The CBC's Falun Gong Show

Someone wise once said we should never attribute to malice what can be explained by ordinary human incompetence.

Clinging desperately to that principle, I am stunned by the journalistic incompetence of this report by the CBC.

To begin with, this is not news. Some average Canadian is upset by a piece of unsolicited mail? Dog bites man. First rule of journalism broken.

Second, any news story is supposed to include both sides of a controversy. Second rule of journalism broken. The piece should quote Epoch Times in response to the woman’s charges. It should also quote an expert who thinks the virus originated in the Wuhan lab. There are many. I believe this has become the majority opinion among the experts.

Certainly, the assertion by the average Canadian featured that “we know scientifically that’s just not true” needed to be challenged. It was objectively false.

The CBC narrator later says Epoch Times claims the virus was developed as a bioweapon. This is objectively false as well. The Epoch Times did not say this; it only referred to it as a possibility. Fake news.

The anonymous average Canadian interviewee is quoted calling the Epoch Times “racist,” without this being challenged.

The Epoch Times is here being highly critical of the Chinese Communist Party. The Epoch Times is owned and run by a group of Chinese Americans. Same race.

The Epoch Times is affiliated in some way with Falun Gong. The CBC refers to them as “a dissident group that has locked horns with the Chinese Communist Party.” It might be debatable to what extent and in what way the Falun Gong has been persecuted in China—organ harvesting or no organ harvesting—there is no question that they are being persecuted. And the is no question the dispute began with the CCP attacking Falun Gong, not vice versa, in violation of the principle of freedom of religion which we consider a human right. Speaking of them as having “locked horns” with the CCP, is like referring to the German Jews having “locked horns” with Hitler. This is not a conflict in which a moral person can be neutral. Much less support, as the CBC does here, the Chinese Communists.

Can you imagine them having supported the Soviet government against Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn, declaring the latter racists? The difference in treatment of Russian Communist governments and Chinese Communist governments indeed suggests racism—on the part of the CBC.

It interviews an unidentified woman saying that, because the Epoch Times “always has the same position on a particular issue,” “that’s not journalism. Is it propaganda?” Cleverly worded, perhaps, so the CBC cannot be sued. But by this standard, The Economist magazine is also propaganda, not journalism. It has a consistent position on free markets. Essentially all magazines or newspapers have consistent editorial positions: it is the usual reason for starting a journal, and the usual reason for subscribing to one. In a word, it is journalism.

This is at the same time an example of the simplest and most easily recognized of all logical fallacies: an ad hominem argument. Not the sort of thing a professional journalistic outlet should ever be guilty of; the sort of thing a professional journalistic outlet should be educating the public out of. The reporting of the Epoch Times, like any reporting, must be evaluated on its merits.

The narrator’s arch concluding comment: ““If people don’t like it, they can always drop it in the recycling bin.”

The tragedy is, Canadians cannot do the same with the CBC. We are forced to pay for it, even if we are not forced to watch it.

Someone should be fired over this.

Fake Fake News News

National Post has published a piece from Bloomberg News taking umbrage over Trump's “Fake News” Awards.

The piece is, alarmingly, presented not as opinion, but straight news. But get this for a nice, balanced, objective lede: “President Donald Trump announced the recipients of his so-called Fake News Awards, on Wednesday, his latest attack on the press that has drawn objections from within his own party.”

Near the top, it notes “Trump’s announcement came as two senators from his own party excoriated him for his incessant attacks on the free press.”

“The free press”? Why this qualifying adjective? Is there another press in the US, well-known to readers, large and worthy of mention, that is not free?

No. Surely the implication is that any criticism of the press, or any part of the press, is an attack on press freedom.

If you think so, and want to argue so, you do not believe in mere freedom of the press. You believe in dictatorship of the press.

It then complains that Trump has called on journalists to be fired for “minor” mistakes.

Doesn't calling the unspecified mistakes “minor” there sound like an expression of opinion more than objective reporting? Shouldn't it be substantiated in some way?

The article then asks:

The “Fake News Awards” announced on the Republican National Committee website and touted by President Donald Trump pose a conundrum: Does it really count if the news organization admits error?

Everyone makes mistakes – and the point is not to play gotcha. News organizations operate in a competitive arena and mistakes are bound to be made. The key test is whether an error is acknowledged and corrected.

