Mike, thanks for posting your paper on deniability - it looks incredibly interesting.
The whole issue of truth, deniability and the media goes to the heart of how hard it is to reach rational conclusions about what's going on, because it's well nigh impossible to get accurate (and complete) information. Politicians and the media seem to operate as though in a courtroom, where argument and evidence matter, but not truth. So if we can't disprove x's statement, we have to live with it, and you're so right to point out that the onus is now on the audience to disprove things, rather than on the speaker to prove them. During the last Gulf War, the British journalist Robert Fisk declined to be part of the reporting pool in the Middle East, which was being controlled in every way by the American military (where to stay, where to go, what to look at, which tanks to get rides on etc - and of course the journalists loved it, because it made them feel like soldiers). Fisk decided to wander off to check out some of the things they were being told - wanting to see them for himself. He was "caught" and told to re-join the pool, and when he did, the people who rounded on him the most were the other journalists! Said he was "risking spoiling things for everyone else." So in this case even the journalists were accepting that the notion of truth was secondary to whether they got "the story" i.e. whether they got a version of events from a source who would be considered reliable (the military) by their news organizations. Whether it was true or not, could be left to the Fisks of this world to explore, but AFTER the war please, so as to not screw things up for the network correspondents. And then of course when journalists like Fisk do investigate events after the fact, they're the only ones to reach their conclusions, and so are not believed because of that - but they're the only ones to say these things because they're the only ones who went looking for the truth, rather than just accepting "the story" that was dished out to everyone else. Sarah At 11:54 PM +0100 01/17/2003, mike pritchard wrote: >mike says > >Berel Lang, in an article entitled 'Politics and the New History of >Truth' (Lang, 1991:38), looks at the concepts of 'truth' and 'lie' >and the blurring of the distinctions between them, especially as >used by Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Many of the key concepts of the >corruption of language emerged during their presidencies. Most >people have a clear idea of the difference between telling a lie and >telling the truth. The difference between the two concepts is so >fundamental that: > > >>it would be difficult to find a child above the age of five who, >at some level, is unaware of the difference, and indeed almost all >the links that hold social institutions together - laws, contracts, >promises, even simple descriptive statements - assume this very >distinction (Lang, 1991:38). << > > The concept of 'deniability', however, muddies the waters and >during the Watergate hearings the "Nixonians' working definition of >truth" emerged (Lang, 1991:38). > > >>Where in common usage, the truth of a statement implies a >correspondence with facts, including those that might be known only >to the speaker, 'deniability' ascribes truth to any statement that >cannot be disproved, all claims to the contrary can then be denied. >(Lang, 1991:38). << > > The second step is to ensure that there are no claims to the >contrary, such as the cases where films are banned or censored, >therefore 'deniability' works hand in hand with censorship, ensuring >that the official version remains the only version the public gets . >Public opinion, then, is based on a partial viewing of the facts >(partial in both senses). Where claims to the contrary are >available, the government uses the media to discredit the source. >For example, some people attempt to ridicule Chomsky's political >views in order to diminish the weight of evidence he provides. > >We should not underestimate what is going on here: without evidence >to the contrary, the original assertion, however incredible, remains >'true'. Lang states: > > >>It means that the test of truth is now negative: all assertions - >claims or denials of responsibility, descriptions of events - are >true until they are disproved. If they are. The burden of proof is >thus entirely on the audience and not at all on the speaker, whose >main concern, once s/he has spoken, is to retain the power of >deniability by assuring that possible counterevidence remains >hidden.<< (Lang, 1991:39).
