Tag: truth

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

The FCC’s Press Bias Fix

censorship, FCC, news, media, propaganda

You are operating a newsroom or, let’s say, a commentary room. Somebody accuses you of bias in how you decide what to publish.

You deflect: Of course different media organizations have different perspectives; each to its own. Sometimes, too, we choose what to run less rationally than the Platonic philosopher-​journalist would demand.

Bias is everywhere, inevitable.

Which makes the only cure maximal freedom of speech and openness of discourse. The answer to deficient speech is better speech, not either direct or indirect government censorship.

Nevertheless, the FCC has proposed to “investigate” the selection process of newsrooms.

Any such investigation is necessarily biased from the get-​go against freedom of speech and press. Even if it never gets to the regulation stage, the investigation itself constitutes interference. It is impossible for anyone being asked formal investigatory questions by the FCC to be unaware that the questioner has the power of government behind him.

How, for example, is a conscientious employee who respects the rights of his boss supposed to answer this loaded question: “Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?”?

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai reports that this is one query being considered as part of a “Critical Information Needs” study to determine how stories are selected, “perceived bias,” and how responsive a newsroom is to “underserved populations.”

Pai, who opposes the project, says: “The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”

Or not covering others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people

Watch Out!

Paul Jacob, fake news, media, truth, fact check

This week, a Google Alert brought a news article from Brady Today, a small-​town publication in Brady, Texas. 

The story in the Brady newspaper is strikingly similar to one The Center Square had produced right after the election. Except that the ending — a statement from yours truly — was quite different. 

“Watch out in 2026,” The Center Square article quoted me from our press release. “We have people in another dozen states already anxious to pass these measures and clarify that only citizens can vote in their state and local elections.”

However, the Brady Today story quoted me quite differently. “In 2026, we need to be cautious. There are individuals in several more states who are eager to implement similar measures and ensure that only citizens have the right to vote in their state and local elections.”

Urge caution? Not me. Ever. 

And especially not after sweeping to wins in eight states, adding up to a 14 – 0 record on Citizen Only Voting Amendments in recent years.

Nolan Brown with Brady Today has me saying something I’ve never said. 

Dan McCaleb of The Center Sqare quoted me correctly. He did his job as a reporter. But Mr. Brown? He appears to have a different task in mind. 

I tried to contact both Brady Today’s management and Nolan Brown. James R. Griffin, III, who owns the small-​town newspaper says he had shut down the website a year ago, only to discover (due to my phone call) that it has been revived online by an unknown entity — which has been using his name without permission on articles he did not write. And Mr. Brown? Unreachable.

The upshot is pretty clear: Don’t believe everything you read. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people meme

Eclipse

eclipse, propaganda, truth
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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism social media

Tom Paine Sues Facebook

Thomas Paine, truth, offense, censorship

The ghost of Thomas Paine is suing Instagram and Facebook.

Mr. Paine, the eloquent champion of the American Revolution who penned such zeitgeist-​capturing volumes as Common Sense, The American Crisis, and The Rights of Man, is going to court to protest the indignity that these social-​media forums recently inflicted upon his spirit by censoring his statement that “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

The statement comes from an op-​ed Paine published in the April 24, 1776 issue of the Pennsylvania Journal: “Cato’s partizans may call me furious; I regard it not. There are men too, who, have not virtue enough to be angry, and that crime perhaps is Cato’s. He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

Mr. Paine seems to be saying that persons of craven mettle often eschew the challenge of being standard-​bearers of truth, especially when controversial matters are involved. Articulating such views forthrightly tends to offend — somebody.

The particular mentalities of censorious Facebook flunkies and algorithms are new to Mr. Paine, of course. But he is ready to fight.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” he declares when asked to assess his prospects, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. . . . [I]t would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

If that be hate speech, Mr. Paine seems to suggest, make the most of it.

This is Common Sense. Happy New Year! I’m Paul Jacob.

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Reality About Fake News

truth, fake news

“Fake news entered the world with the emergence of descriptive language,” writes philosopher Ray Scott Percival on Medium, “perhaps hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

And it is here to stay, because we lack a “fool-​proof algorithm” for “disposing of fake news” without cranking out a different variety of fake news.

“But this should not demoralise us,” Percival admonishes. “It is no different from the situation of science. Removing error has to be a piecemeal, tentative enterprise.”

