No, Wallace didn’t make it up — the view is unfortunately widespread, and not just in journalistic circles, as these threads indicate. I think it is, however, a consequence of a deeper problem inherent in leftist and contemporary academic circles, and that has to do with the earlier discussion of moral and cultural relativism — the reason that Wallace and co. have no idea of anything “higher” than journalism, and are thus forced to elevate “getting the story” to some transcendent moral level, is that they’ve lost the notion of any objective moral structure altogether, apart from the guidelines, rules of thumb, or “principles” of whatever craft or trade they happen to be involved in. They’ve been reduced to a kind of journalistic tribalism, in effect.

As for it being “part of journalistic ethics for a very long time”, well, compare this sort of hypothetical situation — which, as we’ve been seeing in Iraq, isn’t always hypothetical — to the reporters of World War 2, who also risked their lives to get the story, but never pretended that they had no country or side. No, this interpretation of the non-interference guideline is definitely something that could only have been voiced since the “post-modern”, leftist-inspired cultural changes of the late sixties.

However, getting interviews, say, with enemy leaders, has happened, and I think can in fact be valuable. Typically journalists have been blindfolded on the way to the interview, etc., and are obviously not privy to any operational details so the chances a North Kosanese-style situation will arise is somewhat unlikely in the real world. But I do think the general principle of non-involvement makes these sorts of things possible, and on balance I’m glad reporters can get into these places and gather information for the public.

Your example of WWII reporting is interesting and I’ll have to think about it a bit more, but I think the general “cover the story, don’t become the story” journalistic idea has been around far longer than postmodernism has been an influence in the United States. (The subject of postmodernism is a separate question which I think deserves to be discussed as well — it is not, as people often suggest, just a sort of ultra-relativism, but rather a much more interesting set of ideas, but I’m pretty sure Neo’s comments section is not the best place to discuss that. Frankly, many conservatives decry “postmodernism” but postmodernism, strictly speaking, hasn’t even been a major intellectual force in the United States for more than a couple of decades.)

M

I assume you meant an American reporter-Hussein is accused of doing exactly what that hypothetical laid out.

The enemy has plenty of avenues to get their message out in this day and age. Everything winds up on the Internet. A reporter is not going to conduct diplomacy or make the enemy realize the error of his ways. Unless there is a live external feed (unlikely) any incriminating or damaging content will not make it out. Thus, I see no value in American reporters interviewing the enemy in the field. (Captured enemy, for example, are different for obvious reasons).

There may be value for interviews with leaders of hostile states, like the leadership of Iran. But any reporter should understand that those leaders will try to use the reporter as a propaganda tool.

Getting back to Hussein, since he is not an American, his personal moral responsibility is different (just an an American embed has no responsibility to warn AQ of a US ambush.) And maybe AP considers itself more of an international organization than an American one. That choice should have consequences, though. For example, publishing information like photos of an attack from an embed with the enemy should expose the publisher to civil liability from family of those killed or wounded in the attack.

To my mind, a better way of understanding the issues with respect to science can be found in American and British philosophy of science, i.e., Imre Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn. Neither of them are “postmodern” but what they discovered are analogous issues in science to what postmodernists uncovered in literary theory. Far from anti-rational these issues are in fact central to understanding science particularly in the twentieth century, in my view.

On the other hand, as has been pointed out, covering the war effort from the other side is, to a very real extent, offering to be used as a propaganda vehicle.

Just a thought.

Let’s examine the converse situation: suppose the reporter is supplying disinformation to the American public. Shouldn’t troops let him be killed, because America benefits more from eliminating distorted reports than it does from having reporters saved?

I doubt that reporters would go for that exchange of variables Gedanken experiment, but it’s every bit as valid as their point.

On purpose, through incompetence, or ?

If a reporter is allied with no side and simply a battlefield feature, then they cannot be victims of either ‘friendly’ or ‘enemy’ fire as they have to friends or enemies on the battlefield.

Furthermore, what is the obligation of either side to render aid if the reporter is shot while performing his, or her, job as bullet shield or terrain feature?

By their attitude and job description as ‘neutral and uninterested observers’, you could use them as range markers as in: “Direct fire 50m left of that reporter!”

