NYT public editor tries to get his bearings

Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, asked his readers whether the news reporters should be "truth vigilantes": "I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." The U.K. Guardian describes the fallout:

Brisbane (who, as public editor, speaks only for himself, not the Times) referred to two recent stories: the claim that Clarence Thomas had "misunderstood" a financial reporting form when he left out key information, and Mitt Romney's assertion that President Obama gives speeches "apologising" for America. Brisbane asked whether news reporters should have the freedom to investigate and respond to those comments. The reaction from readers was swift, voluminous, negative and incredulous. "Is this a joke? THIS IS YOUR JOB." "If the purpose of the NYT is to be an inoffensive container for ad copy, then by all means continue to do nothing more than paraphrase those press releases." "I hope you can help me, Mr Brisbane, because I'm an editor, currently unemployed: is fecklessness now a job requirement?"

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Who will address critically important election issues?

Glenn Greenwald points out that no viable candidate is addressing critically important issues:

The chances that any of these issues will be debated in an Obama/Romney presidential contest are exactly zero. On all of these issues — Endless War, empire, steadfast devotion to the Israeli government, due-process-free assassinations, multiple-nation drone assaults, escalating confrontation with Iran, the secretive, unchecked Surveillance and National Security States, the sadistic and racist Drug War, the full-scale capture of the political process by bankers and oligarchs — Romney is fully supportive of President Obama’s actions (except to the extent he argues they don’t go far enough: and those critiques will almost certainly be modulated once the primary is over, resulting in ever greater convergence between the two).
Greenwald points out that voting for Barack Obama (or Mitt Romney) regarding any of these issues would not be voting for change:
How can you pretend to vehemently oppose the slaughter of foreign civilians, the deprivation of due process, a posture of Endless War, radical secrecy, etc., when the President behind whom you’re faithfully marching is an aggressive advocate and implementer of those very policies?
In a previous column, Greenwald discussed many of Barack Obama's "grave moral and political failings" in these areas. He quotes Matt Taibbi on the expected lack of choice in the upcoming election:
There are obvious, even significant differences between Obama and someone like Mitt Romney, particularly on social issues, but no matter how Obama markets himself this time around, a choice between these two will not in any way represent a choice between “change” and the status quo. This is a choice between two different versions of the status quo, and everyone knows it.
Nonetheless--and this is the point of Greenwald's recent article, progressives who dare to publicly recognize that Ron Paul (despite his many major faults, from a progressive viewpoint) will be excoriated by fellow progressives and accused of being Ron Paul supporters.

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Cascades of terror

A few years ago, I wrote a post where I pointed out that early innocuous-seeming intellectual moves can result in huge consequences further down the road. I illustrated this point by mentioning that, for many people, the uncritical acceptance that cognition allegedly occurs in the absence of a neural network capable of able to support that cognition had led to the belief in souls (as well as ghosts and gods). We need to be careful about our early assumptions. I have recently finished reading Thinking, Fast and Slow, an excellent new book by Daniel Kahneman. In his new book, Kahneman writes that the availability heuristic "like other heuristics of judgment, substitutes one question for another: you wish to estimate the size of the category or the frequency of an event, but your report and impression of the ease with which instances come to mind. Substitution of questions inevitably produces systematic errors."  [Page 130] I have often considered the great power of the availability heuristic. It is a phenomenon "in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind." We tend to recall information based upon whether the event is salient, dramatic or personal. It is difficult to set these aside when determining relevant evidence. In chapter 13, "Availability, a Motion, and Risk," Kahneman reminds us that "availability" provides a heuristic for a wide variety of judgments, including judgments other than frequency. In particular, the importance of an idea is often judged by the fluency (an emotional charge) with which that idea comes to mind." He describes the availability heuristic as perhaps the most dominant heuristic in social contexts, and describes how it can result in immense social damage when it is applied in cascaded fashion.

The availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by "availability enterprise orders," individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and repulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a "heinous cover-up." The issue becomes politically important because it is on everyone's mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public good, all have faded into the background.

.   .   .

[W]e either ignore [small risks] altogether or give them far too much weight-nothing in between.… The amount of concern is not adequately sensitive to the probability of harm; you are imagining the numerator-the tragic story you saw on the news-and not thinking about the denominator. [Cass] Sunstein has coined the phrase "probability neglect" to describe the pattern. The combination of probability neglect with the social mechanisms of availability cascades inevitably leads to gross exaggeration of minor threats, sometimes with important consequences.

In today's world, terrorists are the most significant practitioners of the art of inducing availability cascades. With a few horrible exceptions such as 9/11, the number of casualties from terror attacks is very small relative to other causes of death. Even in countries that have been targets of intensive terror campaigns, such as Israel, the weekly number of casualties almost never came close to the number of traffic deaths. The differences in the availability of the two risks, the ease in the frequency with which they come to mind. Gruesome images, endlessly repeated in the media, cause everyone to be on edge. As I know from experience, it is difficult to reason oneself into a state of complete calm.

