Can't say I was too impressed by this one. When you leverage your influence to take a stance on something, it's fair game to attack your influence. Journalists absolutely should be applying a higher level of scrutiny to people who speak out. If there's a problem there it's jourbalists' bias, not their methods.
It feels like vintage Scott to me. He is loudly and explicitly calling bullshit on a clearly false proposition. I didn't read him as making a huge value judgement here. To be a good Bayesian, you have to reason properly about the process that produces the evidence. People who don't operate on the presumption that the media "targets" people are going to be systematically wrong.
I read it as saying "smearing is irrelevant" when I find it very relevant. More to the point, in the real world, where arguments are not usually logical propositions, I'm a big believer in ad hominem. I'm a lot less likely to look into someone's theory of quantum gravity if it turns out their phd was faked. Ad hominem is a very useful heuristic.
The media targetting people is a separate thing and has a lot more to do with media bias than with the smearing/sniffing out personal details itself.
The false proposition is "journalists don't target hitpieces against people they don't like".
I guess I'm not big on the plagiarism train because I already assumed Gay's academic credentials were hogwash. From [Wikipedia:]
"Claudine Gay (born 1970)[2][3] is an American political scientist and academic administrator who was the 30th president of Harvard University, and is the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard.[4] Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout and politics of race and identity.[5]"
This isn't quite the same as saying someone is "The L. Ron Hubbard Professor of homeopathy and psychoanalysis", but it's pretty darn close. I don't care if a homeopathy journal has a plagiarism scandal. That doesn't affect my opinion of it's accuracy.
I don't care if a homeopathy journal has a plagiarism scandal. That doesn't affect my opinion of it's accuracy.
You're already sold on homeopathy being bad, but a plagiarism scandal is absolute gold if other methods of convincing others that the journal is bunk have failed.
The false proposition is "journalists don't target hitpieces against people they don't like".
Well I'll definitely agree that's a false proposition, but to me the article seemed more focused on "hitpieces are bad" than on "actually journalists do write hitpieces."
If it’s fair game, then why were Spiers and others so eager to deny it?
Undermining opponents’ credibility is effective. It’s also considered gauche. Perhaps even a sign that one is acting in bad faith! This is not a coincidence; as Scott points out, that sort of strategy is symmetric. Agnostic to the truth.
For professionals who like to portray themselves as noble truth-seekers, that’s an awkward position. The mythos of American journalism is complicated, but I really do think it leans into “speaking truth to power.” Call it a legacy of the Cold War. The reflex, then, is to insist that whatever one is doing—no, it’s very cool and very countercultural.
I like it when that’s actually true. I’d like it to win out over the tribalistic, partisan allure of scoring easy points. If that means we don’t learn about the sex lives and past transgressions of people we’d never otherwise have met…so be it.
If it’s fair game, then why were Spiers and others so eager to deny it?
Mainly because most journalists are on one side of the equation. So long as smearing is only a tool the left can use against the right, smearing should be defended. The thing is that "smearing" isn't really the problem here, the problem is that the smearing only goes one way (due to the political distribution of journalists) and there's nobody in the other corner to defend you or counter-smear.
This is not a coincidence; as Scott points out, that sort of strategy is symmetric. Agnostic to the truth.
I think this is where our disagreement lies. I find personal details highly relevant to the value of someone's opinion. A professor who plagiarizes should not be given the same respect as one who does not. A philosopher who cheats on their spouse, likewise. Virtue clings to virtue; the more someone has their life in order the more attention I will pay to what they have to say.
[Journalists] do not sit around thinking about how they’re going to “get” people they write about, and when subjects think they do, it’s more a reflection of the subject’s self-perception (or self-importance) and, sometimes, a sprinkling of unadulterated narcissism.
That’s defensive, right? Spiers doesn’t want to be described as “get”ting people, so she’s denying that someone might have done it to Scott. (But if they did, then it’s all his fault…)
The category of smearing can’t be legitimized. If it were, then Rufo and others would get some of that legitimacy. More importantly, journalism would lose a lot of prestige. I think journalists would be largely unhappy with a world where media outlets were best known for publishing salacious personal details, even if all those details were always 100% true. It’s strictly less classy than the stereotype of hard-hitting investigative journalism.
Many things, such as Scott's doxxing, rape accusation investigations, and reporting on a politician's track record, qualify as "smearing."
Smearing is OK if it's accurate, and there aren't other broader issues such as rampant selection bias targetting only one side of an issue.
I think Spiers would disagree with #1, and basically say that if her side does it, it's hard-hitting investigative journalism, while if the other side does it, it's smearing. She'll rationalize this as being about intent--her side wants what's best for everyone; her opponents are solely motivated by pure malice--which is why she says it's ridiculous to suggest that her side's smears are actually smears.
