Maverick Philosopher

The 2016 Election and the Demise of Journalistic Standards

Michael Goodwin

A Simple Point of Logic Journalists Ought to be Aware Of

One often encounters sentences like this one:

There are many arenas in which all ideas are not considered equal.

This example is from a recent piece in Vox. I could give further recent examples, but one is enough. To simplify, consider just the core thought:

All ideas are not considered equal.

Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what the core thought is. For the sentence is ambiguous as between 

1) No ideas are considered equal

and

2) Some ideas are not considered equal.

The thoughts (propositions) expressed are distinct since the first can be false while the second is true. Although it is fairly clear that the author intended (2), a good writer avoids ambiguous constructions unless for some reason he intends them. So don't write sentences of the form

3) All Fs are not Gs 

if you intend say something of the form

4) Some Fs are not Gs.

Write instead sentences of the form

5) Not all Fs are Gs

which, by simple quantifier negation, is equivalent to (4). 

Class dismissed.

You Shouldn't Trust Liberal Journalists

Here.

What is Fake News? Rachel's Overreach

A news item is a report of a recent event.  Must the report be true to count as a genuine news item?  I should think so. Must the report be current as well? Obviously.  It is true that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, but no longer news that she did.  So there are two ways for fake news to be fake: by being false and by being dated.

Now that 'fake news' is a buzz word, or a buzz phrase, we need to be alert to this ambiguity.

But there seems to be another way in which a report can be fake news. Suppose an obnoxious leftist is out to damn Trump by showing that he does not pay Federal income tax. So she gets hold of his 2005 Form 1040 which reveals that he paid millions in taxes and trumpets this information on her political TV show. This too has been called 'fake news.' Here:

Unlike Geraldo Rivera, who was pilloried after his Al Capone vault debacle, Maddow knew that what was in the Trump tax returns wasn’t damning, yet she still hyped it on Twitter and played her audience for fools, thereby becoming the epitome of fake news.

What Maddow reported is true. And we the people did not know until a few days ago what Mr Trump paid in taxes back in aught five; so there is a sense in which the item reported is current. So what makes Maddow's reportage 'fake news'? Apparently, the fact that she was out to damn Trump but somehow did not realize that revealing the contents of his 2005 Form 1040 would make him look good!  He paid more in taxes than Bernie and Barack!

I am inclined to conclude that the phrase 'fake news' does now mean much of anything, if it ever did.

Above I pointed to an ambiguity.  But it is worse than that. The phrase is vague and becoming vaguer and vaguer. Chalk it up to the vagaries of polemical discourse in this time of bitter political division.

An ambiguous word or phrase admits of two or more definite meanings; a vague word or phrase has no definite meaning.  'Fake news' is  a bit like 'buzz word' which has itself become a buzz word.

As for Rachel Maddow, she is becoming the poster girl of TDS. How else do you explain the fact that this intelligent woman did not understand that her 'scoop' would hurt her and her benighted cause while benefiting the president?  But I suppose lust for ratings comes into it too. Mindless hatred of Trump plus a lust for ratings.

Next stop: the Twilight Zone.

Related articles

Truth Decay

Hillary the Corrupt

Obama the Liar Update

Trump releases some 2005 tax info ahead of Rachel Maddow report

Rachel Maddow: People expected too much of my report on Trump's tax return

The Quality of The New York Times

Here is the first comment on  Ross Douthat's December 16th column.  The comment has been awarded 'verified' status, meaning that ". . . it is earned based on a history of quality [read: high quality] comments."  Ready?

The following means Douthat knows he is neing dishinest, but it is debatable by he and his buddies, so ok, and, he is not accountable. It is like a talisman to negate reaponsibility for dishinonest: pure phony conservative. "Of course one can dispute how much of this was actually Obama’s fault, and argue over what might have been done differently. "

But anything to say, phony conservative hack style, liberals suck. Douthat's god.

And why is Trump popular?Cathartic howl? Typical cute Douthat rhetoric with all the depth teo dimensions can bring, yeah sure, like the nazis were a cathartic howl. Trump is popular, six months in, because he is reaping what the republican Party has sown and real american republican trash, his countrymen who Douthat respects less than Star Wars dolls,(Haravrd baby!) like the guy and think he is better than the other chump clown .1% lackeys. This, requires daily lies from Douthat and lie he does. 

Yet another proof that the only good NYT combox is a closed NYT combox.  Or: the best arguments against an open NYT combox are the contents of one.

As for the quality of the Opinion Pages themselves, they are piss-poor with only two or three exceptions, Douthat being one of them.  He is worth reading.  The aptronymically-appellated Charles Blow comes across as an affirmative action hire.  I saw him on C-SPAN once.  A very nice man with a beautiful wife, and I'm sure he means well.

By the way, if you are a conservative you ought to do everything in your power to defund the Left, and that includes not subscribing to the Rag of Record.

 

Rachel Dolezal, the Black White Woman

Orwellian Mendacity and Blatant Distortion at The New York Times

ObamaCare Schadenfreude

Ross Douthat

The Central Axiom of Partisan Politics

The Shrinking of the Friend Zone in a Sex-Saturated Society

Keith Burgess-Jackson: From Today's New York Times