The downside of the "lie" label

Ezra Klein praises a Washington Post article on Rudy Giuliani's health care dissembling:

This is the headline and first paragraph of an article in The Washington Post:

Giuliani Is Still Standing By Questionable Figures

The former New York mayor would have us believe that he was off by one percentage point at most in calculating his chances of surviving prostate cancer in Britain. In fact, he was spectacularly wrong the first time and equally wrong the second time. Epidemiologists say that his claim rests on a faulty statistical methodology that would not earn a passing grade at top medical schools in the United States.

The first graf of the article is pretty good work. Indeed, the whole article is pretty good work. I'd like to see it on A1 rather than A6, and I'd like to see Giuliani's lies get mentioned in everyday coverage of the candidate, but baby steps.

That said, most people will still only real the headline. And the headline does not accurately convey the article's conclusions. Giuliani is not "standing by questionable figures.' He's continually "lying about American health care." There's a big difference.

The media really has to get comfortable saying the "L" word.

Klein is right to call for more prominent and frequent coverage of Giuliani's dissembling, but he should be careful what he wishes for in terms of the word "lying." The problem is that the word implies an intention to mislead that can never be proven (that's why we avoided using it in All the President's Spin).

More importantly, speculation about motives is one of the worst features of the modern political journalism and not something we should be requesting more of. Reporters and pundits love to attribute motives to actions taken by politicians based on prevailing narratives about the candidates. As a result, the statements recognized as "lies" tend to be those that reinforce narratives of candidate dishonesty (see Gore, Al), which have been disproportionately attached to Democrats in recent years.

In short, calling for more denunciations of "lies" is, in practice, a call for more narrative-based speculation about motives. There's an easier way: the media needs to state, flatly, that Giuliani is wrong in the context of regular news coverage. It's that simple.

Comments

[lowellfield]

You're completely wrong. What we shouldn't do is call people liars who could well be misinformed instead. That's not the case here.

There are some facts that reasonable people can't disagree about, and personally I don't want the press to turn a blind eye to willful deceit. The warm feeling of decorum doesn't offset the amount of misinformation we end up swallowing under those rules.

[some guy]

"The problem is that the word implies an intention to mislead that can never be proven... speculation about motives is one of the worst features of the modern political journalism... calling for more denunciations of 'lies' is, in practice, a call for more narrative-based speculation about motives. There's an easier way: the media needs to state, flatly, that Giuliani is wrong."

I'm with that two-thirds of the way. You can demonstrate an intent, but determining motive is almost-always mind-reading unless someone states something flat-out. E.g., Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Federal Reserve and bring us back to the Gold Standard. That's an intent. His motive may be that he believes in Austrian economics, or it may be that he wants to put those "Jewish Banking Conspirators" in their place. He has supporters on either end of that spectrum. We can't tell what his motive is unless he explains it.

On the other hand, with Guiliani making a statement about health care that is false, we don't know his intent or his motive, since he hasn't state either one clearly. It's my relatively educated opinion that he has some nebulous intent involving a "private" plan to "fix" health care, but i don't know whether his motive is to help out his pharma buddies, or to lead poor people to die from cancer sooner, or whatever.

You can see a lot of similar tea-leaf behavior in most journalism, however, and even in the relative bastion of fact, finance reporting. "Markets fall on credit worries" ascribes a motive to every speculator and investor and it is going to be wrong.

Now, all that said: nothing treats falsehood like demonstratable facts. There's a lot more "human interest" in mind-reading, but just gimme the numbers, please.