China and its Discontents

Should the internet be subjected to historical libel laws? Can they even be applied in the same ways? One of the biggest obstacles to applying libel law to the internet is anonymity. Of course many websites and blogs are attached to a specific name or organization, and even if they are not, the IP addresses of libelers can be identified. But certain software, such as TOR or VPN services, can conceal a user’s IP address. TOR isn’t just used for this purpose in Western countries–it’s also used by journalists and protestors in undemocratic countries to disseminate news. Furthermore, websites or internet service providers might not want to disclose their users’ IP addresses and even if served with a court order they might not be able to if they intentionally do not store that information.

Libel law seems out of place in the Wild Wild West of the Internet not just because “internet message boards are so filled with outrageous postings that no reasonable person would interpret such a posting as a true statement of fact.” (150) People online do not just commit mild negligence; they often intend actual malice. Social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter are prime examples of websites that could attract massive libel suits against its users, and yet the two are rather tame compared to other examples. 4chan is an infamous message board that is known for being crude, puerile, offensive, and at times libelous. One can also assume a large portion of 4chan users are underage. The internet, by disconnecting a person from their identity or any real-world consequences, frees some people from all inhibitions. The cost of publication is free and it’s anonymous–why not post it?

And yet the factors that make it difficult to sue for libel on the internet also add the greatest unique value to the internet. The internet has succeeded as a revolutionary technology precisely because the entry barrier is low and it is so easy to publish. While the internet has provided a platform to conspiracy theories and Obama birth-certificate claims that are most certainly published with actual malice, it has also turned the tables on the way information is distributed. With older forms of media, information is produced and consumed in one direction. With the internet, consumers become producers, and vice-versa. The average citizen is free to produce new creative works, remix old culture, and yes, libel his fellow citizens with abandon. If we “fixed” the internet so that every user had to conform to journalistic standards, we would destroy the essential characteristics of the internet that make it great.

Installment #2 of the journalism class blog posts.

You could not have a more bigger shift in tone between “The Idea of Public Journalism” and “The Death and Life of American Journalism.” I guess that’s what happened in the intervening ten years between the two books’ publication dates. Compared to the more optimistic takes on journalism’s future in “Public Journalism,” McChesney and Nichols paint a dire situation. Not only are the newspapers failing, but nothing will ever replace it absent state intervention (we’ll address that next week). The alternative is bleak, where PR firms dictate the content of every media outlet (one almost senses they would go even further to say PR firms will start dictating what we think, too). The corporations, the rich, and the status quo win.

Here’s the problem I have this argument: the authors blatantly argue for a press that supports their political preferences, without stopping to think of alternative rhetoric they could use. Wanting more partisan coverage is not necessarily bad. I, as a Democrat, would certainly like journalists to more positively cover Democrats and their policy preferences. But I know that that is an unrealistic expectation and probably not in the best interests of the country as a whole. Even if I think those policy preferences would be in the common good, I do not think we should design a press establishment that is biased in that way.

McChesney and Nichols, despite their protestations to the contrary, romanticize some standard of journalism that never actually existed. They hark back to the Framers of the Constitution to justify a “take-no-prisoners, speak-truth-to-power journalism that has as its end not a recreation of the old order of empowered elites and cowering masses but a new order in which the will of an informed and emboldened people shall be the law of the land.” (XXViii) Further, they want a press “that regard[s] the state secret as an assault to popular governance…” (2) Finally, they claim, “The business of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” (8)

This is all a bunch of hogwash. This type of journalism, despite their claims to the contrary, has never existed, nor can it ever exist. Journalism has always been status quo, and nominally pro-government. I also don’t see how the United States could function without a commitment to political and religious pluralism. The truth is, the kinds of changes the authors want to see in American journalism are highly partisan. A large portion of the electorate does not have the same social justice sensibilities as the authors.

