Spinning the Truth: The Needle in a Modern Information Haystack

A couple of days ago, I saw a striking headline that Target was suing a man who had heroically saved a teenage girl from a knife-wielding attacker. Now, as with cat and dog persons, the world divides into Target or Walmart people and I shop at Target when forced to choose the lesser of two evils. So naturally, this click bait headline worked it's siren magic and drew me in to read the story. What was immediately obvious was that the article, on the Federalist website, was highly abbreviated and could not be treated as a news report at all. Using the meager details gleaned from the Federalist story, I searched for more background and was able to find out a little more.

The story, as I understood it, is basically this: a mentally ill man, Leon Walls attacked a man near a Target store in Pennsylvania. Michael Turner who Target is suing, and some friends including the stabbed man chased after Walls as he ran into the Target store. At some point, Walls then sized a teenage girl as a hostage and apparently was demanding that he be allowed to leave unmollested when someone jumped him from behind. In the ensuing fracas, the girl first broke free but then Walls lunged forward and stabbed her before being finally subdued. Till here the article in the Federalist is not in any disagreement with the facts, though it does suggest that Walls stabbed the teenager first while other articles suggest that he was trying to use her as a human shield and escape. Where the truth gets lost totally however is in the characterization of the lawsuits - the Federalist suggests, but its tone and omissions that Target is suing a hero out of vindictiveness but conveniently leaves out the fact that the family of the teen sued Target first alleging that the store failed to protect them and Target responded by counter-suing both Turner and Walls. This distinction is crucial, because the omission hides the fact that Target's suit is a sad but typical part of American civil justice. If Target were to fight the suit brought by Allison Meadows' family, they would almost certainly lose or have to settle out of court - we are after all the same people who agreed with a plaintiff that McDonalds was in the wrong when the plaintiff burned herself when she spilled the hot coffee she's just bought over her legs while exiting the drive-through lane and since then we've had lids that remind us that hot coffee is in fact and contrary to what we may believe, actually quite hot - and so they counter-sue the other parties involved so that they may present the full story before a jury and muddy the waters enough to avoid paying the full demanded amount. They do not expect to collect any money from Turner, and certainly not from Wells who was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, but they do hope to show a jury that the attack was caused by others and was not solely their fault, and avoid paying damages.


Now the rights and wrongs of this case are beyond the scope of my little rant here, but the story is illustrative of one of the greatest problems we face in today's world. We are drowning in information, but it's so much that we cannot really handle it all. Conveniently, there are numerous organizations, like the Federalist, Slate, Mother Jones, Breitbart and others that package it into bite sized pieces. Or rather they pick out the stories most likely to interest their target audience. While this might still leave a void in our overall understanding of the world, it would be no major problem. But many of these organizations do not stop with picking and choosing the news they highlight for their audience - instead, like this article from the Federalist, they go several steps beyond and snip out key elements and spin it to suit their own agenda. And unfortunately, their audience is blissfully unaware of or willingly blinded to the actual facts. In this case, a quick perusal of comments by the Federalist's readers showed that they had accepted the narrative that the author wanted to project, and this despite the open attempt to tie this case (from 2013! ) to Target's recent decision to extend equal privileges to members of the LGBT community as to its heterosexual patrons. In this case the author was not particularly subtle in her spinning of the story or omission of the pertinent facts. Yet her readers, with their political views already in tune with hers looked past all inadequacies in the reporting and treated it with the same reverence that my family did the BBC World Service when I was still in short clothes.

Let's ignore for a moment the fact that a likely libertarian-leaning group is somehow against a decision by Target to extend freedom and equality to all members and instead demanding that we regulate the use of restrooms through government action. Let's look past the omission of the facts of the story that the judge sentencing the attacker knew that the man needed medical treatment but in the face of program cuts had no choice but to incarcerate him in prison instead. Let's treat, for the sake of argument, as spurious or irrelevant,  Target's claim that Turner and his friends chased Walls with baseball bats (even if they had good intentions to simply hold him till the police arrived) and that they helped create the conditions that led to Allison Meadows' stabbing. What we are still left with is a website that purposely disseminates only a portion of the truth, spinning it to suit their own narrative and very knowingly hiding any and every fact that works against their position. And their readers, in many cases will take this story as one hundred percent fact and base their future positions and actions on that very suspect foundation. This is a problem that cuts across all ideological lines. Since Michael Turner is a black man, The Root also weighed in with their own version and did as bad a job of presenting the facts as the Federalist. I didn't find the story in any of liberal-leaning news sites I usually use, but that is less a bias on their part (though the lack of story would confirm that bias in the eyes of most hard line conservatives) as a reflection of the lack of any actual story here. Not to mention that it is actually a three year old story and that it centers on the most common of American behavior - person suffers loss, person sues anyone and everyone trying to get compensated for loss.