So what exactly should I be mourning when one of these brave, neutral, disinterested features of the battlefield is killed by ‘a combatant’?

If you believe that, then you really should check out Fashionable Nonsense too.

“Postmodernism”, “post-structuralism”, “Theory”, “deconstruction”, etc., etc., are all just slight variations on vaporous and logorrheic academic fads, thrown up by an increasingly desperate and decadent fin-de-siecle leftism. But if you like that kind of thing, you can find endless fun by just hitting “Reload” here.

Motivation doesn’t matter, does it? The public policy consideration lies in delivery of accurate information (whatever that means) so that the democratic process can work. Why some information is inaccurate is irrelevant to its invidious effect, namely, to subvert the functioning of democratic decision-making.

Look out Dan Rather!

When we try to reproduce the results of the Jennings hypothetical we can see that it is meaningless because morality is not that simple. God is in the details.

The most tellingly omitted detail here is the role of individual conscience. Apparently, it has not occurred to some here to even ask whether the war described in the hypothetical is a just one and whether the reporter, in his own conscience, has decided to support, oppose or remain neutral to it.

To illustrate: instead of a Canadian raised on sour breast milk, let’s suppose Jennings is a Kosanese raised under the Kosan dictator’s terror. In his own conscience, he has decided that the American invasion is worthy of support. He’s invited to embed with U.S. Marines on an ambush. Must he warn the Kosan soldiers marching into the ambush?

When the demands of the state contradict the demands of conscience, what does the individual do? The solution that moral equation will not be arrived at through simple math, but by complex calculus that includes unknown variables and every single relevant detail. Anyone who suggests the answer to that question is either obvious or always the same isn’t thinking carefully enough.

There can be no real human freedom in the absence of individual conscience, nor any real morality that ignores it. Tyranny demands first and foremost the abnegation of individual conscience, the rest — from state theft to lying to murder –follows in natural order.

We can’t hope to understand the moral dimension of press coverage in war time without measuring the morality of the war itself. When we establish that, we find the reporter’s nationality far less relevant.

Why not? If someone is purposefully promulgating enemy disformation, then that person is an enemy agent, not a reporter. Or does the distinction not matter to you? If so, why not?

>If you believe that, then you really should check out
>Fashionable Nonsense too.

Believe me, I am well aware of the Sokal hoax — like I said, my academic studies were in physics, that was a pretty famous prank. That Sokal managed to fool a minor journal into accepting his paper is hardly proof of anything other than the poor quality of that particular journal’s review process.

You’re welcome to believe what you want to believe about postmodernism, but quite frankly Sokal doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. By his own admission he doesn’t understand it. His prank was certainly funny but I can hardly take him seriously since he obviously has no clue what postmodern thinkers are saying.

Like I said, for those who think postmodernism is anti-scientific gibberish, I recommend starting with something like Imre Lakatos, who was one of Karl Popper’s proteges, who eventually came to realize there were fundamental problems with Popper’s approach. Lakatos’ work is difficult but even someone like Sokal could probably understand it, and it’s not written in the dense language of the postmodern thinkers. If you can understand what Lakatos was getting at, then you’ll begin to see that there are difficult questions that can’t be swept under the rug regarding the interpretation of science. Postmodernists are (I assert) making similar observations with respect to other fields — their conclusions may go a bit too far but their ideas are really quite interesting and deserve a lot more thought than someone like Sokal put into it.

Ah, so reporters aren’t really supposed to just, you know, “report” — they’re really supposed to be propagandists and even activists for the morally and politically “correct” position! Well, that might be fine if we could be sure that all or even most such “reporters” and their media outlets shared that correct position — namely, the right-wing, neoconservative position. Alas, at the present time, as we can see, significant major media outlets do not. When they do, I’m sure McLovin will join many of us in welcoming a steady stream of correct neocon reporting and intervention on the part of our media corps; until they do, I think they should stick to the facts, and let the rest of us derive the (objectively correct) morality.

