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Title: Five criteria for assessing the truth of news stories. (Stolen From Burkeman Sold in the Pawn Shop)
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Published: Dec 15, 2007
Author: Brukeman
Post Date: 2007-12-15 23:47:52 by tom007
Keywords: None
Views: 68
Comments: 2
Five criteria for assessing the truth of news stories. 1) Proximity. How close to the event being reported is the reporter and his source(s)? Did the reporter personally witness the event? Does his source have first hand knowledge of the news or event he is relaying to the reporter? 2) Source Identification. Is the source anonymous or named? Is there any credible reason for the source to be anonymous? 3) Diversity of sources. A news story with multiple sources is more credible than a story with fewer or only one source. And a story with unrelated sources is more credible than multiple sources who belong to the same organization. 4) Motivation of the Source. Does the source have a motivation to lie? What is the relation of the source to the event. 5) Consequences for lying. Are there any repercussions to the reporter or his source for passing along false, inaccurate, or misleading information? Accepting that the above are good criteria for assessing the validity of news stories let us apply these criteria to a recent story about the latest “Al Qaeda” recording. The ABC News story in it’s entirety is here: A new al Qaeda communique featuring Al-Qaeda's number-two man was released on the internet Friday morning. References to last month's peace conference in Annapolis indicate the recording is recent. The message, in Arabic, has not yet been fully translated, but early analysis indicates it contains fulminations about Mideast leaders' positions expressed at the late November event. Experts have authenticated the tape and confirmed the voice belongs to Zawahiri. It was released by As Sahab, the terror group's propaganda operation. The recording – audio over a still photomontage showing images of Zawahiri, Bush and Middle Eastern leaders – is 20 minutes, two seconds long. Al Zawahiri was last featured on an As Sahab release in early November, in an audio statement with an al Qaeda field commander. In September, al Qaeda released a videotape of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. How does the above match up to my 5 criteria for establishing the truth to news stories? Let’s take the first criteria. Proximity. We have no idea of the proximity as the reporter himself is not even named. Never a good sign. In fact- we have absolutely no idea where any of the information came from. Which takes us to Source Identification. There is none, not one agency is even named. Where did any of this information come from? We have no idea. Vague “experts” are cited but who they are and might work for is a complete mystery. What of the tape itself? The subject of the news story? Where did it come from? How did ABC find out about it? Well it came from the “Internet”. That is literally all we know of where this tape might be from. How did ABC find out about it? Who told them of the “release”? Where on the “Internet” can it be found? All a total mystery. The rest of the criteria can't even really be applied to this “news” story because absolutely no one is named. We can’t assess the amount of diversity among the sources because we have zero idea of who they might be. If it is one source or two or three. They don’t even cite anonymous sources or name an agency from where this information might have come so we can’t judge the motivations of the source and can’t know if there any consequences for lying. So what can we logically and reasonably assume is true in this story? We can perhaps assume that a tape exists. That is about it. Can we believe it is from “Al Qaeda”? No. Can we believe it is authentic? No. Can we believe it was found on the Internet? No. Other that a recoding exists- there is zero reason believe any of this story. Let’s do another “news” story that appeared in America’s widely regarded “paper of record” in September of 2002. U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon. How does this story measure up as to proximity of the reporters to the events and information they relay? Poorly. All the information they relay in that story they were told about by sources. None of it was seen first hand. Some of the sources for the story were relayed to the reporters by other sources. Which leads us to the second criteria, Source Identification. Who are the sources? All anonymous. Not one named source that the reporters talked to directly for any of the pertinent information that is the subject of the article being relayed. Back round sources are identified but they have no first hand knowledge of the topic of the article and just provide context and add nothing one way or the other as to the truth of whether or not Iraq was “intensifying it’s nuclear weapon program”. One source is an anonymous Iraqi ex-pat with the pseudonym Ahmed Al Shemri. Is there any credible reason why these sources should be anonymous? Perhaps. Intelligence officials certainly need to have their identities protected. But this information could be relayed through a named press flunky who stands behind a podium with the Presidential seal emblazoned on the front. Why isn't it? What about the administration officials? They are not secret agents. Why can't they be named? Why are they not willing to be named? There is no credible reason other than they are lying or not being honest or are unsure of the information they are passing along and don't want to be called on it later and have this haunt their futures. When a government is unwilling to put some press liaison hairdo behind a podium to officially make statements about intelligence and secret knowledge and rather they leak it anonymously to the press? Then you simply cannot trust such information or assign any credibility to it. Source Diversity? Poor. All the unnamed sources are either generic, “officials”, “American officials”, “Administration officials”, or “intelligence officials”. Sometimes we are told by “officials” what “intelligence experts” said they believed. We have no idea as to their diversity or relation to each other. Motivation of the sources? Obviously the motive for lying could be many fold. Iraq is an oil rich country. The administration under discussion is heavily involved with the oil industry and is comprised of ideologues with very established public statements advocating even unprovoked war upon Iraq and “regime change” in Baghdad. Further- governments lie about war and always have since the dawn of time. There is no reason to grant the government any benefit of the doubt. That is generally the case in all things. And lastly? Consequences for lying? Are there any for the sources? Hard to tell at the time. But clearly with hindsight 5 years later? No- there were no consequences for those anonymous sources to lie to the New York Times. No even the threat of being named. Now if you applied those simple logical standards for assessing and judging the truth of news reports back when this story first appeared in 2002 you could not be even remotely sure of the truth of these reports and logic would demand skepticism and suspicion. This isn’t rocket science. It is common sense and dime store logic. And what was true in that “Times” story above about Hussein’s “quest for A-Bomb parts”? Not one thing. Not one assertion was true. In fact- the complete opposite was true. Note the detail in that story by the way. It is the presence of detail in news stories that people often mistakenly use to judge validity of stories. The thinking is that “surely no one could lie with such detail.” Well- yes- they do. That is what makes the lie believable. Think of your own lies in the past. Ever lie about being late to something? Were you vague or did you include detail in your lie? All of that story- and many many more with even more detail were complete and total lies. All of it fantasy and concoctions. Now I am not saying that I knew the truth back in 2002- that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that all these stories were total fabrications. But I did indeed at least question all those stories. I did indeed smell a rat by applying my standards to judging truth (and they really are not "my standards"- just common sense applied logic.) So when you are reading about “Al Qaeda in Iraq” in the Boston Globe next Sunday morning apply my five criteria to the story and see how it stacks up? In fact- do it with pretty much any story about Iraq or “al Qaeda” you see. I think you might be shocked as to how little logical reason there is to believe anything we are told about these subjects. Posted by Burkeman1 at 6:30 AM 1 comments Friday, December 14, 2007
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#1. To: All, burkeman1 (#0)
Excellent article. As rational as it gets and encompasses a huge amount of epistemological real world applicable philosophy. Thank you Burke.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Thanks.
Let’s take the first criteria. Proximity. We have no idea of the proximity as the reporter himself is not even named. Never a good sign. In fact- we have absolutely no idea where any of the information came from.
#2. To: tom007 (#1)
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