The abuse of authority
Several months ago I wrote an opinion piece that defended Wikipedia on the grounds that, in principle, the common criticisms over its questionable accuracy are not unique to Wikipedia—these criticisms, ultimately, apply to all information sources regardless of status or prestige. The only difference between Wikipedia and other information sources is that Wikipedia candidly tells the reader that its information is suspect, whereas other information sources tend to mask this feature. My conclusion was that readers should be more circumspect about the information they consume, regardless of the source. In fact, I argued, consumers should be even more circumspect about information sources that market themselves as distinguished “authorities” and color themselves infallible. My reasoning for this is the fact that the greater the amount of “authority” a source appears to have, the greater the temptation is in the consumer to suspend his or her scrutiny over that source of information.
The reason I bring this up is because a recent article published in The New York Times draws on this same issue in a powerful way. On Apr. 20, The Times ran an article written by David Barstow entitled “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.” The article suggested, based on The Times’ research, that a substantial number of former military experts turned “military analysts” for major media outlets have been a part of a calculated, systematic effort by Pentagon officials to favorably spin information about the war in Iraq.
In the opening paragraphs of the article, Barstow writes the following: “Hidden behind [the] appearance of objectivity… is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used [military analysts] in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found…Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.”
Barstow then goes on to explain in more detail who was implicated in this campaign and points out that much of his information was derived from some 8,000 pages of messages, emails and transcripts that The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to obtain. He further writes: “These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.”
What the thrust of this article suggests is that, despite the authoritative muscle of popular and relatively respectable sources—such as mainstream news outlets, the Pentagon, and the military analysts in question—there nevertheless remains the risk that those sources can become corrupted and engage in the dissemination of dubious information.
Now, the dissemination of dubious information is bad enough in itself, but when it is over matters of war, as Barstow’s article suggests it is in this case, then it is indeed grossly disturbing. Many lives have been lost or compromised over the wars waged in response to the information peddled by these “experts,” “analysts” and “officials;” and, if Barstow’s article is even remotely accurate, the general public ought to be alarmed at the extent to which their authoritative sources can mislead them, and outraged about the consequences of such deception. More than anything though, the general public ought to cease assuming that authoritative sources are virtually infallible, reliable sources that can be trusted without scrutiny. As it is in the case of Wikipedia, it is the responsibility of the individual to decide what is and is not worth believing, no matter who or what a given source claims to be. Even though it is wrong for authorities to abuse their power and intentionally misinform, it is still the consumer’s fault if he or she is duped by the misinformation.
Now that we have good reason to suspect that a substantial amount of the information we have been given about the still-in-progress U.S. wars are biased towards those who have vested interests in the positive characterization of these wars, it is incumbent upon us to recognize how severe the consequences of consumer negligence can be and to seriously rethink the way we absorb information about the world.