Any time anyone has attempted to create this sort of ideologically-committed journalism, it has descended into something that is not journalism: Fox News, most cable opinion shows, Media Matters, etc. These outlets may be socially useful–but they are definitely not journalistic outlets.

What kind of rhetoric could they use instead? I was a big fan of many of the articles from “Public Journalism.” In many of those articles, the authors referred to “convening communities” and “problem-solving.” This is the right way forward. It avoids the partisanship of “The Death and Life of American Journalism,” while still acknowledging failures in and proposing solutions to currently-practiced journalism.

Wen Jiabao sees Bo’s downfall as a pivotal opportunity to pin his reformist colors high while the Communist Party is too divided to rein him in. He is reaching out to the Chinese public because the party is losing its monopoly on truth and internal roads to reform have long been blocked. Ironically, he is doing so by leading the public purging of a victim who has no hope of transparent justice, because the party to which he has devoted his life has never known any other way.

That last sentence was really a great kicker to an amazing article by John Garnaut in Foreign Policy entitled, “The Revenge of Wen Jiabao.” It seems kind of sadly cruel that Bo Xilai was purged and is probably being detained in some black prison somewhere.

GEORGE WILL’s Sunday column calls the Supreme Court health-reform case (three days of oral arguments begin Monday) “the last exit ramp on the road to unlimited government”: “[T]he Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, [argues that the] individual mandate is incompatible with centuries of contract law … because a compulsory contract is an oxymoron. … Under Obamacare, Congress asserted the improper power to compel commercial contracts.”

Libertarians may believe a compulsory contract is an oxymoron, but everyone is entered into all sorts of “compulsory contracts” by the virtue of being a citizen! Just by being born in the U.S., we are all compelled to pay taxes, abide by the criminal and civil legal codes, and sign ourselves up for Selective Service and possibly be drafted (if we are male), among other requirements that I am most certainly forgetting. Many political philosophers would also consider voting to be each citizen’s duty, and many countries make voting legally obligatory. Of course we wouldn’t even be having this argument if either single-payer insurance had been enacted or hospitals themselves had been socialized, making the individual mandate unnecessary. Those alternatives definitely would not have invited any legal challenges. At least, I don’t think so…

Via Friday’s Playbook

This is why I’m going into graduate school for IR/China Studies/International Economics and where I see my career going into the future. This question of scientistic economics vs. moral and political economy has profound implications for China, where these questions cannot even really be asked by academics. And it of course also directly affects the United States, where we need this kind of thought to combat a growing culture of ignorance and Tea Party economics. I love Michael Sandel:

“Scientistic understandings of economics detached from traditional normative questions, traditional questions of value, has a kind of momentum of its own, as if economics were a science or discipline that had graduated from, risen above, connection with mere speculation, which is what philosophers are sometimes thought to do.

And there is something very heady about that idea, of economics as a science, even like physics, for example. But I think it’s a mistake, and I think it’s short-sighted. I think the most important and creative work in the social sciences in our lifetime and in the future will be done by people who are equipped with economic training and concepts and categories but who can see beyond it, and who can reconnect economics with what used to be called moral and political economy.

You know back in the days of Adam Smith, and David Hume, and John Stewart Mill, there was one subject, moral and political economy. There was not political philosophy on the one hand and economics, the science, on the other. And I think that some of the most exciting development and new work will consist in reconnecting the normative dimensions of moral and political theory with economic analysis.

And we see this beginning in debates about globalization, for example, where the role of markets and normative questions seem very hard to leave by the wayside. So that’s one area I think in which the established social science are in need of a kind of leavening and deepening that can come if they reconnect with questions not only of policy but also values and norms, and ideals.”

via the excellent blog Understanding Society.

