Epistemology vs. Quality Assurance

Thomas Lifson of The American Thinker has a pretty good piece up at RealClear Politics concerning the recent withdrawal by Reuters of nearly 1,000 photographs of the war in Lebanon it had been distributing until obvious image manipulations were uncovered and publicized. He concludes with a very good question.

But beyond the problem of [Adnan] Hajj the fraud is the larger problem of Q[uality] A[ssurance] for the entire reporting force Reuters and most other news agencies field in Muslim lands. For language reasons, and for personal safety reasons, stringers, not full-time employees, are used to work the ground in places like Qana. Who are they?

One thing we can be certain of, is that they are people who feel reasonably certain they will not be murdered by Hiz b'allah (or Hamas or Saddam, when he was in power) for reporting news inconvenient to those with the guns. This alone is reason to suspect their fairness.

Reuters and other news agencies employing stringers need to be forthright with their public about who these people are and what are the limits under which they operate. Of course, doing so will limit the degree to which their reports are trusted. No doubt, that is why such caveats have rarely if ever been supplied.

When Reuters was still backing Hajj, it made no mention of his status as a stringer. But once he was repudiated, words like "stringer," "part-timer" and "freelance" became suddenly visible.

This will not do.

War-time reporting always has its limits. When news is gathered under the thumb of murderous tyrants and terrorists, it cannot be fully trusted. Either acknowledge the limits (and diminish the value of your product), or don't offer it at all. Pretending that a product has met QA standards when it has not only damages and ultimately destroys a brand name.

Why is it that businesses making soft drinks understand this common sense dictum, while major news agencies do not? [bold added]

The reason lies in the fact that journalists do not think that the idea of Quality Assurance applies to the profession of journalism. Recently, in the process of composing a book review, I considered this same question, but in a different context. What I wrote then lies below, between the rows of asterisks.

***

Just as most college students today, trained throughout high school to be intellectually passive, tend to absorb left-wing views from their liberal professors, many students of journalism absorb some of the dominant views now taught in their field. Most important of these is that objectivity is impossible because facts are merely agreed-upon social constructs rather than valid observations of and inferences about reality. [bold added] Andrew Bernstein of the Ayn Rand Institute observed how widespread this notion is in response to RatherGate.

"No serious thinker any longer believes in a verifiable, objective reality," said one newsman. An article in the Atlantic Monthly concluded that it is "better to admit from the start the inevitable subjectivity of journalism, and then to treat it as a necessary condition."

And if objectivity is impossible, objectivity is irrelevant. This is why, rather than issuing a retraction of its story, CBS News famously attacked bloggers for lounging about in their pajamas without editorial supervision.

In other words, because of the subjectivist epistemology of many of its members, Big Media makes no serious attempt at objectivity. And because it scoffs at the importance of facts, its members behave arrogantly with respect to them. Reporting is, famously, sloppy when not fabricated outright a la Jayson Blair. And we see a major journalist like Dan Rather behave recklessly with regard to his own reputation. If there aren't any facts, why not attempt to mold the public consensus in whatever way is most convenient to support one's views? When there are no facts, everything is a matter of personal taste.

***

This all goes for Reuters in spades. If they're acting like reporting is a silly game -- if they behave like adolescents pulling a prank -- it is because they basically see it that way. And who needs QA for a silly game?

Remember this the next time you hear about another episode of dishonest reporting -- and you will. And remember this the next time someone laughs about philosophy as having no relevance to the world we live in. Reuters has just demonstrated the importance of epistemology, a field many have never heard of through poor education and one that the most of the rest see as irrelevant.

-- CAV