FACTS DO NOT NEED TO BE OFFICIAL; THERE ARE NO "REAL FACTS"

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

I went to Starbucks this morning to buy a coffee. I wasn't really thinking about anything. I was groggy and I was battling a cold. But as I waited for the barista to serve up my venti bold, I overheard the man behind the espresso machine say to his coworkers: "Wikipedia is written by us. Those aren't real facts."

My mind immediately sprang into action. I really did not care about the man's opinion about Wikipedia. Everyone knows that you need to read Wikipedia with a grain of salt. Its reporting can be unreliable, just like any other source. But I took serious issue with his assertion that Wikipedia does not contain "real facts" because "people like us" write it, as if "regular people" are incapable of reporting "real facts."

I was saddened for two reasons. First, the barista's comment revealed the widespread--and servile--public belief that "facts" must flow from certain "official" sources. Second, it revealed the belief that "regular people" do not deserve credibility when they report "facts."

Let us begin with "facts." More than a year ago, I struggled to formulate a workable definition for "facts." Everyone thinks they know what "facts" are. They think "facts" are "things that actually happened." But it is impossible to really know whether something "actually happened" if you were not there to perceive it. Everyone else must rely on second-hand reports to form an opinion about "what actually happened;" and that opinion may not reflect what "actually happened" at all. Facts intertwine with belief; a person calls something "a fact" as long as he subjectively believes it to be true, even if it is not. A person's belief, too, is a "fact." It is a "fact" to say: "John believes that Mary robbed her mother." It is not necessarily true that Mary robbed her mother. But if John believes it, John's belief about it is "a fact."

Viewing all human existence as a whole, most "facts" are incredibly banal. It is a "fact" that I just moved my eyelid and that I just pursed my lips: I perceived these "acts" through my visual and tactile senses, so they are facts. Facts are rarely newsworthy, and almost never "the stuff of history." Yet many people mistakenly believe that "facts" must be "official." Like the barista, they believe that something is not a "fact" unless some reputable source reports it. To use the barista's term, only certain sources can present "real facts," not plebeian sources like Wikipedia.

What is a "real fact?" How does a "real fact" differ from any other fact? After all, a "fact" is any event, act or condition that is objectively verifiable and perceptible by the human senses. Your own emotional state is a "fact" at this very moment. Whether you're wearing blue jeans right now is a "fact." These are "conditions" and "acts" perceptible by human sense. The New York Times will never report these "facts," but they are still facts. Anyone can recount facts. As human beings, we all can recount our sensory impressions through memory and language. Put simply, the power to recount facts does not require a reputable press pass or an advanced degree.

Facts do not distinguish. There are only "real facts" to the extent that another person chooses to believe them. Source is irrelevant to the inquiry whether something is a fact. Source is only relevant to the question whether a reported fact is credible or reliable.

But the barista confused theses issues in a deeply troubling way. He not only manifested a belief that certain sources were not reliable. He also revealed a belief that certain sources cannot even report "facts" at all. According to the barista's logic, only reputable sources dispense "real facts." Sources like Wikipedia do not. Yet this is pure nonsense. Wikipedia definitely reports "facts." It reports "acts, events and conditions that are objectively verifiable and perceptible by the human senses." True, its reports might contain inaccuracies and falsehoods. But that is a danger inherent in all reporting. And in the end, "facts" are not about "what actually happened," but rather about "what we are willing to believe." Both Wikipedia and the New York Times face the same "factual" dangers every day when they report on matters that occurred beyond their writers' own sensory range. Both Wikipedia and the New York Times ask their readers to believe their words to be facts, no more. In that sense, they are exactly the same.

It is dangerous to believe that only certain sources have the power to dispense "facts." When people believe that only certain "official" reports deserve credibility as "facts," they disempower themselves. They yield their power to judge the truth for themselves by conditioning their belief systems on "official sources." The barista's comment revealed this servile dynamic at work. He demeaned Wikipedia because "regular people" write it, not "official sources." As such, he refused to even believe that it reported a single "real fact," as if any fact were more real than another.

Worse, the barista tacitly acknowledged his inferior station in our society's truth-creating hierarchy. Our society perpetuates the notion that truth can only proceed from certain "official" sources, like news agencies, universities, government offices, courts, churches and science labs. While those sources might deserve credibility in particular circumstances, the ultimate decision whether to believe something is entirely individual. And when people do not do their own research by investigating as many sources as possible, they subject themselves to dominant power systems. They accept some reports as "fact" solely because they flow from some exalted source, not because they verified the reports themselves.