[Page 142-144] Anyone who has bothered to watch what passes as "the news" understands the ways in which the "news media" works the availability cascade. I saw this firsthand after TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed. I was approached by local TV news station in St. Louis while I was walking in downtown St. Louis. An extremely intense reporter wanted to get my opinion (this was within an hour after flight 800 had exploded and crashed into the ocean). She asked me something like this: "What is your reaction to the fact that it appears as though terrorists have shot down TWA flight 800, killing hundreds of people?" My response to her was, "Do we actually know that flight 800 was shot down by terrorists?" She was flabbergasted, and not interested in anything else I had to say. I watched the news that night to see what they did put on, and I saw several people reacting in horror that terrorists would dare shoot down an American commercial flight. The station was interested in stirring up anger and hysteria, not in asking or answering a simple question that I asked. It turned out, of course, that there is no evidence that terrorists had anything to do with the crash of TWA flight 800. Kahneman's book talks indeed tale about the availability heuristic, as well as numerous other cognitive tricks and traps, with warnings that these mental shortcuts often have real-world significant (and even devastating) effects, and offering lots of good advice as to how to anticipate and avoid falling into these traps. I will be writing about this book for many months and years to come. It is a real gem.

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Treat all those who cheat the public like crooked locksmiths

Here is an MSNBC feature on locksmiths who cheat people who call them in emergencies when they are locked out of their homes. This news piece follows a tried and true formula for creating a good memorable story: It vividly exposes an unscrupulous practice, and then turns the camera on the perpetrators as they try to slink away. To tell the complete story, the producers included the fact that there are honest people in the trade (in this case, honest locksmiths); locksmiths can make a living while giving people a fair shake.

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Why, then, don't networks treat all of those who lie, cheat and steal with comparable scrutiny? What I have in mind are Wall Street Banks, telecoms, fossil fuel industries, healthcare insurers, the defense industries and other powerful entities who have purchased Congress and then made certain that industry reform is impossible. These industries have driven out competition and/or figured out how to freely feed out of the public trough. They've been gouging consumers, directly and indirectly, in ways that make the crooked fees charged by locksmiths look like chump change. Consider this recent article by Matt Taibbi, illustrating how big banks are cheating taxpayers. Consider also how Barack Obama's promise of an expanded industry of energy conservation and sustainable energy production would be a centerpiece of his Administration. Though he has done some good things, has also opened up large tracts of Western lands to coal mining and providing much more funding to nuclear and fossil fuel than to green alternatives. This is one of many of Obama's broken promises-- somehow, indefinite warmongering against undefined enemies is somehow much more important that having a sustainable economy back home. And even after "health care reform," people who had health insurance are struggling mightily to pay uncovered medical bills, many of them tipping over into bankruptcy. Payday lenders run rampant across the country. A few months ago, telecoms almost succeeded in destroying what is left of net neutrality. These sorts of thing don't just happen; powerful people are consciously making these terrible decisions, and they (including most of our politicians) are motivated by money, not public service. I fear that one of the main reasons we are cleaning up these industries is that too many Americans are math challenged -- they suffer from innumeracy. And most Americans would flunk a basic test on American civics and history. Foxes run rampant in the American hen house. One would need to spend some serious time thinking about the effects of lack of competition in order to appreciate how much the public is being fleeced, but Americans are highly distracted with TV and other forms of entertainment. Another hurdle is that big media is owned by big companies and serves big industries by selling them commercials. Thus, we don't see constant aggressive journalism illustrating how the public is being ripped off by many (by no means all) big businesses. Don't expect the journalism to get better, especially for the reasons outlined by John Nichols of Free Press. Expect things to get worse, in light of the fact that this week the FCC proposed a new set of rules that would unleash a wave of media consolidation across the country. If the agency's proposal sounds familiar, that’s because it’s nearly identical to rules the FCC proposed during the Bush administration. This proposal is especially scandalous for the reasons stated here. An additional hurdle to getting these stories out is to make them simple and memorable stories, but this is quite a challenge. These industries have successfully complexified themselves--it now takes "experts" (including teams of lawyers) to understand how these industries function. Ordinary people don't have much of a chance of even articulating how and why they are getting ripped off, much less understanding what can be done to fix the problems. Complexity is not an accident--it is a tactic. Consolidating the mass media isn't simply happening--it is a tactic of big business to maintain control, as are recent attempts to give private businesses the power to shut down internet domains without a court order. There is no incentive for the mass media to excoriate those behind any of these proposals. There is little to no incentive for big media to descend on those behind these movements as though they were crooked locksmiths. If only.

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