The Age of Unreason

Is reason dead? Has critical thinking lost credence in the world today? I fear it may have. It seems that “the public,” that amorphous mass of unwashed, uneducated peons, has lost interest in facts, considering them less important than what sounds good.

I suppose that’s a natural result of depending on television for our news. A successful network can devote only a limited time to news, and that limited time has to include ALL of the current events that the producers deem to be “newsworthy.” Those constraints place fairly harsh limits on the amount of time a news anchor can devote to any one story. That has conditioned us to accept a 10-second “sound bite” as a legitimate and complete statement of position on an issue. Yes, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but in TV news, a video of someone’s face adds little to the message. The message itself is usually short enough that it would be considered a summary paragraph in a newspaper article or formal essay.

In such a limited format, there’s no time to present details and supporting facts. In addition, the journalists love to report controversy, which means that instead of reporting facts on which to base our decisions, they report the sound bites and bullet statements from “both” sides – even if there are more than two points of view to be found. And to increase the friction, they often show the most extreme supporters on each side, guaranteeing maximum vitriol and malice in their claims of the evils of their opponents.

And THAT’S where the problems get even worse. The issue and the proponents become completely polarized. The spokespeople, trying to sway the maximum number of people in their limited time in the spotlight, turn their sound bites away from statements of fact toward emotional pleas, misleading claims, and personal attacks on the opposition.

Over the next several days, I’m going to take a look at one such issue – illegal immigration. I had originally intended to cover several of the more obvious simplified arguments within this single entry…but I discovered I had too much to say on them. Rather than simplify and shorten my own arguments, I’m asking you, my loyal readers (both of you) to follow with me over the next week or so.

Edit, 28JUN2007 - I lost interest in the examples. Sorry. If you really want them, let me know. Moving on now.

Get the Facts!

I read a story by reporter Kim Barker in the Chicago Tribune yesterday. It started with an anecdote about a deployed Soldier going through a divorce during the four-month extension on his original one-year deployment. The implication, of course, is that the extension CAUSED the divorce, but that is not specifically stated. The article continues by mentioning three other pending divorces and various other “family” problems the Soldiers in his unit are experiencing.

The article goes on to discuss the reason for longer deployments, and asserts that these extensions will hurt Army retention and recruitment, possibly even leaving the all-volunteer Army “permanently damaged.” As evidence, it includes a mention of a Pentagon survey of over 1700 Soldiers and Marines: “A survey…said longer combat deployments could hurt troops' morale and mental health.”

That may all be true. Extended deployments may be causing broken families, reduced retention, problems in recruiting, lower morale, reduced Army effectiveness, and maybe even loss of hair and poor taste in neckties. I AM sure, however, that this so-called “news story” doesn’t provide any useful information to back up the hints, assertions, and innuendo.

For starters, a survey of troops is capturing their opinion on the subject. Unless the respondents were all military psychologists, psychiatrists, and chaplains, then their untrained, uninformed opinions are pretty much meaningless. I haven’t seen the wording of the actual questions the troops answered…but from the brief mention, it sounds much like asking 1700 United Auto Workers “Would increasing the work day to nine hours with no extra pay damage morale in your workplace?” Why don’t we have the numbers on USEFUL questions?

• What is the divorce rate within the Army and Marine Corps now, as compared to seven years ago?
• What is the military divorce rate as compared to the nation as a whole, both now and pre-9/11?
• What is the military divorce rate compared to the divorce rate of other high-stress jobs, like air-traffic controller or police officer? Or compared to other jobs that involve family separation, like traveling salesman or long-haul truck driver? Again, both now and seven years ago?
• What is the military divorce rate within six months before and after a deployment, as compared to within six months of a one-year unaccompanied assignment to Korea?
• What is the Army-wide retention rate, then and now? How many troops are choosing to stay in? How many are reenlisting within a year or two after getting out?

Those would all be useful statistics in determining the damage that long deployments are doing to the force, and I suspect that all of them are available to a hard-working and moderately intelligent news reporter. They might even support the tone and implications of this editorial-masked-as-journalism – though my recollection of statistics in other reports doesn’t quite match up with that. But with no truly useful information, this story is a waste of newsprint or electrons.

I brought up this issue not to criticize Ms. Barker. Her news story seems to me to be fairly typical of journalism today – a heavy emphasis on anecdotes and emotional appeals, while minimalizing hard facts. Fortunately, I’ve found several resources that encourage critical thinking.

