And the “credibility” of blogging? I’m afraid that’s self-demonstrable by the contents. It mattered not that no one knew who Charles Johnson was when RatherGate came up, what counted was his “blinking memo” and that it was immediately replicable evidence. Solid content, not the name behind it. IMHO, for the most part readers could give a hoot less WHO is producing content they like, as long as they produce it. Blogging [er se will NEVER be “credible” simply because anyone can do it, but some blogs and bloggers will be, regardless of credentials but not independent of their established “brands” in the blogosphere.

Those who are inclined to serious politics will likewise either be open to valid ideas and argument regardless of who utters it, as long as the tone is not offensive, or so entrenched in their own “convictions” and prejudices that no authority will count unless it agrees with them. They will cheer those they believe to be on their saide, and boo those they believe are not, regardless of content. It’s the intelligent non-ideologues who can be swayed by solid content, and they will tend to distrust claims of authority in the first place. They may disagre upon reflection, but they will at least pause to reflect.

Political blogging is a seriously small corner of the blogosphere, BTW, however much WE enjoy it. I believe it’s far behind cooking, child care, tech geekery, and generic me-ism.

But just for giggles, let’s note something about the flap that inspired this post, Whelan’s outing of publius. No matter how you slice it, in terms of “credibility” Whelan outing publius was the dumbest thing he could do, as no matter which theory we ascribe to he did nothing but BOOST publius’ credibility.

If publius lacked credibility because he was pseudonymous, then Whelan exposing him as law school faculty was Whelan shooting himself in the ass. But Whelan acknowledged publius’ credibility by even noticing his existence and responding. If the pseudonymous publius was not credible, there was no reason to respond. But if publius was credible enough to respond to for other reasons, even Whelan’s simple annoyance at the personality-sniping, Whelan boosted publius’ credibility by putting a set of real-world credentials to the pseudonym, making publius’ sniping even MORE credibly on-target.

I guess when you’re an unethical hothead, you can’t win for losing. ;-)

To your response on the fourth point, I think you’re making a big assumption that somebody is more apt to fact check because that person is pseudonymous. In fact, I believe it’s the other way around. If somebody has a name/credentials, the other side will be that much more prone to pick his/her argument apart. However, at a certain point, if somebody becomes pseudonymously famous, that turns into the exact same situation and their identity makes little difference because the other side will want to disprove them anyway. Again, it all goes back to the idea that pseudonymity is ultimately self serving and thus detracts from the credibility of blogging as a whole…at least in my opinion. :-)

Last, can people really live without sex? I guess all you need to do is ask anybody who’s married.

OH!

Ladies and gentleman, I’ll be here all week.

Don’t forget to tip your bloggers.

Oops on your third.

On your fourth, part II first, I’ve already agreed in whole and will happily agree again. Repeat often. Anyone who thinks they can STAY pseudonymous (or even anonymous) on the internet if someone with some fairly common ‘net skills and a lack of ethics gets a mad on at them is indeed fooling themselves. And there are certainly people that have nothing better to do than get a mad on, and can’t spell ethics, much less exercise any. The anonymity of the ‘net is largely illusory, thanks in no small part to the ‘net itself. The bigger the footprint you leave, the easier you are to expose. Your point there cannot be repeated enough for those who think they can hide behind a keyboard. The greatest defense? Civility.

On your fourth, part I, of course it serves the blogger! As I said, people blog for their own reasons. That doesn’t validate the blind acceptance of logical fallacies where “the conversation” is concerned, unless you wish to argue that people are better served by being propagandized and led as compared to checking and re-checking their assumptions. I am not arguing that an identified blogger who has notable expertise in their field should blog pseudonymously, but that buying into things on such a basis is a tacit acknowledgement of an unwillingness to investigate their arguments and instead accept them on faith, using the convenient rationalization of authority. You end up with little better than dueling authorities, and cheerleaders for same.

Lastly, all analogies are inexact by definition. They’re somewhat useful in illuminating similar aspects of other things, but that’s about their limit. As far as otherwise being accurate descriptors of other things, they suck. :-) But they can be fun and useful, the error is in trying to extend them to be exact parallels. And heck, sex isn’t a biological need. Needs and wants are different things. Air is a biological need. Sex is a biological want. You can live without it — though you might not want to….

First, I’m completely not baiting you. That’s a waste of everybody’s time. Trust me on this.

Second, your experience in the political arena far exceeds mine and there’s no doubt about that. But I wasn’t comparing experience. I was suggesting that you were speaking more on a philosophical grounds, and I was talking about the real world applications now that we’ve moved into a very different media world.

Third, I screwed up in that last comment. I should have said, “where the best argument doesn’t win.” That word was key to the point.