But in a world where we are forced or at least led by way of least resistance to choose our sources of news, it's worth reflecting that the news we obtain is all too often not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Equally unfortunately, we tend to believe our preferred sources and see all conflicting views as biased and untruthful. In this case, the gaps and untruths confirm my inherent suspicion about right-wing news sites, but rationally, I know that conservatives would find similar if hopefully less striking cases on liberal sources. And in a world of deep partisan bias, one man's truth is another's lies  and sources that I see as impartial and honest such as the Associated Press, Reuters and the New York Times are regarded with deep suspicion on the opposite side of the political divide. In the end, all one can hope is that more people would draw their news from a wide spectrum of sources and paradoxically question all facts that match their own views  - the more the story presented fits our narrative, the more we should question it and seek additional contrarian (but trustworthy) sources. Those sources may often present a viewpoint that challenges our cherished view of the world and in doing so does us more service than a hundred corroborating stories.








 

Broken Promises and Secrecy in a Dangerous World

Eight years ago for reasons best known to themselves and perhaps including a Scandinavian middle finger to George Bush, the Nobel Prize Committee decided to award the Peace prize to the new American president. One wonders how much they have rued their choice since as Barack Obama has continued the American policy of fighting wars around the world. To be sure, he's engaged in fewer wars, less intervention and overall backed away from the worst parts of the earlier "war on terror" but he nevertheless continued to keep the US deeply engaged in wars abroad. It is unknown what the Nobel committee expected of him, but it is unlikely that his actions would meet with their unqualified approval or that he would be even considered for the honor today. I felt back then that it was foolish to award so prestigious an honor on President Obama before he'd had a chance to live up to his idealistic declarations or our ridiculously high expectations. But like the committee, I too anticipated much of the new president and like them (I imagine) I look back at those dreams and wonder how I could have been so mistaken.

Barack Obama was not just the man who'd opposed the US-Iraq War from the start (while he certainly claimed that badge of distinction to implicitly criticize his opponents, it was far easier for the junior liberal Senator to take a progressive stance when there were no eyes on him and his opposition had little practical impact), but he was also the candidate who raced to the pole position on a slew of promises that promised a liberal utopia. And when faced with the greatest challenge to his candidacy in the controversy over Jeremiah Wright's positions, Obama found a way to spell out a wonderful and uplifting explanation that enunciated our shared progressive ideals. But above all, he promised an end to the bloody and violent policies of the last presidency and raised hopes of a return to best ideals of America, from ending extrajudicial detentions to closing the shameful chapter on torture. Alas, the rhetoric and ideals of the candidate that were deemed worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize proved utterly powerless to sway the actions of President Obama. To liberal supporters of the president, including myself, this is the single greatest failure of Obama's presidency. There are plenty of other issues that have not advanced as we might have wished, from single payer health care and universal coverage to gun control to reformed taxation and long term solutions to the budget deficits and financial imbalances to his signal failure to shut down the Guantanamo prison. But on those issues, it must be acknowledged that Obama lacked the support in Congress and on many of the issues also had insufficient popular support among the general populace to sway his opponents in Congress (and given the oddities of American electoral politics, a majority of support means little if it is concentrated in urban, generally more liberal areas) and was therefore highly constrained in his ability to effect change on a grand scale on any or all of these matters. A defter politician or a less polarizing figure may have been able to manage some incremental change but the deck was generally stacked against Obama on all policy issues dear to liberals, and faced with a stubbornly obstructionist opposition party, he had no choice but to accept that his ambitious agenda would never reach fruition.

However that makes Obama's war policy so much the more frustrating since this was one area where his legion of critics and opponents would generally hold that he has not gone as far as they would have liked and yet he has committed the US to military action around the world. In other words, this is one place where he was not trying to force action in the face of opposition but rather was heading down a path that suited the rightwing and hawkish portions of Congress. While the libertarian wing of the GOP objected to any intervention or continuation of prior engagements, they generally represent a smaller and less influential side of the party and Obama would have actually had more support from his opponents in Congress if he'd been more warlike than less. From a liberal perspective, it would be far better to see the president criticized for not going to war at all than for entering a war but failing to commit to killing enough of the enemy or for failing to sacrifice enough in American lives.

However, in all fairness to the president, there are some extenuating circumstances. The famous if inaccurate Pottery Barn analogy continues to drive our policy in Iraq. And given the former Administration's dreams that the Iraq model would spread and transform the whole of the Middle East, it was difficult for Obama to truly disengage from conflicts in Syria, Yemen and even Libya when it was US policy in Iraq that destabilized and changed the entire region. Sadly, the Iraq model is playing out across the Middle East, but it is the blight of instability and civil war rather than the bloom of liberal democracy that has spread far and wide. In retrospect, Obama has had little choice but to remain deeply involved in Iraq and has been further enmeshed in the region as the instability in Iraq has exploded outward and drawn nearly every major nation into a complicated and contradictory web of conflict. It may even be to Obama's credit that he has resisted deeper involvement and that he has tried to limit US intervention even when his own rash statements (the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons) or his allies' interests (Libya, Yemen) have forced his hand. Even his most controversial policy - extensive use of remote strikes with precision weapons or drone strikes, in common parlance - is more than anything else an attempt to keep US service personnel out of direct harm's way.