We all can perceive the outside world. We know facts because we perceive them. We can report what we know. When we are honest, we know our word is the truth, even if we are not an "official source." We might even write an article about our knowledge in Wikipedia or some other popular publication.

Yet according to the barista's logic, we do not deserve belief. More substantially, we are not even recounting "real facts," even if we saw them with our own eyes. Only "official sources" can dispense "real facts," not regular people. That is not just weak. That is outright capitulation.

I wish more people would understand that we all can report facts as long as we can perceive and communicate. All facts are "real" as long as we believe them. And we do not have to be news agencies to deserve belief.

BIAS AND PREJUDICE IN THE PRESS : NO STORY IS EVER SIMPLE

AN ESSAY

I read the New York Post for two main reasons. First and foremost, it makes me laugh. The headlines are just flat-out funny. Its staff writes in a nasty, even satirical style to mock celebrities and other visible, well-off folks (invisible tycoons are different story because they are not visible). It also covers local New York City stories quite well. In all these ways, the Post is "populist:" It provides a laugh while dispensing relatively accurate local news.

Still, I read the Post for a second reason: To understand my intellectual opponents. While the Post's generic local coverage is populist and funny, its editorial spirit is neither populist nor funny. In fact, it is terrifyingly biased. That's not to say that the Post is any more biased than another newspaper. Every newspaper has a distinct perspective. But the Post's perspective is extremely right-wing. Bill O'Reilly writes columns in the Opinion section. 'Nuff said.

I like getting my news from as many sources as possible. I understand that human sense does not permit me to directly perceive too much in the world. So I turn to second-hand reporting to fill in the gaps. And because second-hand reporting necessarily reflects the bias of those who perceive things, I expect bias when I read newspapers.

For me, reading the news is as much about learning competing arguments as it is about learning "facts." As a philosophical matter, I have difficulty even understanding what a "fact" is, especially when I have no first-hand knowledge about the matter in issue. News reporting purports to relay "just facts." But in reality, its "facts" reflect interpretation and bias as much as any objective "truth." In that light, I suspect every fact I read in a newspaper. The only things I can confidently learn are the newspaper's biases and arguments.

And what luscious biases I find in the Post. To be fair, all American newspapers espouse a particularly virulent bias against Islam. But the Post takes shortsighted prejudice to a fantastic extreme. For almost a decade now, Americans have wondered why "Muslim extremists" attacked the United States on 9/11. I have always known why: Because Western commercial values--which treasure earthly existence over all things--clash fundamentally with Muslim teachings--which eschew earthly success for spiritual success. The fact that Western powers have long encroached on Muslim territory for commercial gain brings this tension in values to confrontation. In essence, the struggle between the West and Islam is a struggle between competing views of human existence: One grossly secular; the other grossly religious. Both are anathema to one another. Misunderstanding and acrimony are inevitable.

But you won't find that analysis in any American newspaper. Rather, you'll find self-righteous odes to the American way over the Muslim way. It's a colossal exercise in "us vs. them." No newspaper makes an effort to see the debate from the Muslim perspective. Heavens no; that would be treasonous. Instead, American newspapers--especially the Post--fan resentment against the "mortal Muslim enemy" by exulting American values over Muslim ones. In the process, they cast difficult questions in a simplistic light, using prejudice and stereotypes distort reality.

Consider two recent Post articles that illustrate these tactics at work. In the first, the Post reports about a Muslim man who fled the FBI, leading agents on a 90 MPH chase through Queens that culminated in a crash and foot chase on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. See N.Y. Post, Bridge 'Terror' Thug's Allah Cry, Jan. 9, 2010 at 5. The article says that the man--Adis Medunjanin--was a "high school acquaintance" of Najibullah Zazi, the New York student arrested last year for hoarding drugstore hydrogen peroxide in an alleged effort to build a bomb. Id. The FBI staked out his home for months. Finally, Medunjanin just left the house and ran. According to the report, he "praised Allah" in Arabic shortly before striking a car on the bridge. The report also claims he said: "We love death more than you love life!" in Arabic. Id. Finally, it says that authorities first merely charged him with leaving the scene of an accident. Later, they added terror-related charges. Id.

It is not clear how anyone heard these statements. The article does not say how FBI agents could hear what Medunjanin was saying in the instant before he crashed his car. It is also not clear under what circumstances he said "we love death more than you love life."