Percival, following a line of argument from philosopher Karl Popper, denies there is such a thing as “manifest truth.” It’s a delusion, says Percival. (The title of his multi-​part essay is “Fake News and the Manifest Truth Delusion.”) But you don’t necessarily need to accept wholly his Popperian take on epistemology (or should that be “epistemics”?) to agree with his important conclusion, that a “ministry of fake news is a fantasy, a tool of oppression, suppression and stagnation, and would unavoidably impair our best means of error-correction.”

He recognizes that error isn’t the half of it. People lie. And some lies look pretty convincing, so we spread them. But the bizarre part of the current “fake news” mania is this: too many earnest citizens turn to government to stop “fake news,” though the biggest and most influential liar has always been the government.

What to do? Well, our “biggest gain in the control of error would be through the separation of science and the corrupting influences of politics (e.g. state funding, licensing etc.) and the chilling effect of political correctness on open discussion.”

Percival wants to “keep the enlightenment alive and kicking.” I like to think that’s just common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fakes & Facts

Snopes, fake news, Trump, Elizabeth Warren, truth

“There was truth and there was untruth,” George Orwell wrote in his classic novel, 1984, “and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

In the Age of Trump and Fake News, way past 1984, I’m hanging on for dear sanity.

Earlier this week, I commented on the brouhaha between the president and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.). Today, I have a bone to pick with Snopes, the faux-​fact-​checking site, which found this statement to be TRUE: “President Donald Trump offered to donate $1 million to a charity of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s choice if she would take a DNA test to demonstrate that she had Native American ancestry.”

Not “Mostly True” with some explanation, but just “True.” Problem is, that statement is false.

Mr. Trump did not make that offer; he promised people at a Montana rally that he would make such an offer in the future, if he found himself “in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she is of Indian [sic] heritage.”

Splitting hairs? Where is the split? Here is President Trump’s full statement.

Snopes was hardly alone in misreporting Trump. The Hill titled its story, “Trump denies offering $1 million for Warren DNA test, even though he did.” The Washington Post parroted The Hill’s “fact-​checked headline.” Other major outlets from CNN to the Miami Herald declared, falsely, that Trump had made the offer.

Look, I don’t blame Warren for goading Trump to pay up. That’s the political game.

But the media, especially fact-​checkers, should be diligent about what precisely the president has said — not playing that game.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Common Sense free trade & free markets government transparency insider corruption local leaders media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Never Trust a Politician

salt, lies, politicians, politics, Donald Trump, truth, economy, trade

One of my more persistent critics on this site asked, last week, why I might believe anything the current president says — considering all the lies.

For reasons of decorum I won’t repeat his exact wording.

The odd thing about the comment was not the vulgarity, though (unfortunately). It was the idea that I was relying upon belief in Donald Trump’s veracity. The whole point of my commentary regarding Trump’s handling of trade and foreign policy was to read between some lines.

I try never to believe anything … er, everything … any politician says.

In Donald Trump’s case, though, there are lies and there are fictions and there are exaggerations. And corkers … and “negotiating gambits.” Separating the wheat from the chaff from the grindstone is not always easy.

Based not only on some of what he says, but also on results-​thus-​far from the EU negotiations, Trump’s idea of “fair trade” appears to be multilateral free trade. But he has chosen a bizarre method to get there: the threat of high-​tariff protectionism — which in the past has led to multilateral protectionism, not free trade.

Trump sees everything as a contest. Trade isn’t a contest as such. It’s win-​win. But trade negotiations are contests. And Trump’s game of chicken is dangerous.

Regarding foreign policy generally, though, he seems to be playing a more familiar game: we can outspend everybody. The recent increase in Pentagon spending is bigger than Russia’s annual military budget!

So, who pays? Americans in

  1. higher taxes and 
  2. the consequences of massive debt, as well as in
  3. the higher prices from his tariffs.

That’s awfully daring of him. For us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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education and schooling folly ideological culture moral hazard

Through a Lens, Darkly

Matthew A. Sears, SJW, Social Justice Warrior, University, dialectic, truth, argument, protest

The “best debates” are ones in which one side shouts down the other side and threatens violence.

Well, that is what a Washington Post essay implies. In “Why ‘social justice warriors’ are the real defenders of free speech on campus,” Matthew A. Sears, an associate professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick, offers a bizarre take on current campus controversies.

