Let's get the rest of the quote: http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/309142-denzel-washington-blasts-media-for-selling-bs ---- Washington was the subject of a phony story earlier this year that falsely claimed he was switching his support of then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to GOP White House hopeful Donald Trump.
One of the effects of "too much information," the 61-year-old Oscar winner says, is "the need to be first, not even to be true anymore."
"In our society, now it's just first — who cares, get it out there. We don't care who it hurts. We don't care who we destroy. We don't care if it's true," ----
It sounds like he's condemning the readership as much as journalists.
It is curious that he picks on newspapers, since they at least have 24 hour news cycle to work with, and can delay a story to gather more evidence. But maybe newspapers don't exist any more since they're not on paper any more, and news stories go up on their website as fast as any where.
For myself, I find main stream newspapers as generally factually accurate, meaning they represent the most accurately known facts as reported. But of course there can be bias that distort perspectives, OR they can go overboard trying to be "fair" by trying too hard to present two sides of an event, when one side is clearly stronger than the other.
Like I saw today a Vox article that called out the NYTimes on false equivalence: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/8/13891648/new-york-times-false-equivalence --- Now the Times has given another example of this type of false equivalency, in one paragraph:
Bias incidents on both sides have been reported. A student walking near campus was threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab. Other students were accused of being racist for supporting Mr. Trump, according to a campuswide message from Mark Schlissel, the university’s president. ---
Labeling people is rude and threaten a person's reputation, while being threatened with physical harm may be much more than rude, depending on how serious the threat appears. On the other hand, threatening someone with physical harm threatens your own reputation, even if you don't mean it, so if you can handle a physical threat without fear, then you're actually standing up to a bully, and you make them look bad whether you consider yourself a victim or not.
I guess Trump's "Crooked Hillary" and "Lyin' Ted" labels work the same way, although I suspect being called a crook or a liar is a pretty specific claim, so he could be sued for his name-calling.
Myself, I've not found any value in calling someone a racist. My pastor escape hypocrisy by saying we're all racists, but that still seems to fall into the false equivalency problem. We're all may have murderous thoughts, but we're not all murders in action. So it is fair at least to judge actions as something more than racism.
But back to Denzel Washington, I wonder if his "misinformed" complaint might be more similar to the BLM complaints, where all blacks are presumed guilty by mainsteam media and all police officers are presumed innocent, so if a black man is dead at the hands of a police officer, he must have deserved it. That would be a biased assumption, even if the BLM falls into the opposite narrative, where every dead black man was innocent, and every officer guilty. Of course being dead is a high punishment for guilt, like selling onesies or whatever. Being guilty of breaking the law shouldn't be a death sentence.
I don't know how to make the news unbiased. We can assume everyone is innocent until proven guilty. And even after a court or jury makes a judgment, not everyone will agree. At least that's also why we say "not guilty" rather than "innocent", and hope 99.9999% of all guilty verdicts are accurate.
"What I've seen is that police are presumed guilty and the blacks are declared innocent in the papers."
Pity that requires pointing out, but thank you for doing so. And not only innocent, but "oppressed".
But to be fair, the residents of Ferguson were being targeted for fines. Of course, what goes unsaid is the elected municipal authorities demanding the revenue were all Democrats. :-D
Sam L, and Trigger Warning... I agree there is some sympathy for the BLM positions in the media, and in part it comes out of the fact that everyone seems to have video cameras these days, and when people see something its harder to defend police actions, even if the videos themselves fail to contain the context of the situation.
It's all a mess when we all think we can be arm-chair arbitrators of truth by possibly doctored videos that can be selected to follow any desired narrative.
Also interestingly, someone else shared some quotes from Thomas Jefferson, a private letter that was published later, and in agreement with Denzel. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html --- It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.
Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. ---
So the problems of the free press are apparently old as time, or the printing press I suppose, and Hillary's new crusade against fake news probably can't help but do more harm than good.
There will always be vulnerable people who will hear or read false information, and in their self-righteous rage, act badly on that.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world.
(Letter to John Norvell, June 14, 1807)
Today, of course, mass media takes many forms besides newspapers. But the standards Jefferson spoke of haven’t changed. “Television network newscast” might be substituted for “newspaper” in the above paragraph. Jefferson further said:
I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
I'm going with "Pretty much true" on the second. The first, not...since Instapundit started.
ReplyDeleteLet's get the rest of the quote:
ReplyDeletehttp://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/309142-denzel-washington-blasts-media-for-selling-bs
----
Washington was the subject of a phony story earlier this year that falsely claimed he was switching his support of then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to GOP White House hopeful Donald Trump.
One of the effects of "too much information," the 61-year-old Oscar winner says, is "the need to be first, not even to be true anymore."