I really don’t agree with your take on this. Sure, journalists have consciences, but that tends to determine what they decide to investigate, rather than what they do with what they find. If a journalist goes into a war reporting situation because he or she thinks there may be something morally repugnant about the war, that’s fine, but at that point they have a responsibility to report, as neutrally as possible (and that’s of course not possible perfectly but it is nevertheless a laudable goal) what they find. If they find evidence supporting their view, they report that, and if they find contrary evidence, a good journalist reports that as well. There’s no such thing as a perfectly objective reporter, but if they purposefully falsify or mislead, they’re no longer journalists in my opinion.

Moral hypotheticals are thought experiments. The results are valid only to the degree that they can be reproduced.

The most tellingly omitted detail here is the role of individual conscience. Apparently, it has not occurred to some here to even ask whether the war described in the hypothetical is a just one and whether the reporter, in his own conscience, has decided to support, oppose or remain neutral to it.

That’s not the reporter’s job. The reporter’s job is to report. If he opposes the war he can write huffy letters to his representatives, speak out as a private individual and vote. But it’s not his job to slant his coverage according to his own judgement about the conflict.

To illustrate: instead of a Canadian raised on sour breast milk, let’s suppose Jennings is a Kosanese raised under the Kosan dictator’s terror. In his own conscience, he has decided that the American invasion is worthy of support. He’s invited to embed with U.S. Marines on an ambush. Must he warn the Kosan soldiers marching into the ambush?

If he’s a Kosanese he’s absolutely entitled to do that, and the Marines would probably think none the worse of him. (Of course, I doubt the Marines would be unwise enough to embed a foreign journalist during operations against that person’s own country.) Or, if he opposes the Kosanese regime enough to fight, put on a uniform and oppose it openly.

When the demands of the state contradict the demands of conscience, what does the individual do? The solution that moral equation will not be arrived at through simple math, but by complex calculus that includes unknown variables and every single relevant detail. Anyone who suggests the answer to that question is either obvious or always the same isn’t thinking carefully enough.

There can be no real human freedom in the absence of individual conscience, nor any real morality that ignores it. Tyranny demands first and foremost the abnegation of individual conscience, the rest — from state theft to lying to murder –follows in natural order.

Fortunately we have a solution to that: it’s called democracy. We choose people to run our state. Otherwise, why obey any laws? Why not do whatever you have the strength to get away with? If your conscience can lead you to treason it can lead you to murder.

We can’t hope to understand the moral dimension of press coverage in war time without measuring the morality of the war itself. When we establish that, we find the reporter’s nationality far less relevant.

Unfortunately, asserting that doesn’t prove it. We can understand the morality of press coverage when we simply ignore the fiction that journalists are different from other citizens. They are not. The same rules apply. A traitor is a traitor, even if he has a press card.

Nor does anyone else, Mitsu, including, amusingly, the pomo “thinkers” themselves, which is what the Sokal Hoax so clearly demonstrated. In actual fact, since at least the turn of the century post-modernism and the rest of that post-post- flotsam has faded as an active meme in the culture, and holds out now only as an arcane and fossilized style of speech in tenure-protected academic bunkers. (Lakatos is another matter, with only the most superficial resemblance to pomo themes; and Kuhn is even less implicated in that racket, despite sweaty efforts by its practitioners to recruit him.)

This is all, of course, in one sense wildly off-topic — but it’s significant that it crops up in attempts to defend the corruption of a moral imperative. In its heyday, that was precisely the service that pomo in all its manifestations rendered to the decaying left.

This is especially relevant in a highly morally charged situation such as war and still more so in the midst of a life-or-death ambush.

Democracies thrive on the principle that individuals are free to dissent and have some moral obligation to do so according to their conscience.

These issues of conscience are far less relevent to the job of reporting itself because journalism relies on facts. There will always be some level of subjective framing within a story and, to that extent, reporters and editors can and should act according to their conscience and a professional best-practice of broad-mindedness.

America’s “founding fathers” were traitors in their time and who would doubt the morality of their decision to act on the basis of individual conscience?

I’d adjust your point to “Journalism is supposed to rely on facts.”

Today, in the real world…?

A reporter covering an ambush in Iraq may well be troubled by the moral dilemma of which humans are most worth trying to save.

But there should be no such dilemma in his reporting of the story, as he can report the facts as he seems them in perfectly good conscience, regardless of who wins or loses the battle.

