. Then, three years ago, I moved to Ohio. Now I had returned to see what might be different.
. . . Washington journalists have always tended to see themselves at the center of things, opening them up to charges of Beltway Blindness. But today they live and work in a wartime capital that is indeed a focal point for an anxious nation and a troubled world. Not since Watergate have journalists felt such a strong sense of mission.
. . . Washington . . . continues to feel itself in the terrorists’ crosshairs. Citizens throughout the city share a sense that there is yet a second shoe to drop.
. . . “People talk about it a lot,” says [Mike] Allen. “It used to be that when you were at the White House, you thought you were in the safest place in the world. People are no longer sure of that.”
. . . “The plane that went down in Pennsylvania was headed for the White House or the Capitol. And then we are reminded every day by the continuing upgrading of security arrangements around town. We’re reminded we’re a potential target.”
. . . I asked [Leonard] Downie if the Post has an order of succession in the event that he and his senior deputies are, to put it delicately, indisposed. “No,” he laughs, “in fact we were joking today that the Loudoun County Extra editor may be running the paper if there’s a direct hit on this building.”
. . . “People who are generally unshakable are very worried and that, of course, is scary,” [Robin Sproul] says. “They generally say, ‘It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.’ You start with that as a given every day in Washington.”
. . . As the first anniversary of the 9/11 attack approached, I asked dozens of seasoned reporters throughout the capital to reflect not only on what the events of 9/11 have meant for Washington journalism, but on how well the press is performing.
. . . Barbara Cochran, a former CBS bureau chief and president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, puts it strongly: “A frightening suppression of the news,” she says. She and other longtime reporters note that a number of factors compound the problem. First, the much-discussed question of how critically to report on an administration that is waging a largely invisible war — the fear that vigorously challenging the administration’s stranglehold on information may appear to be unpatriotic.
. . . That worry, multiplied across the profession, has caught the eye of the Post’s media reporter Howard Kurtz, particularly as applied to writers of opinion. “Very few columnists and commentators these days are willing to challenge the administration.”
. . . Some within the military have broken ranks and, ignoring the iron strictures of Rumsfeld, conducted stealth campaigns to foment the sort of public debate [regarding the prospect of war with Iraq] that this administration has gone to great lengths to suppress.
. . . Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. “I think this relates to people being afraid . . . Journalists are occasionally people. They share the same fears of terrorism, and they are more willing to look the other way because of that. I am sure that we will decide in retrospect that we went soft on the administration and let them get away with too much. It’s inevitable.”
- - Columbia Journalism Review, September 2002
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