"In our society, now it's just first — who cares, get it out there. We don't care who it hurts. We don't care who we destroy. We don't care if it's true,"
----
It sounds like he's condemning the readership as much as journalists.
It is curious that he picks on newspapers, since they at least have 24 hour news cycle to work with, and can delay a story to gather more evidence. But maybe newspapers don't exist any more since they're not on paper any more, and news stories go up on their website as fast as any where.
For myself, I find main stream newspapers as generally factually accurate, meaning they represent the most accurately known facts as reported. But of course there can be bias that distort perspectives, OR they can go overboard trying to be "fair" by trying too hard to present two sides of an event, when one side is clearly stronger than the other.
Like I saw today a Vox article that called out the NYTimes on false equivalence:
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/8/13891648/new-york-times-false-equivalence
---
Now the Times has given another example of this type of false equivalency, in one paragraph:
Bias incidents on both sides have been reported. A student walking near campus was threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab. Other students were accused of being racist for supporting Mr. Trump, according to a campuswide message from Mark Schlissel, the university’s president.
---
Labeling people is rude and threaten a person's reputation, while being threatened with physical harm may be much more than rude, depending on how serious the threat appears. On the other hand, threatening someone with physical harm threatens your own reputation, even if you don't mean it, so if you can handle a physical threat without fear, then you're actually standing up to a bully, and you make them look bad whether you consider yourself a victim or not.
I guess Trump's "Crooked Hillary" and "Lyin' Ted" labels work the same way, although I suspect being called a crook or a liar is a pretty specific claim, so he could be sued for his name-calling.
Myself, I've not found any value in calling someone a racist. My pastor escape hypocrisy by saying we're all racists, but that still seems to fall into the false equivalency problem. We're all may have murderous thoughts, but we're not all murders in action. So it is fair at least to judge actions as something more than racism.
But back to Denzel Washington, I wonder if his "misinformed" complaint might be more similar to the BLM complaints, where all blacks are presumed guilty by mainsteam media and all police officers are presumed innocent, so if a black man is dead at the hands of a police officer, he must have deserved it. That would be a biased assumption, even if the BLM falls into the opposite narrative, where every dead black man was innocent, and every officer guilty. Of course being dead is a high punishment for guilt, like selling onesies or whatever. Being guilty of breaking the law shouldn't be a death sentence.
I don't know how to make the news unbiased. We can assume everyone is innocent until proven guilty. And even after a court or jury makes a judgment, not everyone will agree. At least that's also why we say "not guilty" rather than "innocent", and hope 99.9999% of all guilty verdicts are accurate.
Ares Olympus @December 8, 2016 at 5:30 PM:
ReplyDelete"For myself, I find main stream newspapers as generally factually accurate, meaning they represent the most accurately known facts as reported..."
Of course you find that. You're all about "facts."
That quote is usually attributed to Mark Twain.
ReplyDeleteApparently, it is from Mark Twain. Denzel Washington was quoting it. Thanks for the correction.
ReplyDelete"My pastor escape hypocrisy by saying we're all racists, but that still seems to fall into the false equivalency problem."
ReplyDelete"False equivalence is a logical fallacy in which two opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not."
Your statement is a category error, Ares.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
"What I've seen is that police are presumed guilty and the blacks are declared innocent in the papers."
ReplyDeletePity that requires pointing out, but thank you for doing so. And not only innocent, but "oppressed".
But to be fair, the residents of Ferguson were being targeted for fines. Of course, what goes unsaid is the elected municipal authorities demanding the revenue were all Democrats. :-D
Sam L, and Trigger Warning... I agree there is some sympathy for the BLM positions in the media, and in part it comes out of the fact that everyone seems to have video cameras these days, and when people see something its harder to defend police actions, even if the videos themselves fail to contain the context of the situation.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a mess when we all think we can be arm-chair arbitrators of truth by possibly doctored videos that can be selected to follow any desired narrative.
Also interestingly, someone else shared some quotes from Thomas Jefferson, a private letter that was published later, and in agreement with Denzel.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html
---
It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.
Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on.
---
So the problems of the free press are apparently old as time, or the printing press I suppose, and Hillary's new crusade against fake news probably can't help but do more harm than good.
There will always be vulnerable people who will hear or read false information, and in their self-righteous rage, act badly on that.
Thomas Jefferson said:
ReplyDeleteNothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world.
(Letter to John Norvell, June 14, 1807)
Today, of course, mass media takes many forms besides newspapers. But the standards Jefferson spoke of haven’t changed. “Television network newscast” might be substituted for “newspaper” in the above paragraph. Jefferson further said:
I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
(Above excerpt from James Perloff's website.)
- shoe