A president needs empathy and emotional intelligence, so that he can prevail in political dealings with his own party and the opposition in Washington, and in face-to-face negotiations with foreign leaders, who otherwise will go away saying that this president is “weak” and that the country’s leadership role is suspect. He needs to be confident but not arrogant; open-minded but not a weather vane; resolute but still adaptable; historically minded but highly alert to the present; visionary but practical; personally disciplined but not a prig or martinet. He should be physically fit, disease-resistant, and capable of being fully alert at a moment’s notice when the phone rings at 3 a.m.—yet also able to sleep each night, despite unremitting tension and without chemical aids.

Ideally he would be self-aware enough that, in the center of a system that treats him as emperor-god, he could still recognize his own defects and try to offset them.

From James Fallow’s latest cover story on Obama in The Atlantic.

I’m taking a class on journalism that requires us to blog (not a journalism class, but a class on journalism). So I thought I would put those posts here too. Readings from the class will be referenced (but don’t worry, the references are quoted and explained).

In asking, “What is news?” I was reminded of a question recently posed in the form of a blog post by Arthur Brisbane, the New York Times Ombudsman: “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” Should newspapers point out that X politician made Y and Z false statements? The obvious answer is yes (Jim Fallows at The Atlantic generally summed up my views). Fallows’ critique of the media is common today, and has been common for a long time: that many journalists engage in superficial “horse race reporting” (where facts are presented without context and meaning) and “false equivalence” (where two opposing truth claims are treated as equally plausible). This critique is even mentioned in one of the readings, “If you call to mind the topics which form the principal indictment by reformers against the press, you find they are subjects in which the newspaper occupies the position of the umpire in the unscored baseball game.” (Lippmann, 50)

Some of our readings make the opposite case. According to Halberstam, news is not about providing context or explanation: “News reports, on the other hand, need not be explanatory and those explanations which do appear in news account are often adscititious intrusions.” (Halberstam, 13) Halberstam’s definition of the news would seem to rule out a lot of important news. Financial reporting on the recession, for example, would be useless without context and explanation of the causes and actors involved in the crash. Similarly, Halberstam’s emphasis on events as news would rule out most news stories concerning global warming, or other long-term patterns that impact us in dramatic ways.

I know that personally, I would like to believe that journalists exist as the fourth estate, uncovering malfeasance and inserting themselves into the political process in a way that makes everyone else more informed and better citizens. This sort of reporting would require context and explanation of events and long-term patterns. Lippmann argues strenuously against this idealistic vision: “If the newspapers, then, are to be charged with the duty of translating the whole public life of mankind, so that every adult can arrive at an opinion on every moot topic, they fail, they are bound to fail, in any future one can conceive they will continue to fail.” (Lippmann, 117-118) That might be a straw-man argument. I don’t think that the media, by fulfilling its public purpose, will hand down the truth from on high to the masses. Every person makes autonomous judgments. Rather, news media should seek to make people better-informed citizens, regardless of the political conclusions those people make. After all, Morson’s example of the degraded conditions at the Ridge Home nursing center could lead someone to conclude the government should improve the center, or that the government should abolish the center.

I am so glad Sheryl Sandberg recently shared via Facebook an old blog post of Clay Shirky’s from two years ago, “A Rant About Women.” The post is old in internet terms, but the content is classic. Some of the comments are even better than the original post. The gist is: women aren’t as good as men at being “arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks… self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so.”

Shirky puts this starkly as a male-female divide, but I would hope any self-reflective person struggles with the delicate balance between being genuine and authentic vs. confident and successful. Ultimately though this is a false choice. We don’t have to sacrifice either, and quite often these qualities reinforce the others. If you find yourself becoming inauthentic as you rise professionally, “you’re doing it wrong.” But when you are authentically confident, people recognize both your authenticity and your confidence, and reward you for both (this might be an exaggeration solely supported by my personal experience). Maybe it’s hard to achieve that state. But that’s the point. It should be hard. There’s no point to it otherwise.