The confusion here about the role of a reporter arises because people have been persuaded to abnegate the role of personal conscience.

In a world where the state’s word on a given war is final and placed beyond dissent, there is indeed a dilemma for reporters in that they would naturally be torn over whether to report facts that may weaken the state’s position. Fortunately, America is not such a place.

Americans cherish the right to dissent and celebrate the primacy of individual conscience. It’s the cornerstone of the country’s greatness.

“As a citizen, a reporter is entitled to act according to his individual conscience.

This is especially relevant in a highly morally charged situation such as war and still more so in the midst of a life-or-death ambush.”

Of course. But don’t you see that anyone whose conscience prompts him to put the abstract virtue of “objectivity” ahead of the very concrete virtues of loyalty and decency has a faulty conscience?

“Democracies thrive on the principle that individuals are free to dissent and have some moral obligation to do so according to their conscience.”

No one has said otherwise. But democracies do not and have not thrived on the principle that individuals are free to act out their dissent. You are free to oppose a war. You are free to try to bring it to an end. You are not free to interfere with the conduct of the war or try to bring about defeat. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

“These issues of conscience are far less relevent to the job of reporting itself because journalism relies on facts. There will always be some level of subjective framing within a story and, to that extent, reporters and editors can and should act according to their conscience and a professional best-practice of broad-mindedness.”

True. But again, there are hierarchies of virtue, and the idea that broad-mindedness and professionalism trumps the basic duties of citizenship is insane. You are a human first, a citizen second, and a journalist, distantly, third.

“America’s “founding fathers” were traitors in their time and who would doubt the morality of their decision to act on the basis of individual conscience?”

Absolutely. But note that the Founders did not try to have their cake and eat it, too — Benjamin Franklin didn’t bill the Crown for his services as Postmaster while he was helping lead a revolution against King George. George Washington didn’t claim that his professional ethics as a land surveyor released him from his duties as a British subject. They raised the flag of rebellion and signed their names to the Declaration.

The journalist in the Wallace example is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. He’s got his rights as a citizen, his First Amendment freedom of speech and his American passport and all the rest — but he’s ducking the duties of citizenship by claiming some completely mythical “higher morality” of objectivity.

And worse, Wallace is calling that a virtuous act. He’s subordinating citizenship and common decency to a code of ethics which journalists habitually ignore for far more trivial and selfish reasons.

McLovin, I hope for your sake that you are deliberately baiting us here, and that you aren’t so far gone in moral relativism that you actually agree with Wallace. That is the morality of a jackal.

Good journalism is fact based? How about basic entry-level journalism is fact based.

>A reporter covering an ambush in Iraq may well be troubled by the moral dilemma of which humans are most worth trying to save.

What the hell is the dilemma? This has to be the stupidest comment I’ve read today (or it was until I kept reading)

>But there should be no such dilemma in his reporting of the story, as he can report the facts as he seems them in perfectly good conscience, regardless of who wins or loses the battle.

This statement is vapid. There most certainly is a dilemma… especially if the enemy’s agenda is to use minor acts of violence, like a car bomb, to get news media to report on it so that the impression is made that the conflict should be given up.

So there is decision that needs to be made… report the story.. a story which will create more wavering back home and therefore ultimatey serve the political agenda of the enemy… in effect . becomming the propaganda media arm of the enemy itself.

If that’s the case.. then the “story” should not be reported. There are things more important than the ego of a reporter.

>The confusion here about the role of a reporter arises because people have been persuaded to abnegate the role of personal conscience.

The confusion is on your side. you dont seem to appreciate the consequences of losing wars.. and if we lose the war against Islamic terrorists the consequences would be too terrible to contemplate. That you dont consider that aspect means to me that you either have no idea what is going on in the world.. or that you dont care.

>In a world where the state’s word on a given war is final and placed beyond dissent

Perhaps in your mind. how stupid.

> there is indeed a dilemma for reporters in that they would naturally be torn over whether to report facts that may weaken the state’s position. Fortunately, America is not such a place.

Unfortunately.

If it was up to me, I’d have all the laws pertaining to sedition and treason reviewed , brought up to date, and ready to be used.