Fourth, as stated, I don’t disagree with your points, but when you add up all the pluses and minuses, pseudonimity seems to mainly benefit the person who is pseudonymous more than it does the conversation as a whole. Also, and this again is the main point, those who use pseudonyms should go into this with their eyes wide open to what could happen.

One last note…the condom analogy was amusing, but blogging is not even close to being a biological need…although some bloggers would have you believe otherwise. :-)

I will happily compare our relative records of political successes in the real world, Justin. :-) In private, since I am not “anonymous” to you. I think you know how that would score out. And it still would not affect my analysis. Point being, I am quite aware of how things work in the real political world where the audience is often a bunch of cheerleading idiots (no matter how good the team they cheer for) and am demonstrably adept at working in it, thank you. I still suspect you’re baiting me.

That does not mean I have any respect at all for the blithe dismissal of fallacies as irrelevant–see the follow-up thread. You’re arguing that you don’t care about facts or truth, only about what you can most effectively use for your own purposes. And that line presupposes that others are blogging for your purposes, or for the same purposes you do. Nope. They blog for their own reasons, not to make life easier for you.

It’s an example of stupidity. She presumably knows the interview will be seen by voters, right? So she gives answers that the vast majority of viewers read as “stupid?” Why? Because she doesn’t have the sense to know she’ll sound stupid, or because she’s stupid?

Arguing the difference between persuasive and coherent is missing the point. She had a goal: to sell herself and John McCain. That she answered in ways that anyone could have predicted would have the opposite effect, marks her as stupid.

And she’s kept right on doing it. Her “no one to pray with” remark about the McCain campaign wasn’t just stupid, it was rude and ungrateful, too.

It’s not the media. It’s her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s an empty skirt. The media attacked Reagan, Clinton, any number of other pols who all defeated the media. So why can’t Sarah? After all, getting your message past the filters is part of the job. And yet Democrats, Independents and a surprising number of Republicans think she’s a clown.

So, I ask you, Simon: do you think maybe you’re the one who’s wrong? And maybe she’s just kind of an idiot?

Just as you are an expert on matters legal, I’m an expert in language.

I realize I don’t always show it. But I’ve published 22,000 pages of kidlit, earned starred reviews and a rave from Stephen KIng, a Pollie award for political advertising, been a restaurant reviewer, an ad copy writer, a feature writer, a script doctor, an executive producer of documentaries and I’ve fronted documentaries. I’ve written just about every genre there is.

I’ve written in such a way that readers thought I was a woman, a man, a Christian, an atheist, a conservative and a liberal.

Some of the people who produced the LOTR movies are asking me to partner with them precisely so that I can bring my word skills to bear. A major web design company is after me. I have literally lost track of the number of people who want me to help them manipulate words and are willing to pay me to do so.

I’m writing two book series simultaneously and may soon be writing a third. I’ve earned millions in a field that is vastly more competitive than medicine or the law. I have to compete against everyone in the world with a story to tell. And yet, I’m in the rare position where I could — if I were able to clone myself — keep 3 other hard-working versions of myself very profitably employed at writing. In the middle of a major recession and a meltdown of major sectors of publishing.

I came up with a new approach to online advertising five years ago that major networks are just now beginning to embrace.

I invented a new approach to writing that both American and British publishers are now beginning to embrace.

I don’t think there are two dozen other people on planet Earth who have written as much as I have, as fast as I have, in as many genres, in as many formats, in as many styles, as I have.

I am not manipulated by words any more than you are manipulated by vague or emotional legal arguments.

I also think that you need to come to grips with the fact that if you are right, the people who are most educated and have the most access to information are groups that you think are biased against your world view. On the other hand, people with little education are solidly with you. Is there any conclusion, that comes to mind? (or would if it were the other way around)

As to Gore, I guess you missed the “invented the internet” lie. Or the lie about Love Story. There was at least one other high profile one that I can’t remember at the moment that were all patently false. The GOP repeated them ad nauseum and the media took him down by just repeating what any fact checker could have turned up as a blatant fabrication. It became a big credibility problem for him. As I said, I didn’t vote for him, but what was done to him showed a total lack of character by his detractors.

That you can with (I’m assuming) a straight face put her on the same planet as Obama in intelligence and speaking skills shows just how far off your conclusions can be.

Nothing in my comment above does any such thing, or prejudges my answer to those questions.

Nor do I see much evidence that she can’t think on her feet. The Couric interview is better explained by (depending on how charitable one is toward her) a deer-in-the-headlights moment or, as I’ve already indicated above, overthinking the questions, trying to avoid stepping on landmines. Palin, like every other fair observer, had concluded by the time of the Couric interview that the media had taken sides in an unusually brazen way, and that they were out for her blood. She sought to compensate, unfortunately in an ill-conceived way.

