Don't Believe The Hype... or Anything...
I was probably going to write an entry about the response to the Petraeus report in a few days after it is released, but I guess I don't have to wait... because people have already responded. I don't get how you can respond to something that hasn't been released, but it's now possible in our current state of affairs. Senator Joe Biden (D-DE, and oh by the way, he's running for president) has pretty much declared the report dead on arrival for what the advance reports are saying about it. Of course, I have to wonder if he was going to be in favor of it regardless of what it said.
This is because in these past couple of weeks of pre-release "hype", there has been a concentrated effort to plant doubt in people's minds that the Petraeus report cannot be believed. It's the usual suspects at work (the 23% Crowd), saying that the report will actually be written by the White House and rubber-stamped by Petraeus, or that Petraeus wouldn't dare say anything that would contradict the president or else he'll be fired.
Unfortunately, this effort has succeeded, as the results of a Washington Post-ABC News poll suggest. Of course, since it's the Washington Post doing the poll, I ask you to consider the source. Anyway, apparently 55% of the respondents want all our troops out of Iraq by the spring. And 53% say the report will make things look better than they really are. Breaking down the numbers, just 23% of Democrats expect an honest report.
This is the point we've reached in America today. We cannot believe anything we are told. I'm guilty of it myself in just this entry alone... the Washington Post issues a poll, I and other Republicans immediately assume it's bogus because the Post has a "liberal bias" and well, they intentionally asked liberals. How can 1,002 people reflect the attitudes of the nation as a whole? I'm studying the process of surveying the public and doing research of this type, and this sample size is WAY too small to be effective, but that's not the point. It's the messenger that draws the response. If the New York Post did the same poll and got more favorable results to the Republicans, Democrats would howl because it's Rupert Murdoch's company so they're biased.
When it comes to anything coming from the government, people are inclined to believe that it favors the president. I don't think I'm way too off-base to propose that President Bush is the most hated president in American history. Whether you support him or not, you have to acknowledge the severe and almost irrational level of hate people have for the guy. As such, their ability to receive and interpret the news is colored by this hatred. Take, for example, the NIE report of a couple months ago, which I previously wrote about when it was first released. Bush-haters immediately claimed the NIE was just another ruse meant to fuel the continuing subversion of the people's rights and freedoms by the Bush administration. Just look at a sample from the readers of Rolling Stone (one of the first magazines to proclaim that we "lost" the war in Iraq).
Herein lies the problem that has resulted from a generation brought up by the original Vietnam-era peaceniks, the ones who said, "Question everything." Now people are pre-conditioned to not believe anything that comes from the government. I can't say these people have lost touch with reality, because it's possible that they never had contact with reality to begin with. But what about the rest of us? How did we get to this point? Was it the 2000 Election fiasco? Was it the impeachment of Clinton? Was it Hillary Clinton's first week in the White House, when she declared Republicans and the press the enemy and a designated scapegoat?
So now conservatives watch Fox News and liberals claim it's biased, and liberals read the New York Times and conservatives claim it's biased, and if that's not good enough, then the fringes go to Salon.com or NewsMax. There are plenty of academics who have tried to explain this stuff; I know this because I've been reading all of it for my classes, but it just seems today to be worse than ever. And more importantly, how do we fix this? How do you repair what is coming to be a blatant mistrust of our institutions, both government and the media? That's what I want to see somebody propose.
Of course, when that person does, we'll immediately try to discern his or her political affiliation and claim he's biased and not believable...
This is because in these past couple of weeks of pre-release "hype", there has been a concentrated effort to plant doubt in people's minds that the Petraeus report cannot be believed. It's the usual suspects at work (the 23% Crowd), saying that the report will actually be written by the White House and rubber-stamped by Petraeus, or that Petraeus wouldn't dare say anything that would contradict the president or else he'll be fired.
Unfortunately, this effort has succeeded, as the results of a Washington Post-ABC News poll suggest. Of course, since it's the Washington Post doing the poll, I ask you to consider the source. Anyway, apparently 55% of the respondents want all our troops out of Iraq by the spring. And 53% say the report will make things look better than they really are. Breaking down the numbers, just 23% of Democrats expect an honest report.
This is the point we've reached in America today. We cannot believe anything we are told. I'm guilty of it myself in just this entry alone... the Washington Post issues a poll, I and other Republicans immediately assume it's bogus because the Post has a "liberal bias" and well, they intentionally asked liberals. How can 1,002 people reflect the attitudes of the nation as a whole? I'm studying the process of surveying the public and doing research of this type, and this sample size is WAY too small to be effective, but that's not the point. It's the messenger that draws the response. If the New York Post did the same poll and got more favorable results to the Republicans, Democrats would howl because it's Rupert Murdoch's company so they're biased.
When it comes to anything coming from the government, people are inclined to believe that it favors the president. I don't think I'm way too off-base to propose that President Bush is the most hated president in American history. Whether you support him or not, you have to acknowledge the severe and almost irrational level of hate people have for the guy. As such, their ability to receive and interpret the news is colored by this hatred. Take, for example, the NIE report of a couple months ago, which I previously wrote about when it was first released. Bush-haters immediately claimed the NIE was just another ruse meant to fuel the continuing subversion of the people's rights and freedoms by the Bush administration. Just look at a sample from the readers of Rolling Stone (one of the first magazines to proclaim that we "lost" the war in Iraq).
Herein lies the problem that has resulted from a generation brought up by the original Vietnam-era peaceniks, the ones who said, "Question everything." Now people are pre-conditioned to not believe anything that comes from the government. I can't say these people have lost touch with reality, because it's possible that they never had contact with reality to begin with. But what about the rest of us? How did we get to this point? Was it the 2000 Election fiasco? Was it the impeachment of Clinton? Was it Hillary Clinton's first week in the White House, when she declared Republicans and the press the enemy and a designated scapegoat?
So now conservatives watch Fox News and liberals claim it's biased, and liberals read the New York Times and conservatives claim it's biased, and if that's not good enough, then the fringes go to Salon.com or NewsMax. There are plenty of academics who have tried to explain this stuff; I know this because I've been reading all of it for my classes, but it just seems today to be worse than ever. And more importantly, how do we fix this? How do you repair what is coming to be a blatant mistrust of our institutions, both government and the media? That's what I want to see somebody propose.
Of course, when that person does, we'll immediately try to discern his or her political affiliation and claim he's biased and not believable...
Labels: credibility, peaceniks, Petraeus report
posted by Dave | 1:19 PM
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