Since they ask, yes, it does count. It would be worse, no doubt, if the error were never acknowledged. But people rely on the media, the press, to be authoritative. They are supposed to have layers of editors and fact-checkers to ensure that it is. That is what the people are paying their quarter, or their dollar, for—that reliability. Otherwise they could get all their news on the streetcorner. If an error nevertheless gets printed, that is certainly worthy of condemnation, just as if GM put out a car that burst into flames when the brake was applied. A later recall does not erase the fault.

Moreover, if the error is something that any layperson would expect to have been caught by even a cursory fact-check before publication, we have the right to suspect it was a deliberate case of fake news. The danger is that, at best, the papers no longer check the factuality of assertions they agree with. Then they will run a correction if (and only if) they are caught out. Oops. But no matter—the damage is often already done.

The National Post piece then gets down to specifics. It objects that the story of Trump removing a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King from the Oval Office—an event that never happened—was not fake news, because “This is is reference to a tweet by a reporter – which was quickly corrected. Do tweets really count as ‘news’? This did not appear as a news article.”

This rebuttal is itself fake news. The assertion was not only in a tweet; it was included in a pool report at the time, and in Time magazine's own news article. Time's own website writes: “A TIME story that included the error was corrected.” And here is the actual correction:

Correction: An earlier version of the story said that a bust of Martin Luther King had been moved. It is still in the Oval Office.

So let's see: how did the present author manage to know something that was just not true? How did Bloomberg never fact-check? How did the National Post, in turn, never fact-check? One begins to get suspicious.

The notorious koi story is a similar case. CNN released a video showing Trump dumping food into a koi pond, and this was widely reported as boorish behaviour. The video did not show that Trump was simply following the lead of Japanese PM Abe.

The NatPost piece's defense, again, is that this was “just a tweet.”

However, a quick trip to Snopes shows that actual news stories were indeed filed with this fake news:

The Guardian: “Trump dump: president throws entire box of fish food into precious koi carp pond.”

Jezebel: “Big Stupid Baby Dumps Load Of Fish Food On Japanese Koi Pond.”

CNN's one headline was “Trump feeds fish, winds up pouring entire box of food into koi pond.”

It certainly sounds as though they are making dumping the entire box the focus of the story.

The NatPost commentator insists CNN is off the hook because they added, down in the fifth paragraph, “Abe, who actually appeared to dump out his box of food ahead of Trump.” But buried this deep, and contradicting their own lede, it looks like it was only there to cover butt if necessary.

And the CNN news story includes the deceptively edited clip. It was not just a tweet; it was both a tweet and a full news story.

Evidently the legacy media have no thought to reform. They are determined to go down with all hands on deck and with all guns blazing.

It is a magnificent thing to watch.

Trump on the Civil War

Old Hickory in old age.

The latest nonsense from the press is a criticism of Trump for saying Andrew Jackson might have prevented the US Civil War.

One can disagree with Trump on this. But it is a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

Yet all the coverage is along the lines of “Trump is ignorant of history”; “Trump does not understand the Civil War”; “Trump gets it wrong.” Please.

CNN: “Trump gets Andrew Jackson and Civil War totally wrong”

The Guardian: “Trump voices confusion over US history: ‘Why was there a Civil War?’”

New York Times: “With Civil War remark, a president who does not go by the (history) book.”

Washington Post: “Trump’s totally bizarre claim about avoiding the Civil War.”

Here, so far as I can tell, is exactly what Trump said:

"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, 'There's no reason for this.' People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

The mainstream media’s objections:

1. Andrew Jackson died fourteen years before the Civil War.

Does anyone really believe Trump was saying Jackson was in charge during the war? It was a hypothetical.

Jackson was certainly aware of the tensions between north and south, since they had been around since before the War of Independence.

2. Andrew Jackson did not have a big heart. He was a slaveowner and made the Cherokee Indians move to Oklahoma.

While we may find these policies heartless, it is also true that Jackson had a reputation as a kind commander and a generous slaveholder. When one of his slaves was apparently beaten to death by an overseer, he pressed hard to have the man charged with murder. “Big heart” can also mean courageous, and Jackson certainly had a reputation for that.

It seems to me a bit unfair to condemn anyone running a plantation in the US South for owning slaves. The problem was systemic. If you owned a plantation and did not keep slaves, given that others would, you would soon go bankrupt. You could not compete, given your higher labour costs.

The Anaconda Plan. Basically the North's war strategy.

3. The reason for the Civil War is well known. It was to abolish slavery.

This presupposes that the only way to abolish slavery is through war. An odd claim. Yet the British Empire abolished slavery many years before the US, with no war. In fact, slavery is abolished everywhere, and it seemingly never required a war anywhere but the US. Why is it unreasonable then to think war could have been avoided?