• Snopes.com is the best resource I know to combat “I’ve heard…,” “They say…,” and “Everybody knows…” Mr. and Mrs. Mikkelson research rumors on nearly any subject, especially those that deluge your e-mail inbox. They depend on and link you to multiple and reliable sources to confirm or deny the truth behind the rumors – and when they can do neither, they tell you their best opinion, clearly identifying it as such.
• Mythbusters is an extraordinarily entertaining TV show. Adam and Jamie are remarkably good at portraying themselves as overgrown kids with truly wonderful toys, up to and including a cement mixer full of explosives. But behind the explosions and laughs, they clearly demonstrate the key steps of the scientific method – propose a hypothesis, develop an experiment to test it, and keep an open mind about the results. They have debunked a lot of what “everyone knows,” and surprised themselves with things they were certain would never work. And besides, they usually manage to destroy something in a spectacular manner by the end of the show.
• The Skeptics Society has a variety of publications – the two I’m most familiar with are the Skepticality podcast and the Skeptic e-newsletter. I’m a little behind on the podcast…I started with their archived episodes, and have only gotten as far as August 2005. At any rate, both of them include interviews, news items, book reviews, and other tidbits, with people such as Adam Savage (Mythbusters), James Randi (The Amazing Randi, debunker of psychics), and Michael Shermer (author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Science of Good and Evil). They tend to focus on atheism/agnosticism vs. religion and spirituality, especially in areas like the Intelligent Design/Evolution debate, and “psychic phenomena.” So far, their underlying attitude is a bit too self-righteous and self-congratulatory for my taste, but the information and arguments they provide more than makes up for it.
• NPR provides another useful podcast – Science Friday. These are recordings of the weekly radio show, presenting science news and headlines. The host, Ira Flatow, frequently brings in guests with differing viewpoints, providing a genteel debate that often serves to bring out more truth than a newsreader could manage alone. He also takes calls from surprisingly intellectual and well-informed listeners with often insightful questions – I assume the callers are well-screened, but the screening process does not appear to filter out reasoned disagreement.
• Scott Adams writes The Dilbert Blog. It may not truly belong on this list, as I find some of his writings to have more certainty than the evidence supports. But he frequently comes up with brilliantly bizarre looks at current events that can make you think about them much harder than you normally might. He often proposes solutions to “unsolvable” problems (like the Middle East) that initially draw a dismissive laugh…but then cause you to struggle to find the flaw that makes them unworkable. Reading the “comments” sections will also show you dozens of examples of fuzzy thinking. Plus, of course, he’s frequently funny.
• STATS.org – This site, more than any other, inspired this blog entry. Affiliated with George Mason University, the Statistical Assessment Service analyzes news stories to identify bad science, misleading statistics, poor research, and deliberate misinformation. Reading the articles on the site has made me much more suspicious about the articles I read elsewhere…and that suspicion and skepticism enables me to more easily spot the missing facts. That, in my opinion, is a key skill for any would-be informed citizen.

As Robert Heinlein said in “Time Enough For Love” - “What are the facts? Again and again and again--what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"

Even if the journalists won’t give them to you.

Same Old, Same Old

I recently saw a quote from Bill Maher:
“I feel like the troops have this dysfunctional, abusive relationship with George Bush. The more he mistreats them, the more they seem to like him…why do they still like George Bush?”

Well, first off, not all of us do. The military is not some monolithic structure in which every member thinks alike – many of us disagree with current policies, and many of us voted against President Bush in one or both of his elections. But let’s set that aside for the moment. The real point is that this “dysfunctional, abusive relationship” is nothing new to us…and certainly didn’t start when Bush was elected. Where the public sees mistreatment of the military, we see nothing but status quo.

The newspapers report that Walter Reed is a disaster area, in desperate need of repair. We see our barracks rooms, with “work order submitted” tags on faucets and light fixtures, missing window screens and barely-functional air conditioning. We make copies of the weekly maintenance log for our trucks, so we don’t have to write “parts on order” over and over again. We see the worn carpet in our offices, the patches on our tents, the empty supply cabinets. Building 18 was a horribly extreme example, and the Commander and First Sergeant were quite properly relieved of duty – but it was a matter of degree, not something new.

