Would CNN admitting that they spiked news stories and soft-peddled bad news in order to maintain their office in Iraq prior to 2003 count?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003336
No, it wouldn't. It's a good example, though. Thank you for bringing it up.
You're coming late to this thread, so you may not have read all the posts. I explained back in
post # 34 why an example such as this isn't comparable. It's a long post -- longer than is easy to read, for which I apologize -- so if you don't want to go back there and read the whole thing I'll try to summarize it more briefly here.
We have here two conflicting stories. One story is from the AP, who claim Jamil Hussein is an Iraqi police captain in al-Yarouk who has been a source for them for the past two years. AP claims that an AP reporter has met with Jamil Hussein on several occassions at his office in the al-Yarouk police station. The other story is from Michael Dean of the MCN-I, a group charged with managing the news reporting coming out of Iraq, specifically to see that positive stories are reported. He claims that a records check with the Ministry of the Interior turns up no record for any police officer by that name.
If AP is wrong, then the AP reporter is lying. And by lying, I am using the word in a strict sense. I do not mean he is merely being deceptive, spinning things the way politicians like to do. I do not mean he is leaving out important details. I mean he is making deliberate misstatements of the facts with the intention to deceive.
That in itself would be unusual, but not extraordinarily so. Reporters have lied in the past. But AP has gone on record confirming that Hussein exists, has been an AP source for 2 years, and that their reporter has met with him. That also would need to be a lie -- a deliberate misstatement of the facts with the intention to deceive. And to have a media outlet, upon discovering one of their reporters is lying, respond by
lying rather than by publicly firing the lying reporter, is a very unusual occurrence.
Sloppiness is common. People often say things which are not so -- through carelessness (such stories passed along in this thread about ABC's Food Lion reporting, such as stories passed along in this thread about Dateline: NBC's reporting on GM trucks, such as stories passed along in this thread about Newsweek's coverage of Monica Lewinsky, etc.)
Misunderstandings are common. People come away from reading or hearing something with an incorrect understanding simply because they have put a different interpretation on the words than the speaker or writer intended.
And various forms of deception are common. Politicians regularly say things designed to make people think things that aren't so. So do many businesses, in their ads. But while deception is common, most people prefer to deceive through
omission, or through
careful wording which seems to say one thing but actually says another, or other
artful dodges, rather than through
the deliberate stating of things which are false with the intention to deceive.
That last thing -- which is what I am referring to in this thread when I use the words
lie and
lying -- is much less common, at least among normal adults. For some reason people draw a distinction between that and other forms of deception. My personal definition of lying includes all those forms of deception, but that is not the definition many people use today. In threads on this forum discussing whether George Bush has lied, for instance, many people insist that it is not a lie if he simply
withheld certain information in order to give people the impression he wanted them to have about, say, how likely Saddam Hussein was to have WMDs.
I'm using the word lying in that narrow sense here so as to avoid having one thread where George Bush behaves a certain way and we don't call it lying, and another where AP behaves a certain way and we do call it lying. I think that would be confusing. I'm also using it that way because it's easier than having to type
the deliberate stating of things which are false with the intention to deceive every time we refer to what AP needed to have done if it turns out Jamil Hussein does not exist and is not a police captain in al-Yarmouk.
It is quite possible for Michael Dean to simply be mistaken. Records, especially in a war-torn country, are not always 100% reliable. It is quite possible for Michael Dean to be engaging in deception -- such as a carefully worded statement that makes it sound like Jamil Hussein is not a police captain, when what he means is that Jamil Hussein is not on the list of people whom the MOI has authorized to talk to the media. It is quite possible for Michael Dean to be wrong for a number of reasons which do not involve lying. But for the AP to be wrong almost certainly calls for them to be lying -- which is not impossible, but which I think is unusual enough that, if there are reasonable explanations for the contradiction between Dean's story and AP's which do not involve AP lying, those explanations are more likely to be correct.
That is what I have been arguing. Not that it is
impossible for AP to be lying -- simply that an explanation which requires AP to be lying is
less likely than explanations which don't require that. I am maintaining that instances where
not only a reporter lies, but the media outlet which they are working for lies in their support, are very rare.
You raise a good example of this. In the example you provide, CNN (under threat of torture of their reporters) was willing to
refrain from telling certain things which they knew. That's what I referred to above, deception by omission. The practice of deception by omissions is, sadly, a very common occurrence in the world today. Many people who woud condemn a person for
making a factually false statement are quite willing to forgive, or at least tolerate, the
failure to make a true one. My recollection (for which I do not have a link at the moment) is that Oliver North used that dodge when testifying before Congress (prior to the Iran-Contra scandal) -- and, when that came out during the Iran-Contra hearings, he was perceived positively
because he hadn't lied to Congress, he had simply withheld information from them.
The expression
caveat emptor -- let the buyer beware -- refers to this as well. It is generally frowned upon, not to mention illegal, to make deliberately false statements about things one is selling. But if one simply has failed to mention certain things, that's treated differently -- and generally when a person buys something and later discovers problems they weren't told about, that's seen as they're tough luck, because they didn't think to ask the right question. If the customer asks the right question, then it is lying to deny the problem exists -- but if the customer doesn't ask and the seller doesn't mention it, that's generally not seen as lying.
I disagree with that. I would prefer to call that a
lie of omission. But regardless of what we call it,
lies of omission are fairly common,
lies of omission are viewed differently by the public than
lies of commission, and -- most importantly -- a lie of omission is not sufficient to explain how AP could be wrong in their claim that their reporter has met with a police captain Jamil Hussein in his office in the al-Yarmouk police station
So your example, of CNN
refraining from broadcasting stories they knew to be true is not a good parallel for AP
publishing stories they knew to be false. Which again illustrates my point -- such events are rare.