As to slavery being the cause of the Civil War, even this is debatable. Abraham Lincoln, for one, denied it. He said that it was to preserve the union. He said that if he could have kept the union together by endorsing slavery, he would have done so. And the South abolished slavery themselves before the war ended. It seems more as though slavery was a symbol to the South of their right to self-rule.

4. The Civil War was inevitable, and no leader could have prevented it.

This seems at base a Marxist view of history: dialectical materialism produces historical inevitability, leading of course in the end to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the communist utopia at the end of time. The school of history that believes people actually have free will also has some intellectual credibility. Did Churchill not matter? Gandhi? Martin Luther King? Lincoln? Washington? Newton? Aristotle?

In fact, Jackson faced a southern attempt to leave the union during his presidency—the South Carolina nullification crisis—and managed to nip it in the bud. This seems reasonable grounds for presuming he could have handed it the next time around.

5. Andrew Jackson would not have prevented the Civil War, because he was a slaveholder.

This is a non sequitur. It makes no more sense than arguing that Lincoln could not have fought the Civil War because he owned no slaves. Being a slaveholder himself might have given Jackson the credibility to get the South to compromise.

What compromise? How about what the British did: financial compensation to slave owners for their loss of property.

Note that US Grant, top Union general during the Civil War, himself owned slaves, or at least one slave. Robert E. Lee, top general for the South, opposed slavery. This did not seem to make their tasks impossible.

It may not be that the world has gone crazy, but certainly the press has. What they print has no necessary relation to objective fact.

The Globe Reports the Dutch Election

The dear old mainstream media is incorrigible. They’ll never change.

The headlines after the Dutch election read:

BBC: European relief as mainstream triumphs  

PBS: Dutch reject far-right Geert Wilders in national election for prime minister 

Guardian: GreenLeft proves to be big winner in Dutch election 

Independent: Green Party big winner of Dutch elections. 

Globe and Mail: Centre-left shift in Dutch elections deals blow to populism

These headlines range from spin to fake news.

This is mostly not malicious. But then, neither is most “fake news.” The problem is the need to come up with a striking headline, that will tempt the reader to keep reading the story. “Click-bait” is no new thing—the print equivalent has always been at the core of the news business. Nor is this, in itself, wrong. There is nothing bad about making things sound interesting. The problem is that, too often, the story seems to be falsified for the sake of a good lede.

Here, specifically, the problem is that the election results were indecisive. And they closely reflected the final polls. So what can you say to make them sound important and surprising?

And, then again, some of it is just partisan hackery. The last three headlines, the Guardian., the Independent, and the Globe and Mail, really cannot be explained on other grounds.

Would you know from this glance at the days headlines that the government coalition collapsed? And the “Greens” came in tied for fifth place, with less than 10% of the seats? That’s as though the Liberals or the NDP pulled 30 seats. Big win?

Mark Rutte’s centre-right VVD hung on to the title of largest party, losing eight seat and ending with 33 in the 150-seat house. Seems less than a ringing endorsement. But that is why the headline cannot be “Dutch government falls.” The ruling coalition did indeed fall; but as the head of the largest party, Rutte has first chance to form a new one.

The biggest story is probably that his coalition partner, until now the second-largest party, Labour, sister to Labour in the UK, was crushed. They lost 29 of their 38 seats.

Okay, “second-largest party crushed” does not draw well. But then, how is the collapse of the largest party on the left a move to the left?

The new second-largest party is Wilders’ Trumpesque PVV. They picked up five seats, for 20. If Rutte cannot cobble together a working coalition, he'll get a crack at it. But his chances look to be slim to none.

The second-biggest shift was the Green Party picking up ten seats. But this is no ideological shift to the left of the electorate: the votes that Labour lost had to go somewhere. It turns out that only a third of them stayed on the left, then, with the Greens. Who are clearly also-rans here.

The Christian Democrats, on the right, picked up six seats. And they have five more seats than the Greens. The leftist Socialist Party dropped one seat. D66, whose main issue is direct democracy, picked up seven. Does that count as left or right?

Given the results, at least four parties will be needed to form a government. And they won’t all be on the same side ideologically. So it looks as though any new government may not last. The

Since he heads the largest party, Rutte get first crack. Looking at the seat totals, and who can likely agree on policy, the best bet seems to be a coalition of Rutte (conservative), the Christian Democrats (conservative), D66 (not clear), the Christian Union (conservative), 50Plus (conservative), and maybe the Party for the Animals (you decide). This would be a significant move to the right; remembering that Rutte’s own party is conservative. There are no available coalitions that would move the government to the left. There are available coalitions that would move it further than this to the right—but Rutte has vowed not to allow Wilders into government.

