More Real Than Reality

In one of Star Trek’s decidedly inferior episodes, The Savage Curtain the Enterprise approaches a planet and receives a broadcast from Abraham Lincoln, asking to come on board. Lincoln has always been Kirk’s hero, so he agrees and doesn’t know what to make of it. Kirk knows it is impossible for this stranger to actually be Lincoln, yet "his kindness, his gentle wisdom, his humor, everything about him is so right."

Of course, it does turn out to be impossible. They are actually part of an elaborate game by rock-like creatures on the planet wanting to stage a battle between good and evil and creating famous historic characters to play the parts. (Lincoln is on the side of good, of course). The less said of the rest of the episode the better. But there is one good line at the end, when Kirk wistfully says that they all seemed so real, especially Lincoln. Spock says that in many ways they were more real than the actual historic characters. “Because they were taken from our impressions of them, how could they be anything but what we expected?”

Ghastly as the rest of the episode is, this statement is actually quite profound. If Captain Kirk has stepped through the Guardian of Forever and met the real Lincoln, he would no doubt have been disappointed. The real Lincoln would have been a flawed human being with his own quirks and annoying habits, quite incapable of living up to Kirk’s expectations. The false Lincoln, made to match for Kirk’s expectations, was a whole lot more subjectively “real” to Kirk that that objectively real Lincoln could possibly have been.

I have taken a lesson from this, not just that anything that seems too good to be true probably is, but that anything that too perfectly fits your prejudices and preconceptions should not be trusted. This impression is strengthened by the book, They Never Said It, a collection of spurious quotes.* The two most common sources of spurious quotes – Lenin, who regularly has people’s worst fears put in his mouth, and (you guessed it) Lincoln, who is made a source of quotes for absolutely everything people want to support.

On the whole this has served me well. For instance, when I saw this picture of Sarah Palin, I immediately spotted it, not so much as a hoax, but more of a spoof, the perfect expression of what Palin's enemies think of her, rather than an actual pictue.

All of which is an overly lengthy lead-in to what a lot of liberal blogs have been commenting on – the recent piece by former Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren his old bosses. Emotionally, it is very appealing, a former Republican expressing exactly all my prejudices and preconceptions about the Republicans, based on inside information. It seems too good to be true. Is it?

If it were anonymous, I would assume it was a hoax. But the author published under his own name. Legistorm on Lofgren confirms that Mike Lofgren really is (was) a Congressional staffer. And Michael Tomasky, who shares my concern, is willing to take the word of James Fallows, who has plenty of Washington contacts and vouches that Lofgren is for real. (He also comments that Lofgren has worked "mainly" for Republicans).**

So apparently this is for real. Substantive comments to follow in my next post.

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*And yet it did have quotes that appealed to my preconceptions and I wanted to believe.

**Tomasky also asks the question – how did someone like that get to be a Republican in the first place. He answers that Lofgren has been on Capitol Hill for 28 years, and that when he first arrived, it was perfectly normal and acceptable for a Republican to be sane.

Polarization: It's Not Just Fox's Fault

Let's face it. Although I continue to be disturbed at the degree of polarization we are experiencing, when our own side starts shouting down speakers at town halls, biting off fingers and killing abortion protesters, it is time to realize that we are not blameless. Yes, the other side started it with their talk of "death panels" and other such lies, but we, quite simply, are taking the bait and allowing ourselves to be provoked. This has two dangerous effects -- it encourages the right wing's martyr complex, and it escalates the polarization further, and from both sides. This is what we must not do.

I blame the media. For the polarization on both sides. Two excellent Washington Post columns explain the twin problems at work.

One problem is that the public is poorly informed. Obviously Fox News and talk radio tell a lot of lies. That's what Fox News and talk radio do. Nothing we can do about it. But mainstream news outlets have been falling down on the job of explaining what is really going on. By that I mean not just explaining that there are no death panels being proposed (they have at least made the attempt there), but a failure to explain what is being proposed. Andrew Alexander, Washington Post ombudsman, reports that 72% of all the Post's front page articles since the beginning of July have been about the politics, rather than the policy of health care reform. Policy-oriented articles are often too wonky for most readers to follow. Authors tend to assume that readers know what terms like "single payer" or "public option" mean. Alexander proposes that newspapers make policy issues accessible to non-wonks by features like "glossaries explaining basic terms, easily digestible Q&As, short sidebars that summarize complex concepts and graphics that decipher complicated data." He also proposes more stories on what reform means to the average citizen.

