The View from Right Field

What’s Worse? Fake News or the Cure

I find the panic about “fake news” a little overdone.  I understand there are a lot of news stories out there that aren’t true, but it’s been that way for a long time.  The National Enquirer has been at my supermarket checkout lane for decades.  That’s pretty fake news. 

If by fake news, you mean lies, they’ve been around for a long time, too.  Hitler lied about the Jews.¹  Stalin lied about Katyn Forest.  Vladimir Putin lies all the time.  Crimea.  Ukraine.  The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight 17.  Anybody who believes Vladimir Putin isn’t paying attention.²

It could be, with the Internet, fake news today travels a little faster and gets a broader distribution, but so does everything else. 

Any Publicity Is Good – As Long As They Spell Your Name Right

My father-in-law used to say that, for politicians, any publicity was good publicity – as long as they spelled your name right.  It didn’t matter what the article said about you.  If they spelled your name right, it was good publicity.

While my father-in-law passed away long before Donald Trump became political, I think he may have gotten President Trump – and the media – exactly right.  Since President Trump entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination three years ago, the media has been “All Trump, All the Time.”  The media loved then-candidate Trump – especially the TV and cable networks – during the Republican primaries.  While other candidates were pretty much ignored, Donald Trump was covered 24-7.  Because people would watch and ratings mean money.

An Idea for Less Stress About the News

Richard Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Economics, was asked what somebody should do if they woke up, turned on the TV, and found that the stock market had fallen by three percent.  Dr. Thaler’s advice was simple: “Change channels.  Turn the show off.”¹

Dr. Thaler’s investment advice is pretty simple:

“Whenever anyone asks me for investment advice, I tell them to buy a diversified portfolio heavily tilted toward stocks, especially if they are young, and then scrupulously avoid reading anything in the newspaper aside from the sports section.”²

He said crossword puzzles are also okay, but you need to stay away from the financial section.

Fact-Checking President Trump: Does It Really Make Any Difference?

The Washington Post fact-checked Donald Trump’s interview with The New York Times on Thursday and came up “24 false or misleading claims” “in a 30-minute interview.”  The Post is constantly fact-checking President Trump.  In fact, the Post does this so often, I sort of wonder what the purpose of it is anymore.

Clearly, anybody who wants to know realizes that President Trump gets a lot of things wrong.  I don’t know whether he is lying (in the sense he knows what is right and he is saying something else anyway) or he really thinks what he is saying is right (even though it isn’t).  I think I would rather that it was the former, i.e., he knows what the facts are but he says something else anyway, than that he really doesn’t know what is correct.  But I understand people can differ on that point.

Sexual Harassment in the DOJ and FBI Under Which President?

The Washington Post published a lengthy article yesterday on sexual harassment in the Department of Justice and the FBI.  According to the Post:

“The Justice Department has ‘systemic’ problems in how it handles sexual harassment complaints, with those found to have acted improperly often not receiving appropriate punishment, and the issue requires ‘high level action,’ according to the department’s inspector general.

You Call It Obstructionism. I Call It Standing for Principle.

Throughout the last six years of Barack Obama’s presidency, Democrats complained about Republican “obstructionism.”  They complained that Republicans wouldn’t vote for anything President Obama proposed and that he was forced to do things on his own, via executive order, agreements as opposed to treaties with other countries, etc., because the Republicans wouldn’t work with him.

Now the situation is reversed.  A Republican (or at least somebody who isn’t a Democrat) is president, and it is the Democrats who are united in opposition to anything he (or Republicans in Congress) proposes.  But now it’s apparently not obstructionism.  Now it’s standing for principle.  Because what Donald Trump/the Republicans are proposing is really bad, and he/they won’t agree to what the Democrats consider a reasonable compromise.

The Problem With Facts: We Honestly Do Have Our Own Facts

The Economist’s “Word of the Year” for 2016 was “post-truth.”  Fact-checkers at major media outlets are doing a land office business.  Concern about “fake news” is all the rage.  The answer seems pretty simple.  As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  So the solution to the whole post-truth/fake news problem is to force people to get the facts right.

Except it’s not that simple. Tim Harford, the author of The Undercover Economist and columnist for the Financial Times, wrote an article in FT Weekend last month on “The problem with facts.”  The thing I found most interesting was this section, which is not on how our allegiances, or the “tribes” to which we belong, affect our opinions, but on how our allegiances affect our facts:

Thwarting, Roadblocks, and Obstructionism

As the new Congress is sworn in, and Donald Trump awaits his inauguration later this month, The New York Times reports on the Democrats’ plan:

“But as Republicans plan to reserve the first 100 days of Congress for their more partisan goals, Democrats are preparing roadblocks. …

[O]n many issues, Senate Democrats — including their new leader, Chuck Schumer of New York — are expected to pivot from postelection carping to active thwarting, using complex Senate procedures and political messaging to slow or perhaps block elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda.”

What’s More Important? What Russia Does Or What Donald Trump Tweets in Response?

My second post-Christmas post on pre-Christmas things:

On Friday and Saturday of last week, Donald Trump was accused of starting a new nuclear arms race when he tweeted on Thursday:

“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

Much of the MSM (i.e., mainstream media) went ballistic.¹  The Chicago Tribune’s headline read “‘Arms race’ rings alarms; Trump’s words on nukes, a shift in policy, shakes [sic] globe”.²  The headline in The Wall Street Journal said “Trump Supports Strengthening of Nuclear Arsenal”.²  The articles in both newspapers, as well as The New York Times, included quotes from anti-nuclear weapons groups, accusing Mr. Trump of threatening to start a new nuclear arms race.  (The Tribune story called the group it quoted “non-partisan”.  Yeah, right.)

President Obama on Fox News. What a Change from 2009.

Chris Wallace had an exclusive interview with President Obama on Fox News on Sunday.  Which is fascinating if you remember the Obama administration’s efforts to blackball Fox News in 2009. 

In October of 2009, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod told George Stephanopoulos, on ABC’s “This Week”:   

“[FOX News] is not really a news organization. … [I]t's not even their commentators, but a lot of their news program.  It's really not news, it's pushing a point of view …."

Mr. Axelrod went on to say that ABC News should do what the White House was doing and not treat FOX News as a legitimate news organization:

“[T]he bigger thing is other news organizations like yours, ought not to treat them that way.  And we're not going to treat them that way ….”