SB: “I believe that news and opinion are inseparable.”
Ed Wallis:”This opinion was also shared by Goebbels, if I am not mistaken.”
I propose a definition of “subjectivity” – it is the belief in one’s own objectivity. That is, the moment you claim to be objective is when you fail to discount what you want to believe in you evaluation of what is true.
Thus, if I make a good-faith attempt at objectivity the very first thing I will consider is that I want to believe that the Constitution is a superb framework as it was designed, and that the amendments to it are, for the most part, good. If there is evidence to the contrary, I have some obligation to give it a serious hearing. Until and unless I learn that the person putting forth the evidence is not doing so in good faith.
There is IMHO a difference between Goebbels’s attitude that Goebbels has a right to his own facts, and Steve’s point that opinion precedes the choice of facts which you, or I, or Goebbels or Steve, elect to discuss. That is not a justification for making things up, to the contrary it is the admission that the facts I choose to present to buttress my argument are not the only facts in all of history. Being willing to admit the possibility that other facts than those I selected could have bearing on the issue at hand is humility. Making up “facts” to suit the argument of the moment is arrogance.
Claiming to be wise, and arguing from that assumption, is sophistry. Refusing to claim to be wise, but only claiming to love wisdom (and thus to be willing to listen to facts and logic as propounded by others) is philosophy. IMHO there is not a dime’s worth of difference between arguing from the assumption of your own wisdom and arguing from the assumption of your own objectivity.
Journalists have a financial/business reason to interest the public, but interesting the public is not identically the same as the public interest. The public is interested in learning the government’s secrets – but the public interest may be very ill-served by the disclosure of our military’s plans and activities.