Of course, none of this will sway people who automatically discount everything in the "liberal media" and believe only Fox News. But it is a mistake to exaggerate their numbers, and therein lies the other problem. Alexander reports that an article about healthcare systems in other countries was among the most popular items published by the Post. The hardcore Fox crowd would never link to such an article. Columnist E.J. Dionne reports the constant bias toward sensationalism. In fact the angry crowds shouting speakers down, the Obama as Hitler signs, the talk of "death panels," and other such hysteria made up only a small fraction of all such meetings. We should have suspected as much when Obama went looking for such a crowd to work and couldn't find one. Dionne even quotes a network reporter as telling one Congressman, "Your meeting won't get covered unless it blows up."

The result is obvious. While Fox News stokes right wing paranoia with reports of "death panels," mainstream outlets stoke liberal paranoia with tales hysterical mobs shouting down speakers and comparing Obama to Hitler. Liberals denounced such things, in turn feeding the anger and fear of more reasonable protesters who then felt unfairly demonized. And so the polarization grows and the health of democracy suffers.

No one will hear me writing on this obscure blog, but if they did, I would not waste time trying to convince Fox News, talk radio or Republican leaders to be more reasonable. It is obviously not in their nature. But to the mainstream media, I would say, follow Andrew Alexander's advice. Write more about policy, geared to the non-wonk, so that the general public will understand what is being debated. This is not to suggest that everyone who understands the proposed reforms will favor them, only that there will be more room for rational debate. And when debate becomes irrational, follow Dionne's advice. Yes, irrationality is news and deserves to be reported. But give us some perspective. If the vast majority of meetings are not blowing up, show some of them, too, and give us relative numbers. Your bias toward sensationalism is contributing to the polarization that is most deadly to democracy.

And to Democratic leaders. Barney Frank's approach can be tempting. Yes, when people are being irrational, it can be tempting just to mock them. But it will just be met with either counter-mockery or a sense of martyrdom. Al Franken has it right. Rationally engage whoever is engageable, be wonky but not patronizing, treat your constituents like adults. Be Franken, not Frank. And we may cool things off yet.

Robert Altemeyer on Authoritarians

One of the most popular ideas among liberal commentators these days is the concept of the authoritarian personality, drawing heavily on Robert Altemeyer's book The Authoritarians (available on line). Altemeyer is a Canadian psychologist whose research on authoritarianism was known mostly to professional colleagues until John Dean (of Watergate fame) popularized it in his book, Conservatives Without Conscience. Dean also persuaded Altemeyer to write his on-line book, summarizing his research for the general public.

Chapter 1 defines authoritarian followers as people who are blindly supportive of established authority figures and willing to ignore their misdeeds, aggressive and punitive in support of authority, conformist, and insistent that everyone else also conform. Chapter 3 is an unflattering description of authoritarian thinking. Authoritarian followers care more about reaching a conclusion they like than whether it is supported by facts or logic. They can hold contradictory views simultaneously without being aware of it, and hold their views dogmatically regardless of evidence. They lack self-awareness and a capacity for self criticism. Authoritarians are strongly ethnocentric. They associate as much as possible only with their in-group, distrust outsiders, and tend to see things in terms of us versus them, and to place a high value on group loyalty and cohesiveness. But there is a flaw in this description, particularly the accusation that authoritarians hold contradictory and illogical beliefs. Most people, whether authoritarian or not, hold a multitude of values and principles and, in this messy, complex world, they often come into conflict. Apparent contradictions in such cases are often simply decisions which value has higher priority.

