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The Times and truth
In case you haven’t seen it, here is the New York Times’ grudging, tortured, non-acknowledgement acknowledgement of falsely stating that tv reporter Geraldo Rivera “nudged” an Air Force rescue worker out of the way to help a woman in a wheelchair in New Orleans. Note that the Times doesn’t actually admit that its writer said something false when she alleged a nudge. It just says that no nudge can be seen on the tape (which, of course, is the same tape on which the Times writer based her story). Nice, huh? I find the Times’ stunning lack of grace and forthrightness in this matter to be symptomatic of the nature of liberalism. Let’s start with the fact that liberals, including pre-eminently the people who run the New York Times, are in bad faith, because they despise their own society, and because they don’t believe in objective truth. What they believe in is their own goodness, their own annointed selves. But, being liberals and not revolutionists or anarchists, the Timesians cannot be open about these nihilistic beliefs, they must go through the motions of caring about truth and being responsible to society. Indeed, going through such motions is what liberalism is all about, as distinct from hard leftism, which makes no bones about its animus against the social order (or, as at present, whatever’s left of the social order). So, with considerable fanfare and self-congratulation, the Times sets up an ombudsman, a public editor, to demonstrate to the public that the paper henceforth will have the honesty and good citizenship to admit its false statements and correct its errors. The problem is that the Times people have no intention of correcting their errors and admitting their false statements, because, as already said, they don’t believe in truth. They believe in themselves, in their morally superior collective ego. Their ombudsman is a front they establish for public relations purposes. This becomes evident the moment the Times is found out telling a serious untruth. They are in such bad faith, both with truth and with society, that even when they are caught in a flat-out misstatement, they cannot honestly admit it.
In a parallel media breakdown, Mary Mapes, former producer of the CBS Evening News, denounces her conservative critics, while demonstrating, a full year after Memogate, that she still hasn’t the slightest idea what proportional spacing is. Email entry |