Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Don't Confuse Me With The Facts
Dadmanly looks at the fisking of Fisk and makes this marvelous comment
To me the problem is that such peole are given credence, that they are allowed to be journalists, that they can find publication somewhere other than the blogosphere.
When a person thinks that the guy that just bumped into them on the street is trying to kill them they are accused of having paranoid delusions because there is no reality to confirm their belief. But when a "journalist" finds four people in backcountry Iraq that preferred it under Saddam, he is considered brave and full of journalistic integrity for tell the tale of American oppression. That's about the same as telling our paranoid friend that he is correct to be paranoid because he was accidentally bruised when he was bumped into.
Related Tags: journalism, fisking, facts, delusions, paranoia
I am no longer surprised by the utter lack of professionalism and scholarly discipline among the fiercest defenders of a certain set of leftist beliefs. But I begin to think that a pure and undefiled ignorance lies at the heart of such as these. They really do seem to embrace the core of the new "fake but accurate" journalistic credo.I am forced to comment that such is a common phenomena. We see it every day with people. The problem is not to my mind that people ignore fact to fit their own conceptions.
Someday perhaps a conservative psychiatrist or neuroscientist will uncover the precise mechanism that allows truth and facts to slip through the neural network untethered, leaving preconceptions and old dust-bunnies in their wake. Myself, I think every piece of intellectual flotsam that drifts by is scooped up and filtered through a "does this fit my perfect conception of the world" net, and if not, it flows out with the other trivia.
To me the problem is that such peole are given credence, that they are allowed to be journalists, that they can find publication somewhere other than the blogosphere.
When a person thinks that the guy that just bumped into them on the street is trying to kill them they are accused of having paranoid delusions because there is no reality to confirm their belief. But when a "journalist" finds four people in backcountry Iraq that preferred it under Saddam, he is considered brave and full of journalistic integrity for tell the tale of American oppression. That's about the same as telling our paranoid friend that he is correct to be paranoid because he was accidentally bruised when he was bumped into.
Related Tags: journalism, fisking, facts, delusions, paranoia
