Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me
Bookworm on Aug 18 2006 at 8:53 am | Filed under: Media matters
The shame just keeps piling up as a credulous Western media, which is simultaneously intimidated by Arab thuggery and blinded by Arab tricks, abandons its responsibility to provide actual news in the Middle East. Joel Mowbray does an excellent job summarizing how the Western media is either frightened by, duped by or complicit with the worst elements in the Middle East:
As any veteran of Middle East media coverage knows, many Arab stringers and free-lancers—hired on the cheap by Western outlets, ostensibly because of their superior knowledge for local leaders and events—see it as their duty to demonize Israel, while exalting fellow Arabs or Muslims.
But while the widespread use of Arab locals in covering the Middle East and the frightening level of threatened and real violence are both deeply troubling, more concerning is that the Palestinian propaganda machine has enjoyed tremendous success over the years hoodwinking supposedly sophisticated Western journalists. And Hezbollah has done just that over the past month.
In short, almost nothing that is purported to happen in the Arab world can automatically be taken at face value. Not even if it’s captured in a photo.
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10 Responses to “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”
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Put me down for complicit.
I would suggest that complicity is the largest of the factors at play. The MSM almost entirely pratices ‘advocacy journalism’. We are at the nadir of our forefathers’ ‘disinterested observer’ brand of journalism.
The liberal, pacifist mind-set, when faced with hostile intent, necessarily lacks a forceful response.
Moral cowardice, masquerading under the mantel of intellectual relativism and ‘nuance’, compells playing the ‘intellectual whore’.
As seeking to placate those who would forcibly impose their will upon others, is the only course left open to the appeaser…
Andrew Bolt seeks to slay a number of Leftist lies daily for the Melbourne (Aus) Herald Sun. His letters’ columns are full of outrage from those wounded in his attacks. Here he addresses the loss of the concept of history.
Without a factual history: the MSM, and its handlers, will concoct whatever story they want, and who will know their propaganda for what it is?
excerpt (link below)
‘Hear Anne Curthoys, the Australian National University’s Manning Clark Professor of History: “Many academics in the humanities and social sciences now reject the notion that one can objectively know the facts.
“Many take this even further, and argue that knowledge is entirely an effect
of power, that we can no longer have any concept of truth at all.”
Believe it. When Professor Lyndall Ryan, head of Humanities at Newcastle University, was outed for writing about massacres that hadn’t happened. Citing death tolls from sources that didn’t exist, she had a perfect postmodernist excuse. Two, in fact.
Excuse one: “Historians are always making up figures.” Excuse two: “Two truths are told. Is only one ‘truth’ correct?”
Indeed, yes, madam, if one truth contradicts the other. This is the basis of the entire Western scientific method.
Yet, how easily this respect for truth—and for history’s vast narratives that make sense of a million little facts—have vanished in a swamp of fact-less post-modernism.’
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_history_is_history/
“fact-less post-modernism”
Is the underlying, primary source of disagreement between liberals and conservatives.
Objectivity is consistently cited by conservatives as supportive of their rationale.
Subjectivity is invariably the underlying structural foundation for liberal positions.
JG: as novelist Tom Wolfe pointed out, most of postmodernists academics put a greater premium on Western rationality and the scientific method truth when it comes to the results of their colonoscopy, mammogram or pap smear, and they are quite willing to accept “facts” in the social sciences and humanities when those putative facts agree with their political biases. If you told them that what they regard as “colonialism” or “racism” were not facts but mere perceptions , what kind of reaction would you anticipate?
Oops! Should read …and the scientific method when it comes … ” Failure to proofread.
I’ve already given an exact definition of “history” elsewhere on this blog, a definition that I was required to know by my college major, prehistoric civilizations. As an anthropology major with that particular major, I needed to know the dividing line between “historic” and “prehistoric”. As I said at that time, “historic” is defined by how much record-keeping a given society did as a routine matter, because “history” is not an event, but rather the record of the event. The “history”, the letters, manifests, bills of lading, diaries, etc, tell us why the event mattered and how it affected the people.
I do believe that, if the actual definition of “history” can be kept past this era, then newspapers and other mainstream news media are well on their way out as sources of historic research. Future historians will look upon our news archives with a jaundiced eye, knowing that the journalists of today have lost their purpose; coverage of news for the historic record. They’re too busy trying to create news, and everyone knows it.
It may turn out that records left by such people as Rush Limbaugh and, believe it or not, people like Michael Moore may end up being regarded as more reliable sources of information than today’s mainstream news media. Why? Because the opposing ends do not pretend to be neutral. You know from the start where the source is coming from. In pretending to be neutral, the news media has destroyed its credibility. They have actually made it so that getting information from both ends of the extreme can make you better informed than the crap fed up as “truthy” on the MSM news. You start out knowing that both ends are prejudiced, and can adjust your reading accordingly.
Sort of like reading the diaries of Bernal Diaz, a Spanish priest who recorded a lot of valuable information about the Aztec (or “One World”) society. It’s greatest value is that we KNOW that we’re looking at the Meso-American society from the viewpoint of a Catholic priest, and can use that information to adjust our own jaundiced eye :).
Addendum: Make that “an Inquisition era Catholic priest”. It makes a difference, if you see what I mean ;).
Zhombre: Yes, I know what sort of pap I would receive from today’s (not) historians, in Australia or America. I like to think David McCullough is a real America’s voice. Here’s what one of our true historians has to say about America: (link below)
“How unpardonable it would be for us – with all that we have been given, all the advantages we have, all the continuing opportunities we have to enhance and increase our love of learning – to turn out blockheads or to raise blockheads. What we do in education, what these wonderful teachers and administrators and college presidents and college and university trustees do is the best, most important work there is.
So I salute you all for your interest in education and in the education of Hillsdale. I salute you for coming out tonight to be at an event like this. Not just sitting at home being a spectator. It’s important that we take part. Citizenship isn’t just voting. We all know that. Let’s all pitch in. And let’s not lose heart. They talk about what a difficult, dangerous time we live in. And it is very difficult, very dangerous and very uncertain. But so it has always been. And this nation of ours has been through darker times. And if you don’t know that – as so many who broadcast the news and subject us to their opinions in the press don’t seem to know – that’s because we’re failing in our understanding of history.
The Revolutionary War was as dark a time as we’ve ever been through. 1776, the year we so consistently and rightly celebrate every year, was one of the darkest times, if not the darkest time in the history of the country. Many of us here remember the first months of 1942 after Pearl Harbor when German submarines were sinking our oil tankers right off the coasts of Florida and New Jersey, in sight of the beaches, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. Our recruits were drilling with wooden rifles, we had no air force, half of our navy had been destroyed at Pearl Harbor, and there was nothing to say or guarantee that the Nazi machine could be defeated – nothing. Who was to know? I like to think of what Churchill said when he crossed the Atlantic after Pearl Harbor and gave a magnificent speech. He said we haven’t journeyed this far because we’re made of sugar candy. It’s as true today as it ever was.”
David McCullough Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are
Feb 15, 2005
http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2005/April/
The victors write the history books, so the truth about our era will also be written, but probably not in our lifetimes.