COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Why are reporters so stupid?

Why are respected news organizations letting idiots cover the White House beat? Is the White House press pool bus smaller than most buses?

I hate to even ask, but here's a question to the President from a White House reporter I know only as "Deb."

Mr. President, why does the administration continue to insist that Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda, when even you have denied any connection between Saddam and September 11th. And now the September 11th Commission says that there was no collaborative relationship at all.

The reporter commits several logical fallacies and falsehoods.

1.) There is no contradiction whatsoever with insisting that Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda and denying a connection between Saddam and September 11th.

It is entirely possible to have a very close relationship with Al Qaeda and not to have been kept in the loop about September 11th.

2.) The commission did not say that there was no collaborative relationship at all. The commission said that there was no evidence that Saddam had collaborated with Al Qaeda in attacks on the United States. That is quite a different thing. The commission did not find any evidence that would rule out such a collaboration. Nor did the commission take a position one way or the other on whether there was a relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq (prima facie, there was. Zarqawi found shelter and care in Iraq well before the war. The commission does not deny this.)

3.) A "collaborative relationship" != "relationship." A "collaborative relationship" is a subset of "relationship." All collaborative relationships are relationships, but not all relationships are collaborative.

I mean, this is 6th grade logic here, but apparently it's simply beyond Deb's grasp.

She doesn't know what's in the commission's report. She doesn't know what the Administration has been arguing all along. She doesn't know who Zarqawi is, apparently, or where he was in February 2003, before the war (along with a dozen other members of his cell who also found refuge in Iraq along with him). She doesn't grasp the English language--the primary tool of her trade--sufficiently to discern the difference between "relationship" and "connection," nor does she grasp the logic that makes "Al Qaeda" a distinctly different entity from "September 11th," sufficient to understand that one can have a relationship or connection with one, but not a direct connection with another, and that this is no contradiction.

Further, she doesn't have the detatched grace to frame her question as anything other than a "gotcha." "i.e.: why does the administration continue to insist."

This is an unfair and slanted way to express a question she herself simply does not understand. It's the equivalent of asking the President "Do you still beat your wife?"

A better way to ask the question--an ETHICAL way to ask the question--would be something like this:

Mr. President, the Commission reports there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda, w/r/t attacks on the U.S. But you and your administration continue to assert that some sort of relationship existed between the two. Can you clarify what you believe the nature of that relationship to be, and why it is that you believed that relationship to be a threat to the US?

Of course, those aren't journalist ethics. Too many journalists praise the 'gotcha' question. They confuse it with being "tough minded." And in this case, this woman was showboating.

The real audience wasn't the American people, because the American people derive no benefit from that line or manner of questioning.

Deb's real audience was her fellow journalists in the room.

No. There's a time for the gotcha question. But that time is only when the reporter has done his or her homework, and there's a 'gotcha' to be had.

Being tough-minded is NOT going for the 'gotcha.' Being tough-minded is clarifying the ideas and solidifying your own understanding of the issues, which this reporter--which much of the entire press corps, has not done.

That's why I don't trust journalism ethics to eliminate bias from the newsroom. Journalism ethics, indeed, are part of the problem.

There needs to be less value put on being tough questioners, and more value placed on mastering the CRAFT (not the profession, the CRAFT) of reporting.

This lady hasn't mastered her craft, and looks foolish as a result.

But if you master the craft, then the tough questioning will follow, and it will be far more en pointe, and far more effective for it.

And journalists may be respected once again.

Splash, out

Jason