Consider, for instance, Chapter 4, which discusses authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalists are strong defenders of the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit. Altemeyer gives the hypothetical (pp. 126-127) of a teen from a troubled home seeking advice from another family. If the child was raised as a Christian and seeks advice from atheists, fundamentalists defend the rights of parents to raise their children and belief outsiders should not try to undermine the child's Christian beliefs. But if a troubled child from an atheistic home seeks advice from Christians, most fundamentalists think they should ignore the parents' authority and seek a conversion. In another example (pp. 115-117), fundamentalists favored U.S. schools preaching Christianity despite the wishes of religious minorities. They justified this as a matter of majority rule. But they did not believe that schools in Muslim countries should preach Islam against the wishes of religious minorities, as a matter of minority rights. Altemeyer sees these as examples of a fundamentalist "double standard." But, of course fundamentalists are being perfectly consistent; they are favoring Christianity over any rival religion or non-religion. What they are really saying is that promoting Christianity trumps any consideration of parental authority, majority rule, or minority rights. And, after all, if you believe that Christians go to Heaven and everybody else goes to Hell, what can be more important that promoting Christianity at all costs?

Similar, but less obvious are political cases decribed in Chapter 3. Authoritarians are more likely than non-authoritarians to censor "dangerous" ideas, either of the left or right, including racist ideas (pp 83-84). Clearly authoritarians believe that promoting good ideas over bad ones (including racism) is more important than a value-neutral freedom of expression. More troubling (pp. 81-83) is the hypothetical of a speaker inciting a riot between pro- and anti-gay demonstrators. Authoritarians would punish the speaker more or less severely depending on whether he was giving a pro- or anti-gay speech. This can be treated as a double standard. Or it can be taken to mean that authoritarians consider violence more or less reprehensible depending on whether it is committed on behalf of a "good" or "bad" cause.

And here, I think, lies the answer to the "mystery" (Introduction, p. 2) as to why some people don't seem to want democracy. Democracy is really not as easy or natural as we have been taught to assume. It values procedure over substance. It demands obedience to leaders who are chosen by the right procedure (i.e, who win the election), regardless of how loathsome their values or policies may be to us. It expects us to treat abstract procedural details, such as federalism or separation of powers, as more important than the actual merits of what policy to adopt. It insists that we respect the rights of people we despise (sometimes deservedly). Freedom of expression makes no distinction between good and bad ideas, but expects us to give equal privilege to even the vilest ideas that surely have nothing to contribute. And, to people who believe that their religion is the sole path to Heaven, freedom of religion requires us to allow the spread of false doctrines that will condemn countless people to Hell. These are not easy rules to swallow.


And, in fact, authoritarians do not swallow these rules. They value adopting right and moral policies over any procedural rules of fair play as to how these policies are reached. They do not respect the rights of people they consider underserving. They value the promotion of good ideas over bad ones more than an abstract and value-neutral freedom of expression. They want every advantage for true religion over false. And, increasingly, they are even beginning to value having leaders like themselves, who share their outlooks and values, over electoral nicities.

In a society that did not profess an attachment to democracy, or to freedom of religion and expression, authoritarians could openly say that they favor truth over democratic rule. But in the United States today, it is utterly unacceptable to admit, even to one's self, that one opposes democracy. Thus authoritarians seem self-contradictory and hypocritical. But strip away the pretense of democracy, and authoritarian views are perfectly consistent.

I will address this further in my next post.

The Problem with Conservatives Who Cry Liberal Bias

It's an ongoing saga. Conservatives accuse some institution of having a liberal bias and set out to counter it. When the alternative goes against the judgment of experienced professionals in the field, conservatives dismiss this as evidence that the professionals have a systematic liberal bias. The examples are legion.

Fox New calls itself "fair and balanced" in contrast to the liberally biased network news. The Bush Administration stops having the American Bar Association screen its judicial nominees and refers them to the Federalist Society instead. Michelle Malkin defends the internment of Japanese-Americans and dismisses mainstream historians who disagree as "professor[s] whose tenure relies on regurgitating academic orthodoxy about this episode in American history." Douglas Feith selectively cuts and pastes intelligence reports on Iraq and says he is overcoming the CIA's anti-war bias. The Conservapedia sets out to counter the liberal bias of the Wikipedia. And now it appears that YouTube has a liberal bias and conservatives are founding Qube TV as an alternative. And then there are the alleged "alternatives" to evolution.