The media attempted to “assassinate the character of Al Gore”? I must have missed that one admist their attempt to canonize him. The idea that the media has a conservative bias, see Alterman, What Liberal Media? (2003), is pure nonsense. Liberals conclude that the media skews right based on a specious bit of reasoning: the media is owned by the rich, ergo, it must skew right — right? Conservatives, by contrast, conclude that the media skews left based on observation: looking at the media’s actual output, and looking at the actual political affiliations of its members. The latter is more analytically sound, and the former doesn’t even hold water on its own terms: ABC, for instance, is owned by Disney, whose principle shareholder (Steve Jobs) and directors (Bob Iger and John Pepper) are all noted liberals and Democratic party donors.

I can understand why she didn’t answer the questions as well as you think she should have, she is incapable of thinking on her feet. That’s what we all saw, except for you. She has all the intellectual bite of a 90 year old without their dentures. An Empty Skirt.

btw, I still think the power of suggestion was never more clearly seen when the GOP and the Media mounted a concerted effort to assassinate the character of Al Gore (and I didn’t even vote for him) Were you as offended then? Did you see the Conservative bias of the “MSM ? I think I know the answer, am I wrong?

Likewise with Palin. Were there sections in that Couric interview that were problematic? Sure. (For example: I cannot understand for the life of me why she didn’t just answer the newspaper question instead of overparsing it; “I read Alaska Daily News and various online news outlets,” which is the actual answer to the question, is by no means an invalid answer. But she overthought it, and inadvertently, through being concerned–with considerable justification after the Gibson deal–to not give Couric a gotcha opening, gave the critics a new weapon.) Other sections, however, are perfectly coherent and lucid. The video you posted, as I noted above, is an example of the latter. If it “sound[s] idiotic to [you],” I really think that’s the power of suggestion at work: you’ve heard (indeed, said) that it doesn’t make sense so often that the idea’s been drummed into you. When you watch it, you watch through tinted glasses. Nevertheless, her point makes perfect sense, even if you don’t think it has much bite. Those are two different issues: You can fairly dispute its valence, but not its coherence.

That’s where the argument fails: the sections don’t make sense. They sound idiotic to me and to just about everyone who has heard them.

I understand video editing techniques a little since I’m involved in the business in a small way and have sat in editing bays while it’s being done. So I’m always skeptical. But Palin hasn’t accused Couric of pulling a Jon Stewart on her, she hasn’t as far as I know claimed that one question was substituted for another.

What I mean by that is, I ask, “How was your day?” You answer, “Fine.” I then replace the “How was your day?” with “How was that crack you just smoked?”

That’s not what happened. If that’s what happened Palin’s people would have said, “The question she actually asked makes the answer logical.” I haven’t seen any such specific claim.

Which is why I have now invented the Reynolds Test of Misquotation: the person alleging misquotation has to be able to show how a particular statement could have made sense in a different context in order to have a credible case.

It is not media manipulation. Here’s the interview that all by itself kills her off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nokTjEdaUGg

There were no unfair questions. Her quotes are not chopped up. There is no way to contextualize them that makes her look like anything but an idiot. As a matter of fact, I think that’s an interesting suggestion in any case where the media is accused of editing something to make a person look stupid. (Hannity does it nightly.) If a quote is taken out of context then a fairly bright person should be able to write a frame around it that makes it look reasonable.

So as a thought experiment, try it: invent something she might have said before or after these quotes that can make them seem intelligent.

She’s an empty skirt.

None of which, by the way, helps Sarah Palin.

Actually, it does, because there are specific examples of people dowdifying quotes and using them to attack her. Just to pick two that I flagged, there was this, and there was this. And then there’s the insane number of people who believe that she actually said “I can see Russia from my house”; that’s a testament to Tina Fey’s acumen, but it demonstrates the power of a misquote to tar and feather. And then there was the insidiously clever strategy used by the media to set up and provide an excuse for their campaign against her (under the cover, as it was, of “we need to bring the people up to speed on her by determining whether she’s actually her son’s mom”) the lie that Palin “came from nowhere” (that one was comprehensively debunked here). I could go on ad nauseum.

All of these are specific examples of a general trend: the media manipulating raw materials in order to present a distorted picture that they hope their readers/viewers will buy. They aren’t to be trusted. That’s an unfortunate situation, because there are, I have no doubt, good apples in the profession. But they have been drowned out by the bad. Perhaps when the NYT finally folds later this year, the shockwave will rebalance things, but until that happens, the only thing to do is to read widely and often, and demand the source material.

I’ve found myself saying the opposite of what I said. And this from a major magazine with presumably professional reporters.