After two years of bizarre antics from leftist student bodies in colleges and universities all over the country, academics as diverse as Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, and Camille Paglia have denounced the intentionally disruptive and even violent tactics of student mobs. We need to go back to the Socratic method and “the disinterested pursuit of truth,” as Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Righteous Mind, put it.

Sears counters this by defending the “social justice approach” as better than a “disinterested pursuit of truth.” Instead of “constituting an attack on knowledge, the social justice lens reflects new ideas generated by academic disciplines and experts within them, and generally encourages expanding our knowledge and opening up subjects to new perspectives, much like Socrates advocated.”

Conflating Socratic “dialectic” with the screaming matches and overt force used by the social justice students who have shut down lectures, seminars and fora featuring non-​leftist figures such as Ben Shapiro, Heather Mac Donald and Charles Murray, is more effrontery than enlightening.*

And about that “social justice lens”? Lenses refract, mirrors reflect — and Sears’ argument, you will notice, defends bad behavior out of his classroom by focusing on how he teaches in class. 

We don’t need mirrors or lenses to see the deflection here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was heartening to read most commenters on the page engaging in a merciless “dialectic” against the author. 

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

The First Casualty

Trump, Vietnam, truth, adviser, Johnson, McNamara, lies, war, advice

Former Marine Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s current national security advisor, is the author of Dereliction of Duty, a look at how President Lyndon Johnson conducted the Vietnam War. 

Last Sunday, the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada reviewed the 1997 non-​fiction book, noting that McMaster hadn’t minced words. 

McMaster argues, for instance, that LBJ had a “real propensity for lying.” McMaster also takes Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to task for not telling Johnson hard truths about the war, and going along with what they knew were poor policies. 

Life-​and-​death policies. 

“McMaster explains how a culture of deceit and deference, of divided and misguided loyalties, of policy overrun by politics, resulted in an ever-​deeper U.S. involvement in Vietnam,” Lozada reports. 

Lozada then compares the dishonest bubble within which LBJ made decisions about Vietnam to the people around President Trump today, fearing they too will fail to tell the president inconvenient truths or dare risk his wrath by opposing his policy whims. 

That tilted Trump focus is the 24/​7 obsession of the national press corps. 

But this problem isn’t new with Trump. It’s universal. 

The wise have long understood that truth is the first casualty of war. If not taken out before hostilities even begin.

It is critical to find people of integrity to work at the White House and tell presidents the unvarnished truth. And even more critical is to pick presidents with integrity to tell the American people — the ultimate decision-​makers — the truth. 

It’s long past time that U.S. foreign policies be publicly discussed — and decided — by an informed electorate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Almost Right

Politifact, Snopes, facts, fact check, bias, propaganda, lie, truth, interpretation, analysis

The popular fact-​checking sites, such as Snopes and Politifact, cannot stick to the facts.

When Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky) predicted that a recent repeal of “three regulations” would save “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs,” Politifact rated the statement “Half True,” on the grounds that, well, not all experts agreed.

In 2015, objecting to a reported low figure for the Clinton Foundation’s grants to other groups that actually did things, PunditFact gave a “Mostly false” judgment despite admitting that the statement was “technically true.”

NBC engaged in a similar move, admitting to the technical truth of a claim about unemployment, but said it was “extremely misleading.”

Snopes found reasons to tag a “Mixture” rating onto the simple fact that Omar Mateen, the Pulse nightclub mass murderer, was a registered Democrat. He was*.

The funny thing is, these sites are “Almost Right”: fact checking isn’t enough.

Facts can be true, but deceptively used.

Unfortunately, these “fact-​checkers” repeatedly fail to clearly distinguish matters of fact from matters of context. They could offer a double analysis and double rating: True/​False for the factual; Clear/​Caution, to cover interpretations and implications.

Why don’t they?

Perhaps for the same reason the CIA is planning a Meme Warfare Center — to provide a “full spectrum meme generation, analysis, quality control/​assurance and organic transmission apparatus”** — instead of a Center for the Analysis of Popular Argument: the idea is not to increase knowledge.

It is to maximize influence.

Which leaves us on meme patrol, ever vigilant.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* What Snopes did was speculate that the terrorist perhaps changed his mind after initially registering a decade before the shooting.

** I wrote more about this in Sunday’s Townhall column (from which this Common Sense foray is adapted; see relevant links here), and first broached the goofy/​ominous CIA proposal with Saturday’s featured video.

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