What is the net effect here? In short, the report leads the uncritical reader to assume that Medunjanin is a terrorist because he "said things in Arabic" and because he praised Allah. These are gross stereotypes. After all, what does the neutral evidence show here? It shows that Medunjanin was a high school acquaintance of a terror suspect six years ago. There is no evidence that they interacted with each other since that time. The FBI surveilled Medunjanin for months. Presumably, they also wiretapped him. The article does not divulge what the FBI may have heard in those wiretaps. All we know is that Medunjanin fled and crashed his car after saying something in Arabic about Allah, life and death. Those details suffice to brand him a terrorist.

That is bias at its worst.

What about presuming people innocent in the United States? What about fairness? How can Medunjanin escape the stigma that will now follow him? I find all these things unfortunate. After all, we are talking about a criminal prosecution for terrorism. That carries severe penalties. Yet the Post here gave Medunjanin an unfair trial before he was even arraigned. In so doing, it revealed the pernicious American bias that pervades our media: It made him a terrorist because he spoke Arabic, had a Muslim name, mentioned Allah and knew a suspected terrorist six years ago.

But is this the only conclusion to draw from the evidence? Perhaps Medunjanin simply "lost it" after being surveilled without reason for so long. And how do we know what he said in the car before he crashed? What if he said something in English, rather than Arabic? Would that have made a difference? What if he had said: "Oh shit, I'm about to crash" in Arabic? Would that still make him a terrorist? Who knows. All I know is that no one ever reports on these difficult questions in the American press--and especially not the Post.

In the second article, the Post again espouses its virulent prejudice toward Muslims. See N.Y. Post, How Did 'Undy Bomber' Get a Visa? Jan. 9, 2010 at p. 19. Columnist Michelle Malkin takes the opportunity to both generalize about Muslims and castigate the Obama administration for not spotting Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before his failed bomb attack on Christmas Day.

Malkin argues that U.S. consular officials should never issue "coveted entrance pass[es]" to "globe-trotting, Nigerian-born nomad[s]" who "buy tickets in cash" without "checking in much baggage." Id. Later, she adds that "unmarried, rootless Muslim male nomads" should never receive U.S. visas, either.

Leaving the practical problems associated with Malkin's consular formula to one side, I find it appalling that she recommends a Federal policy based on invidious religious and ethnic stereotypes. After all, Malkin says that "Muslim male nomads" should not be allowed into the United States. Neither should "Nigerian-born" nomads, or "rootless" people, or "globe-trotters," or "unmarried people" or "people who fly with little baggage." These are not workable standards. And they are certainly not standards to which the United States should subscribe, a country that has always prided itself on diversity and equality. It would be awkward at best for the U.S. State Department to advertise America's openness to the world by saying: "Come one, come all…unless you're Muslim, a nomad, unmarried or Nigerian-born."

Hell, I'm unmarried, I fly with little baggage and I sometimes globe-trot to Europe. I shouldn't get a visa, either. Imagine if I was Nigerian: I'd really be in trouble.

In short, Malkin wants prejudice on a governmental scale. Yet her anti-Muslim views find strong support in the Post. Although Malkin's position is extreme, her basic bias against Muslims finds constant expression throughout the American press. In that light, I wonder why the Arab world casts a suspicious eye on America? Could it be that its media routinely mocks them and judges them as terrorists before the fact? I wonder.

We will not solve the tensions between the Muslim world and the West until we stop viewing Muslims as one-dimensional villains. The problems between the Muslim world and the West are understandable. We must merely examine the sharp contrast between the two value systems to see why problems persist. Unfortunately, newspapers do not like talking about value systems. Newspapers do not analyze values; they simply voice them. But the confrontation between the West and the Muslim world will continue until the West tries to understand why its values contrast so strongly with Muslim values.

Sadly, I do not think that's going to happen any time soon. Stubborn self-righteousness inheres in Western thought. And I think the West would rather fight a permanent war against a religion-based civilization than deign to comprehend it.

TRUTH IN THE NEWS?

AN ESSAY

Last week, I read an interesting little article in the New York Daily News. See L.I. dad slain uptown, N.Y. Daily News, July 17, 2009. Newspaper reporting interests me not so much for what the writers disclose, but rather for what they do not disclose. Ironically, newspapers ask readers to accept their reports as “truth,” even though close inspection reveals myriad unanswered questions in every article. Even the smallest, most insignificant news stories often conceal luscious “subtexts.” In the past, I rarely thought about subtext. Now that I’ve gained some experience in life, I see that subtext is far more important than printed words. In the end, I never fully trust a news report. I simply use it as a basis from which to draw my own conclusions, applying my own experience and memory to the “facts” presented. In short, I do not rely on the news for “truth.”