Scott, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be aware of #2. He sees that smears can be used to portray only one side of a story, and therefore smearing is always bad. The thing is, the reason that's bad is because it's only portraying one side of the story, not because it's smearing specifically.
I think if we lived in a world where everyone suffered the degree of scrutiny that heterodox progressives suffer, Scott wouldn't have much of an issue with his treatment.
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Notes -
Can't say I was too impressed by this one. When you leverage your influence to take a stance on something, it's fair game to attack your influence. Journalists absolutely should be applying a higher level of scrutiny to people who speak out. If there's a problem there it's jourbalists' bias, not their methods.
It feels like vintage Scott to me. He is loudly and explicitly calling bullshit on a clearly false proposition. I didn't read him as making a huge value judgement here. To be a good Bayesian, you have to reason properly about the process that produces the evidence. People who don't operate on the presumption that the media "targets" people are going to be systematically wrong.
What's the false proposition?
I read it as saying "smearing is irrelevant" when I find it very relevant. More to the point, in the real world, where arguments are not usually logical propositions, I'm a big believer in ad hominem. I'm a lot less likely to look into someone's theory of quantum gravity if it turns out their phd was faked. Ad hominem is a very useful heuristic.
The media targetting people is a separate thing and has a lot more to do with media bias than with the smearing/sniffing out personal details itself.
The false proposition is "journalists don't target hitpieces against people they don't like".
I guess I'm not big on the plagiarism train because I already assumed Gay's academic credentials were hogwash. From [Wikipedia:]
This isn't quite the same as saying someone is "The L. Ron Hubbard Professor of homeopathy and psychoanalysis", but it's pretty darn close. I don't care if a homeopathy journal has a plagiarism scandal. That doesn't affect my opinion of it's accuracy.
You're already sold on homeopathy being bad, but a plagiarism scandal is absolute gold if other methods of convincing others that the journal is bunk have failed.
Well I'll definitely agree that's a false proposition, but to me the article seemed more focused on "hitpieces are bad" than on "actually journalists do write hitpieces."
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If it’s fair game, then why were Spiers and others so eager to deny it?
Undermining opponents’ credibility is effective. It’s also considered gauche. Perhaps even a sign that one is acting in bad faith! This is not a coincidence; as Scott points out, that sort of strategy is symmetric. Agnostic to the truth.
For professionals who like to portray themselves as noble truth-seekers, that’s an awkward position. The mythos of American journalism is complicated, but I really do think it leans into “speaking truth to power.” Call it a legacy of the Cold War. The reflex, then, is to insist that whatever one is doing—no, it’s very cool and very countercultural.
I like it when that’s actually true. I’d like it to win out over the tribalistic, partisan allure of scoring easy points. If that means we don’t learn about the sex lives and past transgressions of people we’d never otherwise have met…so be it.
Mainly because most journalists are on one side of the equation. So long as smearing is only a tool the left can use against the right, smearing should be defended. The thing is that "smearing" isn't really the problem here, the problem is that the smearing only goes one way (due to the political distribution of journalists) and there's nobody in the other corner to defend you or counter-smear.
I think this is where our disagreement lies. I find personal details highly relevant to the value of someone's opinion. A professor who plagiarizes should not be given the same respect as one who does not. A philosopher who cheats on their spouse, likewise. Virtue clings to virtue; the more someone has their life in order the more attention I will pay to what they have to say.
That’s defensive, right? Spiers doesn’t want to be described as “get”ting people, so she’s denying that someone might have done it to Scott. (But if they did, then it’s all his fault…)
The category of smearing can’t be legitimized. If it were, then Rufo and others would get some of that legitimacy. More importantly, journalism would lose a lot of prestige. I think journalists would be largely unhappy with a world where media outlets were best known for publishing salacious personal details, even if all those details were always 100% true. It’s strictly less classy than the stereotype of hard-hitting investigative journalism.
Agreed.
I believe that:
Many things, such as Scott's doxxing, rape accusation investigations, and reporting on a politician's track record, qualify as "smearing."
Smearing is OK if it's accurate, and there aren't other broader issues such as rampant selection bias targetting only one side of an issue.
I think Spiers would disagree with #1, and basically say that if her side does it, it's hard-hitting investigative journalism, while if the other side does it, it's smearing. She'll rationalize this as being about intent--her side wants what's best for everyone; her opponents are solely motivated by pure malice--which is why she says it's ridiculous to suggest that her side's smears are actually smears.
Scott, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be aware of #2. He sees that smears can be used to portray only one side of a story, and therefore smearing is always bad. The thing is, the reason that's bad is because it's only portraying one side of the story, not because it's smearing specifically.
I think if we lived in a world where everyone suffered the degree of scrutiny that heterodox progressives suffer, Scott wouldn't have much of an issue with his treatment.
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