The two top comments were really superb. First this:

I recognize the unfairness when the societal differentiation is considered. But I have also noted the worth of taking for your own the strength of “not caring about” …so much. A good example is in your average male bonding: it’s not that men don’t have their limits, and certainly can trigger the threshold whereby an outright fighting response is provoked with another man, but that bonding almost universally includes a higher threshold for taking cracks, jabs, humorous insults, swipes, etc, and, when you learn how to give them well and in a good-spirited way (I cannot emphasize the second modifier enough), the joy shared by all. The essence of success in this comes from that differentiation learned over time from men’s interactions to develop in-sensitivity, “to not care so much”. Individuals can wisely adapt for themselves virtues learned from the stereotypical schools of women’s sensitivity and men’s insensitivity, suited to taste. In the above case, it’s about our feelings, but the callous of not-caring-so-much also becomes a tool of confidence for other things.

All this being said, hopefully the true difference between an asshole and an admirable person is prudence of application. Sadly, that too is an art not so easily learned, except by falling down, getting up, and reflecting.

In addition to the lesson of “not caring so much” (i.e., being above the criticisms/jokes), I would add it’s helpful to be below the compliments people give you.

The other great comment read along the lines of “known-knowns, known-unknowns, unknown-knowns, and unknown-unknowns” a la Rumsfeld. Or as a friend restated, “ignorant knowing and knowing ignorance.” The point being, we do well on both personal and professional levels when we operate in the realm of known-unknowns/knowing ignorance.

This post is in the way of an apology for not posting for many months. I submitted an op-ed to the Trinity Tripod a month and a half ago, but never posted it here (and it’s not on the Tripod website either), so here it is!

Have most Trinity students read President Jones’ White Paper? No. But if they have heard anything at all, they know he ‘wants to get rid of the fraternities’. What we cannot forget is that President Jones proposed two ‘helixes’, one academic and the other social, “neither of which can be separated from the other.” In other words, it is useful to think of the big picture – the Jeffersonian, holistic, “intellectual village,” as idealized in the paper.

As I was reading the White Paper, several ideas came to me that have been on my mind since I arrived at Trinity in 2008, some of which President Jones touched upon. The first is the notion of belonging. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it rates as the third most basic, behind physiological needs and safety. The kids at Trinity who don’t feel like they belong here or to any particular community on campus transfer. And President Jones mentions this need. This lack of belonging cannot be answered by only an academic or a social solution – it must be a combination of both. We belong to both groups on campus, and to a larger campus community. These senses of belonging are inculcated by a strong academic ethos marked by intellectual curiosity, where students are inextricably tied to professors in and outside of the classroom, and when we feel we are welcome across campus anywhere we go, as President Jones says, on a meritocratic basis.

A couple of months ago I was having a conversation with my father on pedagogy and the recent acts of bigotry and prejudice at Trinity. Out of that conversation, I came to realize that these acts occur because there is a disconnect in values between some students and the larger campus community. The value system exemplified by our mission statement has not been fully institutionalized – our values are not cohesive, our community is dysfunctional. We lack communal norms. This too can be solved by both an academic and social solution. When students come to Trinity “for the right reasons,” when students and faculty are on the same page, we establish communal norms. When we all share certain communal academic and social experiences, such as the first-year “great books” seminar program proposed by President Jones, norms are established. The best academic model is that of the Socratic method, of proleptic questioning: the faculty ask leading questions that provoke knowledge that a student has but has not yet put together in a coherent fashion. Students come to class having done the reading and are excited to engage in difficult material. This is what we must inculcate at Trinity.

Let’s not get lost in the particulars and remember that there is a greater purpose to the intertwined helixes. Let’s move forward, start a conversation, and ask the hard questions. Let’s be present and active in our little “academic village.”

It’s funny that China is already Saudi Arabia’s biggest customer, because it was the United States who first convinced the Saudis to guarantee oil  with the Chinese in order to gain China’s support for economic sanctions against Iran.

This one sentence was just in a list of unfinished drafts I have for the blog; no links present. Occasionally I’ll start something and never finish, coming back to it months later to find the tidbit was actually interesting.