>Americans cherish the right to dissent and celebrate the primacy of individual conscience. It’s the cornerstone of the country’s greatness.

Cant celebrate anything if the world is abandoned to Islam. That is what is at stake.

For example, the 9/11 attacks were committed by Muslims, but surely Muslims who oppose them are not being disloyal to their faith, nation or ethnic brethren. Rather, they are choosing to be loyal to the principles of Islam, rather than to people who have claimed to act under the banner of Islam.

The relevant moral question isn’t whether one is loyal, but what one is loyal to.

Fine. But choose your side openly and stick with it. Don’t try to be some kind of “neutral observer” and still demand the benefits of citizenship.

“For example, the 9/11 attacks were committed by Muslims, but surely Muslims who oppose them are not being disloyal to their faith, nation or ethnic brethren. Rather, they are choosing to be loyal to the principles of Islam, rather than to people who have claimed to act under the banner of Islam.”

Hate to break it to you, McL, but the 9/11 attackers were probably being more loyal to the principles of Islam than the moderates who oppose them.

Remember also that Islam demands death for apostates.

“The relevant moral question isn’t whether one is loyal, but what one is loyal to.”

Exactly! And if you’re a citizen of a country you have a duty to be loyal. If you don’t like that, move. Or if you honestly want to perform acts of civil disobedience, you have to be ready to face the consequences. If the journalist in the Wallace example really believes that objectivity is a higher virtue than patriotism, then he should go proudly to the gallows as a martyr. But being a traitor and then claiming some kind of immunity to consequences is cowardly and dishonest.

So, just to be clear, you are saying that if you disagree with a particular policy of your country’s government of the time, it’s fine by you to betray your own country’s soldiers to the enemy — that’s what your saying, right?

Perhaps my point wasn’t clear. Wallace’s argument, in essence, (and giving him the most charitable interpretation possible), was that the requirement that voters in a democracy receive good information on which to base their decisions was more important than saving the lives of some citizens of that democracy.

I merely extended the principle. If good information was worth some American soldiers lives, then it must also be worth some journalists lives too.

Put another way, does the motivation of the soldiers so willingly sacrificed by Wallace matter to him? He didn’t inquire whether or not they supported the war in which they were about to die, thanks to Mike Wallace.

As a physicist, you’ll appreciate the symmetry on exchange of variables…

Only despots demand loyalty.

Democracies function under the rule of law, and there are certainly no laws requiring journalists to gather intelligence for the U.S. military.

I can easily imagine circustances where providing such intelligence would be the most moral course of action, but I can just as easily imagine those where it would not. (The Kosanese example could well be one such case, but we can’t know without more details.)

As Americans, we are free to make that moral determination on our own, according to our individual conscience.

The founding fathers were thinking of exactly these moral dilemmas when creating the institutions and intellectual seed capital that have kept America free all these years. And they did so in a time when the odds were against the nation’s survival against enemy attack.

Nonetheless, they rather deliberately chose to leave loyalty to the state as a matter of individual conscience, not a requirement of ordinary citizenship.

John Adams himself famously defended the British soldiers accused of gunning down rioters in Boston in killings that led directly to the outbreak of war.

Many of course accused Adams of disloyalty and, even, treason and called for his execution. More rational heads prevailed and we have an awful lot to thank for that.

Freedom has withstood the test of time in America not because it is a simple or efficient way of winning wars. It survives because it recognizes the immense complexity of moral existence in an amoral universe.

This is a great discussion.

Let me add some historical perspective. I was a teen during WWII, a college student during Korea, and a Navy pilot during Vietnam. I witnessed the morphing of journalism from it’s position of trying to report the facts and let the reader decide.

As I understand it journalists are supposed to include who, where, when, how, and what happened. They are supposed to report the unadulterated facts to inform the reader. The reader can then form an opinion about why something had happened and whether it was good or bad. Opinion was not supposed to be a part of the story. Opinion was expressed on the editorial page.