There you go: “Centre-left shift in Dutch elections deals blow to populism.”

You read it in the Globe first.

Fake News

Why is this a story?

Post Truth

Marcuse

It is bizarre to see so many on the Left now accusing Donald Trump of a “post truth” attitude. And as if this is some new and terrible thing.

That is and was the "post-modern turn": that truth is subjective, that there is no absolute or objective truth, that truth is "socially constructed." As PBS sums it up, "Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality."

Lies no longer exist once you embrace postmodernism.

Rely on “impartial fact-checkers” to guard against “fake news”? Not going to work, once the journalism profession itself has embraced postmodernism. If truth is relative, neither facts, nor mathematics, nor logic, settle anything. Some feminists now argue that mathematics, science, and logic are "tools of the patriarchy." Ethics is now subject to "cultural relativism" rather than appeal to any first principles like Kant’s categorical imperative. As Marcuse wrote, “moral commands and prohibitions are no longer relevant." Postmodernism explicitly rejects scientific truth.

Derrida" self-proclaimed Marxist, denounced "logocentrism."

Where did all this come from? Certainly, it was not Trump’s innovation, It has been the core teaching of the New Left for the past sixty or more years. It is from Marcuse and the Frankfurt School. Marcuse's ideal society was, wrote Kołakowski, “to be ruled despotically by an enlightened group [who] have realized in themselves the unity of Logos and Eros, and thrown off the vexatious authority of logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences.” Marcuse, it turn, was heavily influenced here by Heidegger, who was influenced by Nietzsche.

"Even the ears have walls," they wrote on the walls during the Paris uprising. From this font, for example, feminism comes, along with the newer emphasis on “gender rights”: the idea that “male” and “female” are purely social constructs. Scientific facts like chromosomes and human anatomy are now irrelevant.

Having pushed this idea for a good fifty or sixty years, it is funny to hear some on the left now complain that Donald Trump is supposedly embracing it. It is laughable to hear them suddenly troubled by “fake news,” when “fake news” has become the stock in trade of the establishment press.

Not that he is. As far as I can tell, he has not, as have the members of the New Left, ever expressly reserved the right to make up his own truths. You say he sometimes says things that are not true? And you assert this is a new thing for politicians?

How’s that one for a made-up truth?

Heidegger

Perhaps it is not hypocrisy. If you follow the wonderland logic of postmodernism and the New Left, that truth is whatever I want it to be, then I guess it follows that anyone who disagrees with me is either lying or simply denying reality. Any news I do not like is, by definition, “fake.” There can be no question here of others having equal rights. Unless I choose to allow it. There is left only one way, of course, to settle disputes: might makes right. Whoever is in power gets to do as they like.

You will note that Heidegger embraced the Nazis in their day, who in turn embraced Nietzsche. There is an obvious sympathy of attitudes.

Still, the accusation seems pretty ironic. Because a big part of Trump's appeal to his many supporters is that, unlike the usual politicians, he tells it straight. He speaks the truth.

One example is his taunt of Clinton, or Obama, to just once call Islamic terrorism Islamic terrorism. Or how about hearing the Democratic candidates all publicly disown the statement that "all lives matter"? Trump took the flak for saying, sensibly, that he reserved the right to challenge the election results if they looked bogus. He could have taken the easy political path of insisting he would not, like Hillary Clinton. Who then, of course, when she lost, challenged the election results.

Political correctness, itself a part of the New Left/postmodernist turn, at its base holds that saying a thing is so matters more than whether it is so.

That is a good definition of lying.

The revolt against political correctness has been the very core of Trump's appeal.

Fake News

Fake news is a real problem, and intensely annoying. Indeed, it used to be an offense under the criminal code of Canada: “spreading false news.” However, the Canadian Supreme Court, wisely, eventually struck the law down. The problem is that no agency can be trusted to decide for everyone else what is true. Such a law is an open door to attempted mind control. The only possible approach is to allow freedom of speech, and hope that the truth will out through free debate.

This article points out, correctly, that “false news” began to be a more serious problem when the postmodernists and the cultural relativists of the left began to declare that truth was not objective, that there was “my truth” and “your truth.” That wasn’t Trump’s idea.

And the “mainstream media” began pushing fake news well before any websites in Macedonia.