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Politics : THE VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (5319)	1/8/2004 12:55:16 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6358

Verbal posturing By Thomas Sowell The British Broadcasting Corp. has made itself look ridiculous by ordering that its reporters not refer to Saddam Hussein as an ex-dictator. Apparently, using the word "dictator" would compromise the BBC's neutrality and call its objectivity into question. Unfortunately, the BBC is not alone. In much of the American mainstream media, terrorists are referred to as "militants" or "insurgents." Rioters are called "demonstrators." As American flags went up around the country in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, even the wearing of little American flag lapel pins by TV journalists was banned by some broadcasters, with the notable exception of Fox News. This straining for neutrality is more than just another passing silliness: It reveals a serious confusion between neutrality and objectivity. Such verbal posturing has been at its worst in some of the most biased media, such as the BBC. During World War II, legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow never pretended to be neutral between the Nazis and the Allies. Yet you would have trouble today finding anyone in the media with the stature and integrity of Ed Murrow. Honesty does not require posturing. In fact, the two things are incompatible. Nor does objectivity require neutrality. Medical science is no less scientifically objective because it is completely biased in favor of people and against bacteria. Medical researchers study cancer cells with scientific objectivity in order to discover the hard facts about those cells, regardless of anyone's preconceived beliefs. But they do so precisely in order to destroy cancer cells and, if possible, prevent their existence in the first place. Objectivity refers to honestly seeking the truth, whatever that truth may turn out to be or its possible implications. Neutrality refers to a preconceived "balance," which subordinates the truth to this preconception. Journalists who reported the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps were not violating canons of objectivity by failing to use such neutral language as calling those places "residential facilities" or those who ran them "hosts." Nor did the use of the term "dictator" to describe Adolf Hitler mean World War II journalists did not come up to the supposedly high standards of today's media. What does the much-vaunted "public's right to know" mean when mealy-mouthed words filter out essential facts? During the Cold War, the confusion between objectivity and neutrality led many journalists to balance negative things about the Soviet Union with negative things about the United States. Among the media anointed, a phrase like "the Free World" was disdained for violating this verbal neutrality. Journalistic sophisticates referred to "the so-called Free World." Meanwhile, for decades on end, in countries around the globe, millions of ordinary human beings broke the personal ties of a lifetime, left behind worldly belongings, and took desperate chances with their lives, and those of their children — to try to escape to "the so-called Free World." One pious phrase of the mealy-mouthed media is "the truth lies somewhere in between." It may or may not. Only after you have found the truth do you know where it is. For years, there were people who denied there was a famine in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and others who said that millions died during that famine. Did the truth lie somewhere in between? The leading scholar who argued that millions starved during Josef Stalin's man-made famine was Robert Conquest of the Hoover Institution, often described in the media as a right-wing think tank. When Mikhail Gorbachev finally opened the official records in the last days of the Soviet Union, it turned out that even more people had died during the famine than Conquest had estimated. The truth is where you find it — and you don't find it with a preconceived "balance" expressed in mealy-mouthed words. Thomas Sowell is a nationally syndicated columnist. URL:http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040107-084214-7433r.htm