House of Eratosthenes

Sergeant Joe Friday was well-known on prime-time TV for insisting on “just the facts.” That used to be an easy thing to define, but it no longer is. I remember at the beginning of last year, as the Iraqi elections were approaching, how I began an intense discussion with my then-seven-year-old son what the difference is between a fact and an opinion. I was reading something on the front page, a product of the Associated Press if memory serves. It was squarely between this, which is an excellent digest concerned purely with matters-of-fact; and this, which is nothing more than a snotty smear-piece (“Donald Rumsfeld, whose uncontrollable mouth is sometimes useful insofar as he lets the truth slip…”).

What I was reading, made potent use of the gray area between fact and opinion. It was chock full of gray-area phrases like…”challenges loom ahead, even if the elections go as planned.” What is that? Fact, or opinion? The existence of those challenges, is it arguable, or not? And yet, where I found this story on page A-1, there was no room for opinion. Here was this ingenious method for sneaking the opinion in anyway.

This made a deep impression on my son, which lasts clear through today, and probably beyond — as he asked me “why are you so angry at the newspaper, Daddy?” I did what I always do. I told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I wasn’t angry that the writer of the AP story had a different opinion than what I had, and I wasn’t angry that they were putting it in a “news” story. I wasn’t even mad at their insincerity in cloaking this opinion, as news. What got under my skin, was the precision and practice they showed in doing so. I almost had to admire them. You can only get this clever, by exercising what you were doing, over and over and over again. What kind of concern does that inspire.

I should have clipped that article. “Fact or opinion?” has become one of our favorite father-son intellectual exercises.

Well, I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone to learn this critical distinction before they’ve reached their eighth birthday, but I do think it would be constructive for them to have at least a passing acquaintance with it before watching Dana Milbank’s performance when he reported on Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident.

It seems I’m not the only one to find this objectionable, and to those of us who object, it has become very popular to use the phrase “lighten up!” as if we were taking to the streets with pitchforks and torches. Er…pardon me for saying so, I don’t think us “objecting” people are understood very well by the “lighten up” people. Perhaps someone, somewhere, is getting really huffy puffy and outraged. Perhaps someone somewhere is angry.

I haven’t seen any such anger, and I’m not angry, or outraged. I see no cause for outrage, or for anyone lecturing anybody else about how to lighten up. What I see here, is far, far worse: It’s a good, sound reason for the MSNBC watcher, to tune out and go get his news somewhere else. What is this wisecrack about the “Wichita Eagle-Beacon”? What’s this concern about releasing things to local papers?

Er, I’m sorry Mr. Milbank. Being one of the hundreds of millions of people who will find out about what’s going on whether I get it from the Eagle-Beacon, or you, or the New York Times, or some blog…I don’t see why I’m supposed to give a rat’s ass. Which means, every second you spend griping about news being handed on a silver platter to someone besides you, you’re making me happier that I don’t get my news from you — whether you get it first, or not. What the news actually is, affects me. What the pecking order is as it makes it’s way to me, is decidedly irrelevant. Maybe not to you, but definitely to your viewers.

Like I said, that’s a logical reason to get news from somewhere else. And that’s the worst thing you could do. You could piss on crucifixes and publish smartass cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad all day long, and these wouldn’t be nearly as bad.

But that’s just my opinion.

At least I know that’s just my opinion.

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Just the Facts, Ma’amWednesday, February 15th, 2006

Just the Facts, Ma’am
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006