So how exactly does “subtext” work? And how do news outlets warp perceptions? Let’s examine L.I. dad slain uptown. It’s a short article. The reporters tell us that a “motivational speaker from Valley Stream, Long Island” named Jeffrey Locker, 52, drove into Manhattan last Wednesday afternoon. He was white. We know this because the News includes a picture next to the headline. We then learn that two young “neighborhood people” in East Harlem (a largely black and Hispanic neighborhood) saw Locker walking into a Deli on Second Avenue at around 3 A.M. Immediately thereafter, they saw him exit the Deli carrying a bottle of water and “some Trojan condoms.” One witness told the reporters that he looked “cool, relaxed.” Two hours later, the same “young people” saw Locker in the driver’s seat of his 2007 Dodge Magnum. On closer inspection, they saw that his hands were tied behind him and there was a cord around his neck. He was dead. According to the “police report,” he had been “strangled and stabbed.”

Upon reading these “facts,” I made my own conclusions. Here was an affluent white man with a successful career as a “motivational speaker.” He lived in the suburbs with his wife and three children. So what could possibly draw him to East Harlem at 3 A.M., park his station wagon on the street, then buy condoms and water? The News does not speculate. But is it not obvious? It is a well-known urban truism that affluent white men often drive into “bad neighborhoods” for drugs and sex. They patronize prostitutes. They buy crack cocaine. They pay for all the “wild things” they cannot get in their “respectable neighborhoods.” They indulge. Then they get on the parkway and head back to their wives and “respectable lives.” Their wives inevitably ask: “Why are you so late?” To which comes the familiar reply: “Oh, I got held over at work.” Why else would this man have been East Harlem? And why else would he have bought condoms? To make water balloons?

You might ask how I know this. My answer: I’ve seen it happen. When I lived in Chicago, there was a “skid row” near my apartment a few blocks from some busy nightclubs. These clubs drew the seedy as well as the trendy. Not everyone went to the clubs; in fact, most came simply to “mill around the streets.” Some preyed on drunk kids staggering home. Women donned high heels and hot pants to attract “business.” And then there was a cadre of wig-wearing black transvestites who flagged down cars and hopped into passenger seats. Most of these cars were “suburban:” station wagons, family-edition SUVs, sports cars. The drivers were all white. They were suburban men who came into the city for “exciting hookups” thinking no one back home would ever know. In short, I know from experience that white men often visit cities in order to get “exciting sex” that they never get at home during their “respectable lives.”

I could not ignore experience when reading about Jeffrey Locker. Nor could I ignore my cynical assumption that suburban white men do not go to poor black neighborhoods for saintly purposes. Perhaps the News did not explicitly mention why Locker was in East Harlem at 3 A.M., but expected readers to make their own conclusions. That may be so. But the report contained some other “facts” that cut against this interpretation. These “facts” try to paint Locker as an “innocent victim,” not someone who knowingly put himself in a compromising position. For example, the article quotes Locker’s wife: “He was going into the city and coming home. He was supposed to be coming home…He was supposed to come home. He wasn’t there by choice.” See L.I. dad slain uptown, N.Y. Daily News, second column, July 17, 2009. It also quotes Locker’s mother-in-law: “He probably trusted someone…He was a very trusting person. That’s probably how it happened. You could sell him the Brooklyn bridge.” Id. Finally, it quotes a neighbor who “often took bike rides with Locker:” “He was a nice, really great guy…He was a really wonderful father.” Id. at third column.

Was the News mocking these people? Or was it genuinely trying to suggest that Jeffrey Locker was a “great father” who was not in East Harlem “by choice,” but rather because he was a “trusting person?” True, these people knew Locker from his “respectable life” in Valley Stream. They likely had no idea that he had secret sexual desires, or at least refused to acknowledge them. But they are the only people quoted. They did not even quote a neutral police source that might have shed some objective light on the reasons why a suburban white male was alone in a “bad neighborhood” at 3 A.M. on a weeknight.