We see that the outpatient clinics and the VA are mishandling paperwork, denying valid claims, and causing huge delays in processing. We remember that VA hospitals have ALWAYS been overfilled, underfinanced, and overloaded with administrators – look at any TV show that portrayed a VA hospital, anytime since 1970. We remember all of the paperwork our unit clerks have lost, the underpayments that took months to resolve, the overpayments that came out of our paychecks with no notice. We remember our spouses dialing over and over starting at 7:25 to try to get through when the same-day appointment line opened at 7:30…and giving up at 8:00 after 30 minutes of busy signals, because they knew the appointments would all be full.

We feel the shame of Abu Ghraib, cheer when the guards are brought to justice…and feel rage when we see their senior leaders escape unscathed. But we remember a Private in 1990 who left a round in his weapon, was caught when he cleared his rifle into a safety pit designed for that purpose, and it went off, and he lost a rank…and a Captain in the same unit who fired his pistol through the floor of a bus, and finished his deployment with a Silver Star. We remember junior Soldiers drummed out of the service for a DUI…and more senior Soldiers who were promoted within six months after getting one. We remember the shame of My Lai…and the further shame of the cover-ups…and the rage that the senior officers who set the command climate, and orchestrated the cover-ups were left out of the courts-martial.

We hear people screaming that we don’t have sufficient body armor, vehicle armor, mine-clearing equipment. We agree…but we know that despite the deficiencies, we are the best-equipped military in the world, better equipped than even U.S. forces in any previous war. And we mutter to ourselves, “The mission comes first,” and we go out to accomplish it.

We groan at the thought of extended deployments, keeping us away from family for an extra three months. But we remember our assignments and training from before the war, when a typical career could easily include three one-year tours in Korea, 18 months away from home in leadership or MOS training, half a dozen or more training exercises every year. Even without deployments, a 20-year career might require a cumulative seven years or more away from home. An extra three months is just more of the same.

I suspect, though, that the main “mistreatment” Bill Maher would bring up is sending us out to fight an unjust war. But war is our business. It isn’t our job to decide if the evidence of WMDs is sufficient to justify an invasion. It isn’t our job to decide if we have enough troops to do the job, or if our battle-focused training will still be effective when the mission changes to police work. We know better than to say “We’re just following orders,” but when our civilian leadership decides war is necessary, well, that’s a lawful order. We salute and move out.

We don’t see sending us to war as disrespect, either. If anything, President Bush and his advisors may have had too MUCH respect for us, overestimating what we could do, even when GEN Shinseki and others advised them of the facts. And while we realize that any politician is capable of lying, we see sincerity in President Bush’s statements of support. Anecdotes of his visits to deployed or wounded troops make the rounds, and his off-camera attitude seems to reflect his on-camera speeches. Anecdotes of other politicians make the rounds, too, and give the lie to their speeches of support.

Yes, we’re tired of deployments. We’re tired of poor support and mediocre medical care. We’re tired of getting shot at. We’re particularly tired of attending the funerals of friends. But none of this is really new to us, and none of it is only six years old. Don’t expect us to blame the current incumbent for problems that we’ve suffered for decades, through Presidents and Congresses of both parties. It isn’t our fault that none of you noticed until now.

Is Anyone Surprised?

It appears my guess that the British sailors were abused and coerced into giving false confessions has been confirmed. I am gratified to see that the Royal Navy does not cave in to captors as easily as the Iranians claimed. However, the 15 sailors and marines – and their families – have my most profound sympathies for the experiences they endured. It is most unfortunate that the Iranian people will only hear the lies of their government, and not the truth now revealed.

I also feel sure that someone will soon compare the treatment of the British sailors to the treatment of U.S. prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. They will further compare the falsehoods the Iranians publicized to the errors (or possibly even lies) about weapons of mass destruction that led to our invasion of Iraq. Let me point out a few differences. Any mistreatment of our own prisoners has been used to acquire real intelligence, not as a publicity stunt, in an effort to defend our country. Those prisoners have not been exposed to publicity, nor required to betray their countries or beliefs in front of their own people and the world. And most important of all, the errors and evils of our government are regularly revealed to our citizens through a free press, providing the opportunity for our citizens to change our government in response.

A Little Privacy, Please?

I heard on the radio this morning that Jennifer Anniston invited Brad Pitt’s parents for Thanksgiving dinner. Angelina Jolie found out about it and e-mailed “Jen” to complain about her interfering with family matters.

Okay, first of all, I so VERY don’t care, and I’d really rather not have to hear about their personal lives when I should be hearing music. But a thought occurred to me – how did the gossip columnists find out all this? There was a private phone call – do they have the phones tapped? And a private e-mail – are they hacking the mail servers? Maybe the stars’ personal assistants overheard and passed on the gossip without their employers’ knowledge? And weren’t immediately fired?

