Screeds
Monday, September 13, 2004
A Run Of Deuces
July 9, 2004
It now appears that British intelligence’s original report, which it never ceased to defend, has been confirmed: Saddam Hussein did indeed seek to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger. Palace readers will recall that, when President Bush inserted this British allegation into a speech to Congress, his opponents immediately sought to discredit it, with the cooperation of major Old Media outlets. Shortly thereafter, they accused Bush of willfully making a false charge—lying to get support for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
It now appears that, in the aftermath of Black Tuesday, when the United States lifted its air-travel lockdown, a number of Osama bin Laden’s relatives were cleared to leave the country on some of the first flights permitted—flights personally cleared by Richard Clarke, the former CIA employee who’s accused the Administration of all manner of ineptitude and wrongdoing in the wake of the atrocities, whom the Old Media made into a major, if transient, celebrity for it.
It now appears that, on the occasion of the somewhat secretive sovereignty transfer ceremony in Baghdad on June 28, departing American occupation administrator L. Paul Bremer did indeed give a farewell speech, rather than departing the country in complete silence, as has been alleged by a number of Old Media outlets.
And it now appears that, despite the sporadic fury of armed resistance from Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army,” which so many Old Media outlets portrayed as the sign that our reconstruction efforts in Iraq were doomed to failure, that army has effectively dissolved. Moqtada al-Sadr himself now seeks amnesty and a place in the political process.
It’s been a bad time for the Old Media lately, hasn’t it? Well, anyone can make a mistake or two...or three or four. But there’s an old saying that when all the errors are in the bank’s favor, you can be forgiven for thinking that there’s more than sloppy arithmetic at work.
Many voices have risen to defend the Old Media from the cries of left-wing bias. Granted that most of those voices are themselves left of center, even a number of conservatives have opined that there’s no good in expecting a “journalist” not to have opinions about the events and decisions he covers, nor in expecting that they can be kept from influencing the coverage he gives them. But there is one thing we can justly expect: the candid admission and correction of errors, when they’ve been discovered and adequately confirmed. We’re not getting that either.
Why?
It’s never pleasant to admit to an error. The more serious the error, the less pleasant is the admission. In the case of the Old Media, money’s involved as well. These outlets trade on their reputation for reliability. If their reliability is seen to be less than claimed, they’ll lose a fraction of their audience, with a consequent loss of sponsorship and advertising revenue.
But for a news organ, surely failure to admit a mistake is the worst sin of all. The truth can’t be concealed forever, especially in the Age of the Internet. Future stories from the misspoken “journalist” will be viewed dubiously. Outlets that didn’t collaborate in the error can use their competitor’s reluctance to come clean to seduce away its readers. The erring organ’s influence on public figures and other opinion leaders will diminish more rapidly than in any other case. For the news media above all other kinds of enterprise, integrity is a commercial asset with a cash value.
Only three explanations could possibly apply:
- The Old Media’s authorities are too stupid to realize this.
- They disbelieve the evidence of their mistakes and maintain that they were right.
- They know they were wrong, but believe that they can avoid being called on it.
Explanation 1 doesn’t wash. Whatever their political postures, the barons of the print and broadcast media are as smart and as cognizant of public opinion as other captains of industry. They have to be; there’s a lot of money riding on their decisions, every one of which is watched by gimlet-eyed publishers and boards of directors whose principal function is to fire them at need.
Explanation 2 is no better. Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams famously said. There’s not much one can do in the face of documentary evidence and multiple eyewitness accounts, copious amounts of which contradict all the abovementioned Old Media gaffes. A “journalist” who, given a choice between discredited accusations and hard evidence, chooses to remain with the former won’t get a paycheck for long.
Explanation 3, though unpleasant of aspect, is the most plausible of the group. For many years, the print and broadcast titans were united in their attitudes and effectively unchallenged in their ability to disseminate “news.” Those days are over now, but the desire of major Old Media executives to believe that the immunities of those times still belong to them is strong, as is the persistence of the behavior predicated upon them.
Moreover, there’s a possibility that they’re correct in so believing, at least in the short term.
Consumers of news and opinion can be as biased and stubborn as anyone. They, too, have a “will to believe”: to believe what would conform to their preconceptions and enduring opinions. They, too, have a powerful reluctance to confront their errors, and a still more powerful one to admit them. They will cling to any shred of evidence or concurring opinion for sustenance. In a sense, the Old Media who refuse to admit to their mistakes and the customers who cling to them even so are a mutually reinforcing, mutually delusive society.
In his masterwork The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of the “fact-proof screen” a fanatic must erect between his consciousness and any data from objective reality that would disturb his beliefs. When the facts contradict his creed, he rejects, denies, or denigrates the facts automatically. To give them due consideration would threaten something too valuable to be risked: his moral confidence, his intellectual self-esteem, and his membership in the “compact and unified church” that’s coalesced around his beliefs.
The embrace between the errant Old Media and their true believers may protect them in just that fashion. But believers can and do fall away; eventually, all of them will die. The generation waxing behind them is unlikely to take their places in the the Old Media’s pews.
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