Vietnam changed all that. There have been reams of material written about the reporters that went to Vietnam and found not the glorious war they had expected, but a dirty, back-alley knife fight that didn’t seem to make any sense to them. (Most of them did not perceive Communism as a threatening force.) Most became quite disillusioned and cynical about the war. At the same time Communist propaganda was being spread through U.S. colleges that, of course, made its way into mainstream journalism. The gist of the propaganda was that the U.S. had become illegally involved in a “civil war.” The mantra was that the U.S. was wrong and our legally elected leaders were corrupt, venal, and were somehow illegitimate. (Even though they had been duly elected.) As the war drug on and the casualties mounted the protestations became louder and louder. Covering the anti-war effort began to sell a lot of copy. And some august journalists (Walter Cronkite & others) decided that, yes, the war was unwinnable and the U.S. was, indeed, wrong. Unfortunately, public opinion followed.

The aftermath of our ignoble withdrawal and betrayal of the South Vietnamese is well known, but seldom thought about today because it was so shameful. (Thanks to Neo for covering this in detail on her blog)

However, journalists decided that they had played a noble role in bringing an end to the war. (To hell with what happened to the Vietnamese and Cambodians.) Prizes were awarded, books were published, and the mantra of journalism schools soon became: We must always remain alert to opportunities to thwart wrong-headed moves by the government. If what the elected leaders propose is, in our opinion, wrong we must do everything to stop them. That is how we can make a difference in the world.

Fast forward to 9/11. Even the most cynical and world weary journalists were shocked by the attack on the U.S. For a few days, at least, most of them believed an act of war had been committed. But when it became apparent that we were going to actually do something other than protest to the UN and send some FBI agents out to investigate the terrorists, many in the MSM (NYT, WA Post, LA Times, etc) began to swing into their Vietnam mode. We heard facts about Afghanistan like: The Russiands failed there. No one has ever conquered Afghanistan. Afghanistan will be another quagmire like Vietnam. Etc. Etc. Etc. The quest also began to find out why the terrorists hated us and what we must do to make amends.

Much the same was heard during the lead up to Iraq. And since. Lots of facts against the strategy devised by our elected leaders but seldom any facts about the aims ands barbarity of the Islamists.

Now to an example of what we are all talking about here, which, IMO, is that journalism and journalists like Wallace claim that they are objective and do not have any agenda except to inform.

Let me refute that. The Abu Ghraib scandal was on the front page of the Seattle Times (and most other big city dailies)for many weeks. The stories were full of florid adjectives chosen to inflame opinions against our soldiers even being in Iraq, much less doing the stupid things (yes, they were STUPID!) that a handful of soldiers did. During this time the Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq captured Nick Berg and released a blood curdling video of him being beheaded. That story appeared on the fourth or fifth page of the Seattle Times and it was quite short. It was a paragon of journalistsic virtue. What, who, where, when, etc. all done in perfectly neutral prose calculated to inform only. Yessir, they say, “We report, you decide.” Hogwash! They claim to be objective purveyors of truth, when, in fact they have an agenda that is obvious to any thinking person.

Fortunately, the marketplace is rendering a judgment on their brand of hypocrisy.

I happen to believe that pro-war views are exceedingly well-represented in the U.S. media.

But if I’m wrong, the question, as Jimmy acknowledges, is why are conservatives failing in a free media marketplace?

For a Nam vet like me your examination of all the issues around the Vietnam War have been extremely gratifying. I guess the wounds will never really heal, but what you have presented here has been like healing balm to my soul.

McL,
The major newspapers and TV networks are failing
because they are trying to hold themselves out as objective when they aren’t. I would have more respect for any paper or TV network if they would just openly admit that they have a political agenda. If you don’t see the agenda it is probably because your agenda is the same.

That’s how they become “major” in the first place and they really have no choice but to keeping doing that if they expect to stay “major.”

Jimmy suggests that conservatives, or at least supporters of military aggression, have failed within America’s free media markeplace.

I don’t agree, but I’m wondering what Jimmy, or anyone who agrees with him on this, thinks the cause of that failure is.

As it happens, the mainstream media became significantly more powerful this week thanks to a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission to allow publishers to own both newspapers and broadcast stations in the biggest U.S. cities.

The decision will extend the dominance of papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other major metropolitan dailies.

