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For some reason I've been seeing a lot of people getting caught in lies lately.
The first group of people not telling the truth seems to be the Jena 6. This is a group of black students whose allegedly racist treatment has provoked national protest. The Christian Science Monitor, hardly a right-wing paper, ran a lengthy article debunking the falsehoods (they called them "myths") of the popular perception of the case. Notably, the writer says that the falsehoods were spread by bloggers, and bought hook line and sinker by the mainstream media.
The second group not telling the truth seems to be The New Republic. They ran a series of articles called "The Baghdad Diaries" (which seem to have disappeared) by a US soldier in Iraq. Funny thing is, he's now extremely reluctant to stand by his stories, and a US Army investigation suggests he made them up.
The first point is simple - people don't always tell the truth. Although this is akin to "rain is wet" for newsworthiness, it's worth remembering. The second point is slightly more subtle - most people, including bloggers and news organizations, don't check to see if people are lying.
There's a popular perception that reporters, detectives and similar investigative people are busily at work, checking everybody and everything. The reality is they're not. This is mostly due to what I'll call the "Ninety Percent Rule."
The Ninety Percent Rule says that 90% of the time, things are as they appear. Ninety percent of the time, it's obvious who committed a crime. Ninety percent of the time, people tell the truth.
In the justice system, the Ninety Percent Rule is why we have judges and trials. They're supposed to check and ferret out the 10% of non-obvious cases. There are many flaws with that system, not the least of which is that, as a practical matter, if you don't have money, you'll get at best a perfunctory defense, but it's the best system we've got.
The media doesn't have judges and trials. Bloggers show promise as a means to force the media to be honest, but as the Jena case shows, for this to work, the media needs to check the bloggers.
The first group of people not telling the truth seems to be the Jena 6. This is a group of black students whose allegedly racist treatment has provoked national protest. The Christian Science Monitor, hardly a right-wing paper, ran a lengthy article debunking the falsehoods (they called them "myths") of the popular perception of the case. Notably, the writer says that the falsehoods were spread by bloggers, and bought hook line and sinker by the mainstream media.
The second group not telling the truth seems to be The New Republic. They ran a series of articles called "The Baghdad Diaries" (which seem to have disappeared) by a US soldier in Iraq. Funny thing is, he's now extremely reluctant to stand by his stories, and a US Army investigation suggests he made them up.
The first point is simple - people don't always tell the truth. Although this is akin to "rain is wet" for newsworthiness, it's worth remembering. The second point is slightly more subtle - most people, including bloggers and news organizations, don't check to see if people are lying.
There's a popular perception that reporters, detectives and similar investigative people are busily at work, checking everybody and everything. The reality is they're not. This is mostly due to what I'll call the "Ninety Percent Rule."
The Ninety Percent Rule says that 90% of the time, things are as they appear. Ninety percent of the time, it's obvious who committed a crime. Ninety percent of the time, people tell the truth.
In the justice system, the Ninety Percent Rule is why we have judges and trials. They're supposed to check and ferret out the 10% of non-obvious cases. There are many flaws with that system, not the least of which is that, as a practical matter, if you don't have money, you'll get at best a perfunctory defense, but it's the best system we've got.
The media doesn't have judges and trials. Bloggers show promise as a means to force the media to be honest, but as the Jena case shows, for this to work, the media needs to check the bloggers.