In the end, I guess I can respect his foreign policy decisions. Muddled and contradictory as they seem and as they have been described by his critics, they are in reaction to a muddled and contradictory world and if all the advice and preferred policy of his critics (including my own) were to be assembled, the picture painted would be as muddled and contradictory, if not more so. But there is one striking failure, both on the part of the president and his staunchest critics in Congress and that is the lack of explanation or information on US intervention. Just this past week, the Defense Department admitted that US forces - probably Rangers, Green Berets or some other Special Forces units -  are on the ground in Yemen. This is unbelievably disturbing - not only is Yemen one of the most confused conflicts where there no "good" or "bad" guys (by a long shot) but our interests run wildly contrary to the intentions and interests of our closest "allies" in the region, and there are no good outcomes to be expected of US intervention. However the greater problem is that our involvement is revealed only by chance and that not only does the President consider it unnecessary to tell his own citizens that he has committed troops to a foreign conflict but that Congress has never truly demanded or pushed for a clear report on US involvement abroad. Today, while some (if not all or even a startlingly small percentage of) Americans may be aware that their country is still deeply involved in both Afghanistan and Iraq, a much smaller group would be aware that US forces are involved in both Yemen and Syria. Worse yet, we have no way of knowing just how many other places we may be involved in "training" and "advising" local government forces in conflicts against forces that we consider dangers to us. Are we involved in Algeria, Mali, Nigeria, Chad, Somalia, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan and/or the Philippines? What about Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica? Perhaps Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia have US forces "helping" them? Are US forces involved in countries like the Ukraine and Georgia or Azerbaijan?

As a liberal, I would wish that the world was a better, more peaceful place and that we could solve our problems in more civilized ways. But I understand that the realities of the world actually around us often require violent answers. But the least one should expect from the government is honesty to its own people of where it chooses to put its citizens in harms way and why. Governments will always claim that openness would jeopardize their policy aims, but with all due respect this is nonsense - in a democracy, the power is supposed to lie with the governed not the elected representatives and the least those regents should do is be honest of where they have chosen to entangle the nation, no matter their reasons. And if this honesty would truly hurt the chances of success of the policy than perhaps the policy is flawed. But when the policy is hidden there is no chance to even evaluate it, much less make an informed decision of support for that policy that is being carried out in the name of the entire country.

Congress shows such tenacity in investigating some issues, especially when the name Clinton is involved and has now spent over two years over the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi (without ever finding any evidence of criminal wrongdoing or even negligence) and has now expanded their probe into matters far removed from the original question. Now, whether Secretary Clinton was ill-advised in some of her actions, there is no rational reason to believe that she ever acted with intent to harm the country and the investigation is almost transparently an attempt to destroy her bid for a historic presidential bid and possibly even more historic presidency. Yet those very driven Congressmen have spent little energy questioning how many places the US may have troops involved in undeclared wars. Senator Rand Paul who was willing to filibuster the Senate over his concerns that US drone strikes were targeting American citizens and denying them due process is far less concerned that the US is engaged in war (in everything but name) when those same strikes kill non-Americans. Congress has happily voted billions of dollars to fund military operations around the world but the details of those operations are hidden to the taxpayer citizens who pay for them, and no one in the halls of Congress or the vital Fourth Estate or even amongst the same taxpayers seem really concerned with compelling a response from the people who commit their country to potentially unending wars with the well-intentioned but nonetheless concealed stroked of a pen.

Ultimately, unless the people clamor for an answer and make it clear to their representatives that they deserve to know what their government is doing in their name, the secrecy will continue. Ironically, US involvement is not so very secret in the ranks of her enemies and lacking believable declarations from the US government, is probably greatly exaggerated even to the point where every injustice suffered at the hand of their own rulers is added to the account of the Americans and becomes just another reason to hate the US. The American people are often bemused as to why they are hated in so many corners of the world, not realizing the actions of their own government that contributes to those emotions. And while their government acts in secrecy, the account of hate and bitterness continues to compound, also in secrecy till it explodes upon us. These matters, the actions of ones government should concern all of us for we all live with the consequences and it is only fair that actions taken in one's name should be debated openly. The final definitive lesson of the Obama presidency - and the contrast of its actions to the idealism that preceded its actions -  is that whether the White House incumbent is liberal or conservative, rightwing or leftwing, hawk or dove, the inertia of the establishment will ensure that the veils of secrecy remain intact and the apathy of the citizenry and their watchdogs of the Fourth Estate will keep things unchanged.