Tellingly, the ruling had the full support of the White House and, of course, the media itself. No one pushed for it harder than FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Who is Martin? Previous to his FCC job, he served on the Bush-Cheney transition team and was general council for Bush’s 2000 Presidential campaign. His wife, Cathie Martin is a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney–and works in the White House as a special assistant to the President for economic policy.

Who opposed it? The two Democrats on the FCC panel and liberal public-interest groups.

June 14, 1980–The Marine Corps awarded Bronze Stars yesterday to three journalists who had rescued a mortally wounded marine under enemy fire during the Tet offensive in 1968. The medals are the first to be given to civilians for Vietnam war heroism.
The three journaists were Alvin Webb of the United Press International; David Greenway, then of Time Magazine and Charles Mohr of The New York Times. They were covering a battle in Hue on February 19, 1968, when a Marine was shot through the throat.
The reporters carried the injure man to safety through the devasted streets of Hue.
Greenway and Webb were wounded by an enemy rocket that fell near the group.

>no one else does either

All I can say is, when it comes to Sokal, don’t believe the hype. I certainly understand what many postmodern thinkers are saying, and many others do as well. They write in a difficult style, but it is quite comprehensible if you bother to make a serious effort to understand it. This isn’t to say every postmodern theorist is equally cogent — but there is a there there. The fact that Sokal doesn’t have a clue what they mean says far more about Sokal’s unwillingness or inability to comprehend than it does about the people he’s trying to ridicule.

If you have read and appreciate Kuhn or Lakatos then you’ve already understood arguments which are very similar to what many postmodern thinkers are talking about. Kuhn and Lakatos come from a different philosophical tradition than the Europeans, so in a sense they are only philosophical cousins, but there is certainly important overlap. Richard Rorty is another example: he started out as a star of the analytic philosophy community, only to later develop a philosophy that is remarkably similar to the European postmodernists. Wittgenstein’s concept of the language game is also quite compatible with many postmodern ideas.

My critique of postmodernists is not that they are spewing nonsense but that they spend much of their time undermining the idea of the easy answer, but not as much on speculations about what one might positively assert (it is a generally critical enterprise). However, they are not, as they have been accused, saying that all choices are morally equivalent, that there is no basis for speaking of scientific progress, etc. The point they are making is far more subtle than this. To confuse postmodernism with relativism is a common misunderstanding, but it is simply wrong. As Derrida wrote: “…relativism is a doctrine, which has its own history in which there are only points of view with no absolute necessity, or no references to absolutes. That is the opposite to what I have to say. Relativism is, in classical philosophy, a way of referring to the absolute and denying it; it states that there are only cultures and that there is no pure science of truth. I have never said such a thing. Neither have I ever used the word relativism.”

Naturally, to really discuss these matters in depth is perhaps drifting way off topic so I’ll end my remarks there.

>If good information was worth some American soldiers
>lives, then it must also be worth some journalists lives too.

I certainly would agree with that, but then again so would most war reporters, who risk their lives every day they’re on the beat in a war zone.

The only difference I see with postmodernism is that it hasn’t been fully imposed over any population… yet. Perhaps its only virtue, like ebola, is that it destroys its hosts too quickly to allow the consolidation of political power under it, but carriers like the MSM are becoming more prevalent each year, and secondary infections like metastasising communism are cropping up.

(FYI, yes, I know I’m doing the same thing with my pseudo-scientific comparisons to contagious diseases. That’s because, judging by the number of people still drinking the kool-aid, it seems to work better to get the point across than any detailed explanation, and is easier to type.)

What the hell are you talking about? Scientific theories of relativity? Do you even know what relativity is? Hint: it’s not analogous to philosophical relativism, and is nearly completely irrelevant to the topic — certainly no one has been comparing “relativity” to postmodernism in this topic. I will grant you one thing: the words do look the same.

See how easy that is?

You simply sound, and I believe you are, philosophically naive, Mitsu, to put it bluntly. Kuhn and, even more so, Wittgenstein had something important to say; Lakatos much less so, but still substantive at least. Rorty was largely just a clown who fell off trying to switch horses. But the real scam artists — Foucault and Derrida chief among the sorry lot — always knew how to avoid saying anything that they couldn’t undo in the next sentence with a little dialectical back-flip and hand wave. But the only people who remain under their spell any longer are earnest plodders who think that everything they can’t understand must be deep. No, sometimes if it looks like nonsense and sounds like nonsense, it just is nonsense.