No. The gossip columnists found out because at least one of the stars decided it would be good to get their name in the paper again. They crave the publicity, and they apparently don’t mind baring every intimate aspect of their personal lives as long as they get the attention. I suppose it is possible that the three people in this famous little triangle really are suffering through a bitter ongoing feud. Or perhaps they conference-call once in awhile to discuss what the next fascinating plot twist should be, and whose PR agent gets to make the press release this week. Or maybe they depend on an outside scriptwriter for their public “personal” life just as they do for their lines on the big screen. Anything is possible – but regardless of the reality behind the stories, the only proper treatment for an adult making childish efforts to get your attention is to ignore them until they learn it doesn’t work. It is unfortunate that their target audience can’t resist their spoon-fed gossip. Until the great mass of the public gets tired of it, the rest of us will be forced to learn more than we ever wanted about the semi-private life of Hollywood stars.

Figures Don't Lie...

My son apparently developed an interest in the world around him, and has started watching CNN Headline News in the morning before school. That’s certainly not something I want to discourage…but it has the unfortunate side effect of forcing me to face the world before I’m fully awake. Ah, well, we all make sacrifices for our children, right?

Today, CNN was telling us about Congress’ recent approval to continue the Bush tax cuts, as they were modified last year. They posted a graphic showing the average savings for the cuts in various income brackets – taxpayers making $1,000,000 a year and up will save an average of over $42,000, while taxpayers making less than $25,000 a year will save only $9. There were two other brackets shown, but I was unable to locate them on CNN.com – at any rate, they clearly indicated that the rich would be getting richer, while the poor gained almost nothing.

On further reflection, though, I’m pretty sure that’s misleading. After all, how much taxes are those poor people paying? Looking at the 2005 Form 1040A, I see that for a married couple with two kids making $25,000 a year, $22,800 of that is exempt from taxes. That’s the standard exemption plus the deduction for four dependents. The tax bill on that $2,200 remaining is $279. Then, of course, they get the Child Tax Credit of $2,000 to apply against that $279 – that credit doesn’t allow for negative numbers to be paid to the taxpayer, but it does kill that $279. In fact, for our family of four to actually come up with a positive tax bill, they have to make at least $41,000 – and then they’ll have to pay $4.00. Yes, that’s four dollars. Anything less than that, and they get back every penny that was withheld from them. And that’s not with any fancy tax strategies… that’s just the basics.

Note that I didn’t include Earned Income Credit or the Additional Child Credit – those programs actually pay the taxpayer above and beyond what they put into withholding, so any changes in the tax plan that let them keep more of that money count, for me, as a savings. But as far as I know, this plan didn't make changes to those programs.

Of course, not everyone is in a family of four. For a family of three, you have to make $29,600 (for a married couple with one child) or $33,700 (for a single parent with two children) to pay a single penny in taxes. Even a single parent with one child has to make $23,700 to pay any taxes at all. No wonder the average savings for incomes under $25,000 is so low…you can’t cut the price below zero!

I don’t want to play around with the other end of the spectrum, the folks pulling down a million or more a year. The top bracket is 35%, so they should be paying somewhere near $350,000 on that million (a little less – they get deductions and exemptions, too)…but we all know that various stupid tax tricks can reduce that number considerably, and I’m not familiar enough with tax law to make a reasonable guess on those numbers. But when you start looking at averages at the top of the scale, you run into the skewing that results from people at the extremes. The average savings in that bracket is $42,000 a year…but if nine multi-millionaires are saving $1000 a year (that’s a third of a percent of their tax bill), while one Bill Gates is saving $411,000 a year (on his billion dollar tax bill, so that’s one-twentieth of a percent), then that works out to that average of $42,000 a year, while still being an insignificant savings for all of them! (Yes, I made up the numbers for Bill Gates – I couldn’t find any numbers on what he makes from investments and capital gains, and I couldn’t properly account for his incredibly huge charitable donations. Replace his name with the multi-billionaire of your choice. Or do your own math, and tell me what you came up with.)

I didn’t check out the Fox News version of the tax story. Somehow, I suspect that they focused on the percentage savings for various tax brackets, showing how much greater a savings it was for lower- and middle-income people…while still being just as misleading. I think all news organizations that display statistics of any sort should be required to provide a full disclosure of where they got their numbers and how they did their calculations – they could post it on their web site, or whatever. I expect we’d see a lot less statistics. But since most people can't or won't do simple math anymore, the press can get away with whatever spin they want to put on the numbers.