Two things invariably happen in all these cases. First the conservative alternative is invariably more biased than the original. After initial denials, conservatives admit it is true, but say that everything biased and they are simply providing a counterbalance. And I will concede their point that journalists, academics, scientists and lawyers tend to be liberal in outlook and that this may leak over into their supposedly objective work and create a bias. But a second and more important problem remains with these conservative alternative. They are invariably inferior to the purportedly biased mainstream versions.

So, unless we believe that reality has a liberal bias, why is that so? I believe the answer is that people creating conservative alternatives ignore basic rules of sound methodology. They tend to assume that sound methodology means methodology that yields results I like and is ideologically defined. But there are certain basic principles of how to analyze data to draw sound conclusions that are remarkably similar regardless of whether the field is science, history, journalism, intelligence analysis, etc.

• Analyze the facts to reach a conclusion. Do not begin with a conclusion and arrange the facts to support it.
• It is acceptable to approach the facts with a preliminary hypothesis, so long as the hypothesis can be modified or abandoned if the evidence warrants. What is not acceptable is for the hypothesis to be unchangeable regardless of facts.
• Look for the broad general pattern, while noting anomalies for future investigation. Do not focus on anomalies and ignore the general pattern. (Do not conceal the anomalies, either).
• Beware of single sources. They are apt to be anomalies. Reality leaves ample evidence.

These principles and not ideological. Neither, I admit, are they natural to most people's way of thinking. Most people have strong preconceptions that are hard to shake and are more impressed with a striking annecdote than a mountain of facts. But they are necessary for good scholarship or investigation.

If conservatives want to prove an institution liberally biased and offer an alternative, let them present evidence that mainstream members ignore these principles and offer alternative that adhere to them more rigorously. And if liberals wish to avoid being supplanted by inferior and more biased alternatives, then we need to teach people the importance of these principles for any sort of serious understanding.

Intelligence Analysis versus Manipulation

So, now theWashington Post has reported that the Pentagon Inspector General found that former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith's briefing to the White House in 2002 "undercuts the Intelligence Community" and "did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence." This will presumably be the opening salvo in a great investigation and debate as to whether the Administration manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. To which most reasonable people would say, "Well, duh!" It has long been known that the Vice President's office, distrusting the usual intelligence agencies, set up its Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the Pentagon to sort through raw data to look for any items that would support the case for war. Is this not, by itself, proof that intelligence was manipulated to support the case for war?

According to Bush supporters, it is not. Rather, they say, it was an attempt to correct systematic biases and errors by the intelligence community. Pro-Bush blogger Captain Ed believes that Feith was simply doing what Congress and the 9/11 Commission recommended, expressing dissenting views. "Back then, dissenters got celebrated as visionaries who had the courage to try to wake up the decisionmakers. Now Congress wants to punish someone who essentially did what Congress demanded during those reviews." Feith made similar arguments in an interview with NPR:

The criticism that is being directed now at my former office is because my office was trying to prevent an intelligence failure. We were - we had people in the Pentagon who thought that the CIA's speculative assessments were not of top quality. They were not raising all the questions they should raise and considering all the information they should consider.

What Feith and his defenders are ignoring is that he is not being criticized for presenting dissenting viewpoints, but for how he reached his conclusions. Feith and his colleagues were not just raising shaking up the intelligence community with new and unorthodox ideas, they abandoning sound methods of intelligence analysis and instead cherry picking material to support his own preconceived notions. Feith's defenders might reply that his critics are defining "sound analysis" to mean reaching conclusions they like and "cherry picking" to mean reaching conclusions they do not like. But there are objective standards of what does and does not constitute sound analysis.

There is a reason intelligence agencies filter raw data before passing it on to policy makers. The material they gather, along with valuable information, includes an abundance of unreliable witness accounts, gossip, hearsay, fourth-hand rumors, lies, enemy disinformation, and a few outright forgeries. One of the jobs of intelligence analysts is to determine what is genuine. Even genuine material is not all equally valuable. Like a good journalist or historian, a good analyst should beware of single sources, should give due weight to conflicting evidence, and should search for overall trends and patterns rather than rare anomalies. Trees can be important, but don't overlook the forest! Of course, unlike a journalist or historian, an intelligence analyst is looking for threats that can get us killed, it does seem a reasonable rule that the more alarming a report, the more investigation it merits and the higher the more disproof should be required before it can be dismissed. But that is not the same as automatically believing every alarming rumor.

