The View from Right Field

Daniel Patrick Moynihan Was Wrong. We Can Have Our Own Facts.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”¹  Except that is not true anymore.  Both sides in politics, and probably other things, do have their own facts today.  Fox vs. CNN/MSNBC.  The New York Times vs. The Wall Street Journal editorial page.  People watching/reading one silo of information vs. people watching/reading another.  People really do have different facts today, which means you can see why their opinions differ – because their facts are different.

And what may be even worse is that most of the people watching/reading in different silos don’t even understand that people watching/reading in other silos see things differently.  They still think there is only one set of facts and that everything else is just misinformation or disinformation.² 

Disinformation, Misinformation. How About “Lies” and “Wrong”?

People talk and complain about disinformation and misinformation constantly.  Disinformation and misinformation are said to be horrible, and in some people’s views, they need to be banned.  But to be honest, I’m not really sure what these terms mean.  Is “disinformation” a statement that is false or does it have to be knowingly false?  Does it need to have an illicit purpose or does that matter?  And what about “misinformation”?  Is it something that is not true but without an illicit purpose or is it something else?  And how is it different from “disinformation”?

I don’t know, and I suspect that I’m not alone in my confusion.  I also suspect that disinformation and misinformation are used more as weapons than as descriptions.  The nice thing about calling something disinformation or misinformation is that you don’t have to explain why it’s false or wrong.  You just get to call it false and tell people to ignore it and sometimes even try to shut people up because they’re saying it.

Why Did Polls Get It Wrong Again – Or Did They?

In talking about how well the polls did in the recent US election, John Burn-Murdoch, in a recent article in the Financial Times, said that we all “need to accept that polls deal in fuzzy numbers, not hard numbers.”¹   Which is exactly right, and also not the way too much of the media reports on polls during campaigns. 

While news reports will, almost automatically, recite that the margin of error of this poll or that is 3%, they then immediately go on to talk about candidate A gaining because they are now ahead by two points instead of just one, or that candidate B has slipped from a tie to losing by two points.  None of which, as Mr. Burn-Murdoch says in his article, makes any sense since the margin of error is bigger than any of those numbers. 

Did the “Taranto Principle” Return in 2024?

As I read the comments about the election from various members of the mainstream media, especially their shock at the big win by Donald Trump (quoted in The Wall Street Journal's "Notable & Quotable" on November 7), I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Harris (formerly Biden) team was similarly surprised by the outcome – and if they were, whether they were misled because they had believed what the MSM had been telling them about the campaign.  In other words, did the Harris campaign suffer from the “Taranto effect”?

In 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the original “Swifties,” tried to tell the public about John Kerry’s charges to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971: that American soldiers and sailors had routinely committed war crimes and other atrocities in Vietnam.  But the MSM ignored them and the issue.  James Taranto, then-editor of WSJ.com’s OpinionJournal, hypothesized that the Kerry campaign was misled by the MSM into thinking that they, too, could ignore the issue.  By the time the Kerry campaign realized it couldn’t, it was too late.

Who Is President?

I realize the technical answer is Joe Biden, but the question I am asking is somewhat different.  I’m asking: who is making the decisions, who is running the place?  When the media reports on U.S. efforts to get a ceasefire in Gaza, who is doing that?  Who is deciding the policy on that?  After the failed debate with Donald Trump in June and the interview with George Stephanopoulos that lasted only 22 minutes, it seems pretty clear it is not President Biden.

I don’t know when this happened, or started to happen.  President Biden’s staff has been limiting his public exposure for quite a while and much of the media was not talking about it or trying to figure out why.¹  His condition may have been getting worse for some time.  But regardless of how long it has been, what do we do now?

Israel Is Keeping Its Gaza Assault Secret. Sounds About Right to Me.

The Washington Post has an article today about Israel’s offensive in Gaza that is titled “Early Stages of Israeli ground assault in Gaza shrouded in secrecy”, which I thought was just about right.  I know that Hamas broadcast its terror attack/killing spree on social media as it was happening.  But that was the purpose of Hamas’s attack, publicity and generation of anti-Israeli and antisemitic protests around the world.  Hanas was killing babies, etc., to get Israel to react so that people would then react to Israel’s overreaction (whether real or not).  If Palestinians were killed, it didn’t matter to Hamas, as long as Israel could be seen to overreact.  In fact, the ,more Palestinians killed, the better it was for Hamas’s strategy. 

But, back to The Washinton Post headline: “Early Stages of Israeli ground assault in Gaza shrouded in secrecy.”  I remember back during the Persian Gulf War in 1990/91.  The news media complained that reporters were being censored and they weren’t being allowed to report on U.S. and allied troop movements and locations.  This was back before social media and public satellite coverage, etc., so we were able to keep our troop locations and deployments secret.  This allowed us to swing around the Iraqi right flank with our tanks, disrupting the Iraqi positions and crushing their forces.  Which would not have been doable if the media had been able to broadcast our plans and positions to the world.

So, if the Israelis want to keep their plans and what they are doing as secret as possible, it’s fine with me.  I can wait a couple of weeks to find out what happened.

Ukraine: What Is the US Doing; Is It Enough; How Do We Know?

I try to follow what is going on in Ukraine, including what the United States is doing to help Ukraine and whether we need to do more.  I read articles.  I listen to panel discussions and podcasts.  And I get confused.

Consider whether the US is providing enough military aid to Ukraine and whether we are providing the right military aid.  In a panel discussion Friday morning sponsored by the Atlantic Council, Gen. Philip Breedlove (ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said this about what we are providing (these are my words, not direct quotes):

Liz Cheney, Donald Trump, 2020, and the Republican Party

Liz Cheney was ousted as head of the House Republican Conference last week, mostly (entirely-?) because she wouldn’t sign up for former President Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.  The decision to remove her was taken by a voice vote.  Which was either because almost everybody agreed or because, if one wants to be cynical (which I often find is the best way to look at things, especially politics), people didn’t want to go on the record. 

In any case, here are a few comments on Donald Trump, the 2020 election, and the future of the Republican Party:

“Grifting” for a Cause

Last year the Lincoln Project was a big deal in the mainstream media: a group of Republicans running ads against Donald Trump.  It was big news.  It made the mainstream media feel good.  It was a story they could throw in Trump supporters’ faces. 

Except now, we are finding out there were problems with the Lincoln Project.  Last week, the Associated Press reported on at least ten allegations of harassment (I think sexual harassment) by one of the co-founders of the group.¹  Interestingly, it appears the members of the group’s leadership (or at least some of them) were told about this in June of last year, but the AP only reported it last week.  I guess the AP was busy.

Michael Bloomberg’s Race for President: As If People Needed Another Reason to Doubt the Mainstream Media

With Michael Bloomberg announcing he is going to run for president, the editorial and research wing of his mega-media company has a bit of a problem.  (I think it is fair to call it a “mega-media company” since its annual revenues are over $10 billion.  While most of that money comes from people who subscribe to Bloomberg LP’s business terminals, the editorial and research group has 2700 journalists and analysts.¹  That’s a mega-media company.)

Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement is a problem for Bloomberg LP because Mr. Bloomberg has a policy that journalists who work for his company can’t say anything bad about him.  Mr. Bloomberg explained it last year: “[Q]uite honestly, I don’t want the reporters I’m paying to write a bad story about me.”²  To show you how far Mr. Bloomberg’s definition of a “bad story” goes, the Bloomberg Billionaire List doesn’t include Mr. Bloomberg, even though Forbes says he the eighth richest man in the world.