Again, though, I’d point out the service this particular run of faddish nonsense provided — it wasn’t its “relativism”, which is a larger issue altogether, but rather its very obscurity, which became a very nice method of suppressing critical thought, or indeed any thought, as legions of poor undergrads struggled to understand just the terminology, and smaller legions of grad students contented themselves with permuting that terminology rather than trying to actually say anything at all. E.g. (again): http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

The ways in which I am claiming postmodernism is allied with science have to do with ideas of paradigms and paradigm shifts, a la Kuhn. That is to say, Kuhn brought up a number of problems with Popper’s idea of scientific progress, and proposed a different view, which is less clear-cut. Nevertheless, both Kuhn and postmodernists admit to an idea of scientific progress, simply not one which is defined in the sorts of simple, clear-cut terms of Popper (but which Kuhn, Lakatos, and others demonstrated cannot be correct).

As for relativity — it did represent A paradigm shift in physics (or two, if you count special and general relativity separately), but it is just a theory and not a meta-theory.

Consider that the anti-war people call Iraq a quagmire (and would call Afghanistan a quagmire if they didn’t need something to prove their bogus creds). Every time something spectacular happens, the quagmire theme is reinforced.
“How can you call it a democracy when there are car bombings?” Simple. They have elections, but the anti-war people don’t want to admit that. So the more spectacular but objectively meaningless (except to the victims) actions get front-page treatment, the better for the anti-war types. Since the terrs can’t do anything substantial against US troops, and are increasingly having a hard time against Iraqi forces, the fuel the provide the anti-war types must be the slaughter of civilians.

The anti-war types know their position demands successful terr ops, and the only ones now available are slaughters of civilians. No biggie. The terrs know it, too. And cooperate.

The role of the journo here is not only the reporting of an incident, but the choice of his editors to publish and emphasize.

So the Kosanese encounter would be important in a war in which the US effort was, say, a thousand men, and not when the US effort was 100,000 men. But placed on the front page absent any similar stories about how the US is waxing the Kosanese asses for them wholesale–which is approximately the current reality–we have a genuine impact on the public perception which means on the outcome of the war.

In that case, and we cannot presume any journo is ignorant of the case, the journo is purposely doing something which will handicap the US’ efforts.

>You simply sound, and I believe you are, philosophically
>naive, Mitsu, to put it bluntly.

“Philosophically naive” — that’s an amusing phrase coming from someone who, like Sokal, admits to having no understanding of a large number of philosophers we are supposedly discussing (presumably because there’s nothing to understand… yet as I’ve said before, I understand them quite well.)

If you want to get into a philosophical debate, believe me, I’m quite well-prepared to do so. Let’s stick to people you and I both agree DO have something to say, let’s say, Lakatos. What do you think of his attempt to salvage Popper’s notion of a criterion via his introduction of the idea of the research programme? And why do you think his approach is less of a contribution than Kuhn’s in _Structure of Scientific Revolutions?

Engaging in debate about the actual content of what people say is a “post-modernist game of obfuscation”? That’s an interesting viewpoint.

So far, Sally has made a bunch of assertions about various philosophers here, without actually referring to anything they actually said, even in general terms. If we’re going to be talking about philosophy in the comments thread of a blog — a very strange endeavor as it is — it seems to me that actually discussing what they’ve said is a lot more worthwhile than simply making value judgements without even referring to any content whatsoever.

I have to admit that I can’t really tell whether Sally is saying things based on an actual reading of the philosophers we’ve been talking about — she says, for example, that Lakatos’ contribution was “less” than Kuhn’s (I actually don’t necessarily disagree with this) but from what she says I have no idea why, since she makes no reference whatsoever to either Lakatos or Kuhn’s ideas in her posts.

In fact, I’m surprised that Sally would even admit that Kuhn’s ideas are worthwhile since his notions fly in the face of the conservative tendency to want to identify with fixed paradigms. I am in fact curious to find out what Sally’s basis is for her claims — has she studied philosophy? What has she read? What is she basing on hearsay?