When Generals Speak

There’s been a number of former flag officers (that’s Generals and Admirals, for the military-speak challenged out there) speaking out about Secretary Rumsfeld and his handling of the war in Iraq. And of course, there’s been a flood of editorials and stories in the press about them. While I don’t intend to discuss my opinions on their claims and demands here, I thought that some of what the press is saying deserves a little explanation.

Many pundits have claimed that the number of Generals speaking out is insignificant, and that they obviously represent a fringe element that can be ignored. I have to disagree. There is a deeply-engrained tradition in the military NOT to speak out against our political leaders regarding military matters, even after we return to our civilian lives. Remember, the principle of civilian control of the military is written in the Constitution. It is taught in detail in each service academy and ROTC class. Every unit orderly room has pictures posted of the entire Chain of Command – and the people at the very top of that chain are the ones without uniforms, who nonetheless rate a salute from any soldier that they encounter. In addition to their civilian duties, they are by law and custom our superior officers, ranking above even the most senior General or Admiral.

For six retired officers to break that tradition over a single issue in such a short time is a major shock to those of us who live in that environment. It forces me to take their concerns very, very seriously.

I read another editorial that complains that the Generals took the cowardly path by waiting until they retired to make their statements. The writer claims that the officers were protecting their “sweet retirement packages” by waiting until they were safely out of the service to speak up. Again, I have to disagree.

First of all, that “sweet retirement package” isn’t all that sweet. Let’s take a Major General “Smith”, in charge of a Division. He’s effectively the CEO of a company employing as many as 20,000 people. His annual pay comes in at around $180,000. Yes, he also gets some benefits – travel allowances, expense accounts, and so on, much like any other senior executive does. For comparison, I found that the Goldman-Sachs Group employs about 19,500 people. Their CEO, Henry Paulson, Jr., made out a little better than our MG Smith – he made $21,400,000 last year, or almost 120 TIMES as much. Plus, of course, whatever expense accounts come with THAT position. Of course, MG Smith gets the bonus of getting shot at. But we were discussing retirement pay…well, a military retirement is not a “Golden Parachute.” MG Smith, after 30 years of service, will get 75% of his base pay. When you take out the various allowances that are not part of the base pay, and then take away another 25%, that works out to around $102,000 a year…before taxes. I’ll grant you, that’s a significant chunk of change, but odds are pretty good that any random Major General can get out and make over a million a year by working for a lobbyist, or contracting firm, or maybe taking a CEO slot at a smaller company. Even half a mil is a pretty impressive pay raise, even if his retirement pay gets taken away at the last minute.

So our Generals did not hold their tongues to protect their financial future. Why did they wait? Well, remember that I said those civilians at the top are effectively our superior officers. It turns out that Disrespect to a Superior Officer is a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, punishable by Court-Martial. A conviction by Court-Martial, by the way, is considered a Federal felony conviction. I’m sure that, depending on the wording, various other felony charges could be added – Conduct Unbecoming an Officer, Incitement to Mutiny, and so on…some of those carry the death penalty in time of war, too. When a soldier still in uniform speaks out against his civilian leaders, he isn’t just risking his job and his retirement, he is potentially risking his life. Remember I said that we have a tradition of respecting our civilian leaders? I wasn’t kidding. This is an example of just how engrained that tradition is.

So, anyway, six or so former General Officers are speaking out against our civilian leaders and the conduct of this war. Whether I agree with them or not, I believe they have earned the right to be taken very seriously.

Planning Ahead

There have been several stories in the media lately claiming that the Pentagon is updating plans for an attack on Iran.

Well, duh.

For those of you whose knowledge of the military is based on Hollywood movies, let me fill you in. Every unit in the Army, from the Battalion level on up, has a section devoted to planning. The other services have similar systems. Those planners naturally focus on responses to the most likely future events. At the lower levels, that’s all they have time for. At higher levels of command, though, the planners think about all sorts of possible operations, and write up plans to carry them out if and when it becomes necessary.