In my case it doesn’t much matter because it was a puff piece and I was happy to get the publicity. But the quote was wrong and I didn’t need a tape recorder to know it because it was not what I would ever have intended to say.

The problem at least in part comes from conflicting needs. The reporter may intend to print the absolute truth, but he has to construct a readable narrative. He ends up deciding he has to impose a narrative and make the data fit the story. The motivation need not be nefarious, he just needs to take fragments of speech from multiple sources and use them to tell a story — often a story he’s already made up in his head before conducting his first interview.

I also quit writing for newspapers (I used to free-lance articles mostly on food) because a) it was boring, b) didn’t pay well and c) I couldn’t figure out how to use the journalistic conventions to tell an interesting story. But of course I was naive and thought I had to get quotes precisely right. I used to conduct hideously long interviews — interviews that went on until the subjects wanted to hang themselves — because I wasn’t getting a quote I could use. Again: naive on my part.

None of this is shocking. People see what they expect to see, what they need to see. Which is why I’d like to see schools teach a bit of philosophy, some logic, some epistemology. I don’t think the vast majority of people put facts before opinion or in the case of journalists, facts before narrative.

It is much harder work to approach a story from a state of presuppositionlessness and then to write about what you actually see and hear, than it is to come at the story with a narrative in mind and then pull the quotes that support your thesis.

None of which, by the way, helps Sarah Palin. She’s still a ninny.

First, while you may think I have a dog in this fight, I don’t. I actually left journalism because I hated the monotony of reporting the same stuff day in a day out. But I did study the process of journalism, the laws behind it, etc. That’s where I’m coming from…a base of knowledge about the day in, day out grind, not from a base of bias. Basically, don’t assume I’m defending an institution just because I was once associated with it. I’m a lot more nuanced than that.

Second, when I said “they can’t look up case law” I was speaking metaphorically. You seem to think there’s an absolute objective measure journalists can access, but oftentimes the truth is muddy and open to interpretation. So they do the best that they can with the information they have at the time. And if they find out they’re wrong, they work to amend their previous reports. I’ve seen this numerous times. I won’t deny mistakes happen on a regular basis, but that’s how this business works…as in every other profession on the planet.

Third, I don’t believe you when you say you don’t think there’s any fact checking. And if you do believe that, well, I genuinely feel sorry for you.

Fourth, I too have been quoted…correctly…every single time. Was every single word correct? How would I know? I didn’t have a tape recorder with me. And this is even when a hit piece was written about the founder of my company by a local rag.

Fifth, agreed that lines without context are harmful, but that is done by and large by PUNDITS, not serious journalists reporting on the day to day goings ons or the long lead journalists who break exposés.

I’ve been interviewed a couple of times and several of the things that appeared in the articles bore definite similarities to things I said.

Right. This is only an extreme use of a practice that happens with more benign intents every day. Interviews are rarely if ever shown in raw, unedited form–something that Sarah Palin can attest.

There’s an incredibly harmful mindset that has sprung up–a malignant outgrowth of “show me don’t tell me”–that if you see a person say something, that’s confirmation that they said it to mean what the person pushing a narrative about it says they meant. It stung Barack Obama with the “lipstick on a pig” line, where video of him saying that line and just that line was circulated to confirm the thesis that he was taking a stab at Palin. It stung Palin over the supposed “what does the veep do” nonsense. It has stung Justice Scalia, and you can find clips of him saying things, wrenched from context, that suggest he believes things that are in fact entirely contrary to what we know he believes. If you have the power to remove the context in which a remark is made, as editors do, you have the power to distort its meaning.

I have a degree in journalism, I’ve worked in the field, I know journalists….

IOW, you have a dog in this fight.

Journalists can’t look up case law.

Why not? Everyone else can. The Federal Reporter and the United States Reports–containing virtually the entire corpus of authoritative federal caselaw–is available free, online. There are some free online tools for searching it, and the big guns, LexisNexis and Westlaw, are only a nominal cost for a newspaper. (I frankly find it hard to imagine that a real newspaper doesn’t already have Lexis access.) State caselaw is also increasingly available online, and again, Lexis and Westlaw have a significant amount of it. Caselaw from Article I courts like the BIA and MSPB is trickier, but no less so than for professionals. So: why–for what reason that doesn’t undercut your argument for their competence–can’t journalists look up relevant caselaw?

However, editors fact check the **** out of stories

Don’t believe it. I’ve seen so many factual errors in stories over the years, from the AP on down, that it’s hard to believe that there’s any fact checking. Perhaps my favorite example was a series of articles covering a trial, during which the reporter repeatedly referred to the defense’s “latches” argument.

to the best of their abilities

That is not saying much.