Sunday January 29, 2017
National Public Radio in the U.S. has made a decision. It will not use the word “lie” to describe President Donald Trump’s less-than-truthful assertions. Or, as NPR puts it, “how to characterize the statements of President Trump when they are at odds with evidence to the contrary.”
NPR cites, as an example, Trump’s claim that when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, "I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people [referring to ‘Muslims’] were cheering as that building was coming down."
The statement was clearly false, and NPR said so. But they didn’t call him a liar.
Other examples included a spat with a United Methodist pastor in Flint, Mich., and Trump’s on-again-off-again feud with American Intelligence services. NPR had staff at both events. What they witnessed, in person, did not square with Trump’s public statements.
But again, NPR didn’t call him a liar.
Distracting definitions
NPR hides behind the Oxford English Dictionary’s skirts. Mary Louise Kelly, reporting after Trump's visit to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., went to the dictionary for the definition of "lie."
She found, "A false statement made with intent to deceive." Intent was “the key word,” she said. “Without the ability to peer into Donald Trump's head, I can't tell you what his intent was.”
I call that a cop-out. As Gertrude Stein might have said, a lie is a lie is a lie. Let’s not sugar-coat it and call it a difference of opinion. Or excuse it as political spin. Or even rationalize it as a psychological inability to distinguish truth from falsehood.
A lie is, in itself, an intent to deceive.
Anyway, NPR decided against using the word "lie."
"Our job as journalists is to report, to find facts, and establish their authenticity and share them with everybody," explained NPR's senior vice president for news, Michael Oreskes. "The minute you start branding things with a word like 'lie,' you push people away from you."
Hogwash! A lie is a lie. Period.
Classes of lies
In this context, I have to make a distinction between public and private settings.
In private settings, I suspect, everyone has uttered a little white lie. The lie’s intent – there’s that word again -- is to protect someone else from embarrassment. No, that blouse doesn’t make you look fat. Aw, I’m sure no one noticed that your fly was undone.
In private, too, one can offer a gentle correction. Franklin did not actually discover the Northwest Passage; he died trying to discover it. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, not Kenya.
It’s less easy to condone the lie intended to protect oneself. Perhaps from embarrassment. More likely, to avoid punishment or social censure.
But public lies fall into a different class. The emperor has already displayed himself, minus clothing. A word whispered in the emperor’s ear cannot retract what the people have already seen.
Or, in the modern media, what they have heard. From a supposedly reliable source.
Deliberate deceit
A tiny item on an inside page of my newspaper noted that Nick Kouvalis, campaign manager for Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Lietch, had admitted posting false information about Justin Trudeau’s government.
A month ago, Kouvalis tweeted a list of donations to suspicious international groups. Specifically, $351 million to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.
Kouvalis did it, he told Maclean’s magazine, “to make the left go nuts.”
There are ways of checking these things. Snopes.com has built its reputation on checking out wild assertions and prevailing myths. But the recent wave of untruths has overwhelmed Snopes’ capabilities.
Google and Facebook have both been testing on-line tools “aimed at helping users identify credible information” posted on their pages.
All well and good. Except that software can only be reactive, not pro-active. Their programs will not, cannot, intercept lies before they go public. They can pull pages discovered faulty; they can append notes disputing the accuracy of a posting.
But the deed has already been done. The word has gone out. It now resides on countless computers, and in countless minds, and is being recited as authoritative. It can be challenged; it cannot be called back.
Public deceit can only be countered, I argue, by public shaming of the liar.
A child does not learn to tell the truth by getting away with a lie. A public figure does not learn the value of truth, of transparency, of accountability, by getting away with a lie. And another lie. And another….
Lies deserve to be called lies.
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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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YOUR TURN
I had an exchange of letters with Jack Driedger. In his first letter, he asked, “Should we grant rights to bed bugs, mosquitos, etc?”
I turned it around: “If we DON'T grant rights to other living things, on what basis do we decide that we humans deserve them?”
To which Jack replied, “Wouldn’t our planet earth be much better off if mankind were eliminated completely and the other species were allowed to remain? Paved roads, dams in rivers, homes etc. would slowly disappear. In their place trees and other vegetation would thrive. After some centuries planet Earth would be green again.”
Ann Zuk commented, “I agree with you that the Penticton situation was not handled correctly and I sincerely think that most nature-loving people would agree. I don’t understand why we can’t seem to live with nature. We certainly bend backwards for the deer in our area. I have visiting deer going through my yard constantly leaving reminders that I must clean up. I would have welcomed the cougars in my yard.
Thank you again for your article. I hope that those who read it will think twice about decisions that are being made about wild nature. They definitely were here before we were. “Do no harm” would be a good idea for the men who took part in the killings.”
David Gilchrist did not yield to a sentimental view of cougars: “They may look cuddly, and you may well pet a tamed one at Al's Oeming's place; but I can't see co-habiting with any even a tamed ‘wild creature,’ let alone a feral one. Recently that we heard of the latest infant mauled by a large ‘pet’ dog. Fear is not always misplaced; it is an instinct with a purpose in our design.
“I don't see the analogy with Aboriginals: that was not fear, but ignorant arrogance. The Aboriginals made it possible for our ancestors to survive at all in this country. I felt I learned as much or more from the ones I taught than I was able to give them.
“I agree that we have to figure out a way to share our world with these beautiful felines, as well as with all the other species we are slowly destroying; but sharing the same space is not a viable option. Cougars may seldom attack humans except when cornered or hungry: but they DO get hungry. And our little children, playing in our back yards, are more defenceless than our cats and dogs.
“There must be a better way than we are going now.”
Peter Scott also offered a different perspective: “Thank you for saying that the cougars were ‘killed’. Most of the time our society tries to hide our killing behind euphemisms like ‘culled’ or ‘euthanized’. All of this obfuscation is to help humans avoid the fact that we are killers by nature and always will be. By nature we have to kill either plants or animals to eat but today we try to sanitize our nature by paying someone else to do our food killing for us and we hide behind weasel words to hide our convenience killing like the cougar homicide you reported.
“I am a hunter. I don't hunt for sport, I hunt for food and if I am lucky enough to kill an animal the blood on my hands is sacred. I always thank the spirit of the animal whose flesh will feed me and my family. This I learned from the First Nations of this land. We still have much to learn from them about living in peace with the creatures of creation but we will never do it by hiding behind the dishonest language that the mainstream media has to use to keep up the illusion of what we like to call ‘civilization’.”
Steve Roney challenged my claim that western explorers handed out disease-tainted blankets. That’s well documented.
He also disputed that Indian Residential Schools were imposed on aboriginal people: “Quite false. It was the Indians who demanded schools. The government was not keen on making the commitment, and had to be prodded to live up to it. Rev. Peter Jones, an Ojibway chief, went so far as to appeal in person to the Imperial Cabinet in London for residential schools back in the 1830s. The Indians insisted on it in every one of the numbered treaties.”
My reading agrees that the native tribes wanted education; I see nothing that says they wanted to have their children taken away. Wikipedia says only that Jones lobbied Queen Victoria to obtain legal title to the lands occupied by the Ojibwa.
Ted Wilson’s letter last week about when and how we die sparked this response from Margaret Carr: “Ted Wilson has it right regarding Dementia. We all die by inches until something worse happens. People with Dementia will never be given the right to assisted dying as they cannot speak for themselves. I visit a friend with dementia and she continues to get worse -- now attacking other residents or wandering into someone else's room or bed and being generally someone to fear not love. Quality [of life] is so much more needed than Quantity. There is nothing I can do to help and yet I come home feeling awful, still trying to keep a promise.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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