Naturally, if a potential trouble spot starts to look more troublesome, the planners haul out the old paperwork, blow the dust off of it, and update it to better fit the current situation. And also naturally, when the military writes up a plan to respond to a trouble spot, they write it up as a military solution. That doesn’t mean they particularly want to carry it out. It doesn’t mean they think a military solution is the best or the only option. It simply means that if things go bad in the political and diplomatic arenas, and the civilian leadership gives the order to take action, a good soldier does not intend to be caught saying, “Um, well, we’re not sure if we can do that, let me get back to you in a week or two…”

I’ve never seen the files of plans in the Pentagon, but I suspect that if the press got a look at them, our diplomats would be working overtime for years to smooth the ruffled feathers. There are probably plans in the files to carry out all sorts of horrible operations, too dreadful for anyone to contemplate – but the planners have to contemplate them, that’s their job. There may be plans to bomb Iran, and to invade it. Odds are pretty good that we have plans to attack China. To bomb either India or Pakistan, or both, in case their bickering goes nuclear. There’s probably plans to invade France or Germany, too – those protests they have from time to time might blow up, after all. There might even be plans on the books to destroy or conquer Canada, just in case they get tired of us stealing all their acting and comedic talent and declare war on Hollywood – which, unfortunately, we are still obligated to defend.

In the United States, the military functions under civilian control. We maintain plans to do all sorts of horrible things, because we never know what sort of stupidity our civilian leaders may get us into. All we know for sure is that when it starts to get ugly, it’s our job to fix it. And when that happens, we don’t have time to start from scratch.

Freedom of the Press Release

I hate having to defend someone I don’t like.

I don’t particularly like Vice-President Cheney. In my opinion, the modern-day purpose of a Vice-Presidential candidate is to look good, shore up support for the Presidential candidate in a different home region, and, in the case of a former challenger for his party’s nomination, provide some extra electoral votes for the big guy. Dick Cheney doesn’t look good. He’s from Wyoming, a state tied with six others for the least electoral votes – even the CITY of Washington, D.C. has the same number! To make it worse, Mr. Cheney is from the same general region as Mr. Bush – the West. And certainly, Mr. Cheney was never even vaguely a contender for the Presidential nomination.

For Mr. Bush to select Mr. Cheney as a running mate required that he give up all these potential advantages that another person might provide. There has to be some compensating advantage or reason – and when I think about that, the words “kingmaker” or worse, “puppeteer” leap to mind. I am very uncomfortable with the thought that my President, my Commander-in-Chief, might be little more than a mouthpiece for his Vice-President. Still worse when that Vice-President gives the appearance of being deeply beholden to various special and corporate interests, especially the oil and defense industries.

With all that in mind, you can imagine how much it bugs me to be forced to defend Mr. Cheney. But the press has the wrong end of the stick this week, and I don’t see many people stepping up to say so. Dick Cheney went out this past weekend on a hunting trip with a friend. The trip held no particular political importance, wasn’t an official function, and wasn’t related to his duties. It turns out that he made a tragic mistake in the course of the day that has hospitalized that friend. This is news – not because it is politically important, but because the Vice-President is an inherently newsworthy figure, so anything he does is news, especially something unusual and tragic. (All the more so that it includes so many comedic elements – political humorists are having a field day.) I don’t see any problem with the media reporting the incident, or with the satirists poking fun at it – that’s part of the deal when you accept the office, or even when you hang around with the VP.

The press corps, however, seems to believe that they were entitled to full details provided directly from the White House as soon as the incident occurred. There’s been a few editorials on the subject batting about the terms “cover-up” and “withholding information.” Alan Dershowitz hints that Cheney may have been drunk at the time. But worse than the editorials have been the so-called “balanced” news stories that take their pot shots by publicizing the “media’s reaction.” For example:

“Amid criticism of the White House for waiting to announce the shooting accident…”

“US media slams Dick Cheney” and “The Vice President seems to be avoiding the press, however, that hasn't stopped the media from taking pot shots at him.”

“The accident raised questions about …the White House's failure to disclose the accident in a timely way.”

I read editorials frequently, but I prefer that they be labeled correctly. Constant mentions of “press reaction” by the press itself strike me as a way to cover opinion with a patina of honest reporting.

But why is the press so upset in the first place? Because they weren’t given the full story right away. The reporters seem to have forgotten a basic truth – the freedom of the press is a freedom for them to publish and for them to go find out, not a guarantee that they’ll be handed every story on silver platter. A government cover-up of official actions is one thing, but this incident was a private matter. It could later become a civil or criminal matter, if Mr. Whittington should decide to sue or press charges, but right now it is purely private. Mr. Cheney and the White House were under no obligation to say anything.

In fact, it might be better for us all if the media stopped depending on press conferences, releases, and handouts for our news, and went out there and looked and told us what they found.