If the News expects its readers to think that Jeffrey Locker was completely innocent and that some “evil minority person” took advantage of him because he was “too trusting,” then it is both racist and naïve. Jeffrey Locker was in the city because he wanted to patronize some prostitutes in East Harlem. He would not have bought condoms if sex were not his goal. He thought he would park his car, buy some condoms at the local bodega, invite some hookers into the car and do what he came to do. But he was playing a dangerous game. He was in a risky position by choice. “Reasonable people” do not go to “high-crime” areas late at night, let alone park expensive cars there. Apparently someone saw him as a mark and attacked him. We cannot know exactly why it happened, but it is not very surprising. It was a crime of opportunity. And it simply defies belief to suggest that someone “seduced” Jeffrey Locker. Did someone “entice him” on his way home to Long Island, convince him to drive all the way uptown, park his car in a “bad neighborhood,” then kill him? That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Moreover, the unbiased eyewitness statements contradict that scenario. According to the “neighborhood people” who saw him, Locker was “cool” and “relaxed” as he walked from a Deli carrying condoms. That does not sound like some overly trusting, misled soul to me.

In sum, this was a white suburban man who was unsatisfied with his boring sexual life at home, so he went into the city for some fast, anonymous sex with black and Hispanic prostitutes. This was a man with secrets. He was leading a double life. To his neighbor, he was a “really nice guy” and “a great father” who “rode bikes.” But the “neighborhood people” saw his dark side. Who knows how many times he had gone to East Harlem in the past? All this was clear to me when I read the article. I saw a sexually frustrated white middle-aged suburban man using lower-income city dwellers to play out fantasies that he could not indulge in his “respectable life.” It is not complicated. It may be embarrassing and pathetic, but not complicated.

Yet the article reported none of these things. To fully grasp what happened in Jeffrey Locker’s case, I had to apply my own experience and analysis. I could not rely solely on the information in the report. Still, newspapers claim to present “unbiased fact” so that we learn the “truth” about “what happened” in particular events. Newspapers report on “matters of public concern.” Murders concern the public. Nonetheless, the article about Jeffrey Locker does not remotely report the “truth.” No one will ever know the “truth” except Jeffrey Locker and the person who killed him in his car. A few witnesses saw Locker two hours before he died. Their sensory recollections provide us some insight about his motivations and why he was in East Harlem. But they know nothing about his final moments.

Despite the News' best efforts—and every reporting company like it—we can never really grasp the “truth” about events we do not perceive. At best, we can interpret what “may have happened” based upon our own experience, memory, intuition, impressions and emotions. When we do that, we do not actually perceive “what happened,” nor do we come any closer to the “truth” as an absolute matter. Rather, we create truth in our own minds. We hear recollections. We read details. We digest reports. These things interact with our own experience to create something we believe. We see events in our mind’s eye even if we never saw them with our real eyes. We think these mental images are “truth.” In fact, they are nothing more than interpretations based on our own experience. To that extent, truth is entirely subjective. And because it depends on experience, no two people will ever precisely agree on what is true. After all, we all draw on unique experiences to guide our interpretations.

At best, we can agree on certain “indisputable details” when analyzing events. Nothing can replace actual sense. But our society demands “truth” about events, even when no one was there to observe them. Our news media answers this demand. In so doing, it assumes a central role in our consciousness. If we cannot be present to experience every event that concerns us as a society, at least we can receive some information upon which to make our own conclusions. Still, how many people really draw their own conclusions from news reporting? After all, as the Locker case shows, news reporters have the power to selectively publish certain details about past events. Those details channel interpretation. Not everyone has the same life experience to tease out the subtleties concealed in a story. In fact, news stories lure the reader into feeling that he is reading “the pure truth” about a past event. But this is delusional. The mere fact that a newspaper describes an event does not make it true. Rather, the fact that a newspaper describes an event should make the reader even more suspicious about “what actually happened.”

I do not rely on any news media for “truth.” But I do not completely discount it, either. After all, news outlets perform an essential role in disseminating details about events. Without them, we would have no information at all about “things that happen.” Beyond that, however, it is up to me to sort out what “actually happened” based upon my own life experience. It is not easy; interpretation never is. Yet if we simply credit everything we hear in the news, we lend ourselves to deception far more than “truth.” After all, we humans have very limited sensory range. Our senses provide the best pathway to “truth” about the external world. Unfortunately, we can use them to grasp a comparatively minuscule proportion of all the things that happen during our lifetimes. For everything else, we depend on language, second-hand reports, stories, memories, distortions, recollections, biased impressions and legend. In all these cases, “we weren’t there” to perceive the event reported. Nor can we really say whether it “really happened.” We can choose simply to believe it did—or did not. And even then, we see something in our mind’s eye that might be totally different than what “actually happened.”

Is there any way to sift through language, fragmented details, memory and bias to find “truth?” Is it a hopeless endeavor? Or worse, do we just reveal our own individual biases when we try to “create truth?”