Granted, all this is easier said than done. Analysts can be fooled into believing inaccurate information or dismissing genuine material as false. They can dismiss findings as anomalies only to find later that they are important, or they can miss the forest for the trees. There is plenty of room for even professionals to disagree on what constitutes good analysis. But there are some things any amateur should be able to recognize as bad analysis. Examples would include: Relying on documents widely believed to be forgeries and contradicted by investigation on the ground. Overriding the judgment of nuclear scientists that aluminum tubes going to Iraq were not suitable for enriching uranium. Believing accounts of mobile bioweapons labs from a single source, widely viewed as a fabricator. Ignoring the professional judgment of the Air Force that Iraqi unmanned drones were unsuited for delivering chemical or biological weapons. Underlying all these individual errors was a basis error in approach. Instead of examining the evidence to see what conclusions it would support, Feith and the OSP began with a conclusion and then looked for supporting evidence, regardless of source, that would support it.

Significantly, Feith and his defenders do not focus on on the OSP's search for any and all evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The well-publicized cases of bad data they accepted, and the lack of physical evidence of such an arsenal are too embarrassing. Instead, they discuss the OSP's attempts to prove links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, a claim much more difficult to disprove. In the murky world of international intelligence and terrorism, everyone has contacts with everyone else. Indeed, some conspiracy theorists have even found evidence (of dubious quality) of contacts between Bin Laden and the US. Searching through the murk for evidence of contacts between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda, Feith found evidence that the two organizations had some contacts during the 1990's, put out feelers toward each other, and considered a collaberation. But there was nothing concrete to indicate that Saddam supplied al-Qaeda with money, weapon, training, havens or other meaningful assistance. Feith's defender's argue that the OSP was simply trying to overcome CIA preconceptions that groups as ideologically opposed as Islamicists and Baathist would not cooperate, But, in fact, the CIA appears to have based its estimate, not just on this assumption, but on a high-level "source" that assured them there was no collaberative relationship. Furthermore, despite claims that CIA had a bias against believing in such a relationship, Paul Pillar, the former CIA senior analyst for the Middle East points out that too exhaustive study of such links can create a bias in the opposite direction:

On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath. In an unpoliticized environment, intelligence officers decide which rocks to turn over based on past patterns and their own judgments. But when policymakers repeatedly urge the intelligence community to turn over only certain rocks, the process becomes biased. The community responds by concentrating its resources on those rocks, eventually producing a body of reporting and analysis that, thanks to quantity and emphasis, leaves the impression that what lies under those same rocks is a bigger part of the problem than it really is.

Granted, intelligence officers' judgments can be faulty, and following past pattern creates a bias in favor of looking at past threats that may miss a new one. But Pillar is, again, pointing out the dangers of beginning with a conclusion and working back to find evidence for it.

The important point to keep in mind about Feith and his defenders is that they are not conceding that the OSP was wrong, about Saddam's ties to Al-Qaeda or even (potentially) about WMD. In fact, they believe they have an ace up their sleeve proving the OSP was right, the Iraqi Freedom Documents. These documents are a collection of some 48,000 boxes of documents captured in Iraq. Although the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) found nothing in these documents to change their viewpoints, at the insistence of Congressman Pete Hoekstra, they were made public, and numerous Bush supporters are pouring over them, looking for evidence to support the OSP's judgment. They do, indeed, appear to have found at least one significant document from 1995 about contacts between Saddam's government and Bin Laden, and others that are suggestive.

Nothing in these archives, however, has changed the minds of intelligence professionals. They are subject to the same caveats as any other intelligence source -- they contain an abundance of contradictory information, anomalies, unreliable sources, fourth-hand rumors and the like. Historian Fritz Umbach, examining the documents, found that they contained some 40 files relating to jihadists, but having nothing to do with Iraq. (He speculates that either Iraqi intelligence departments downloaded them from jihadi websites, or U.S. forces could have "captured" them by downloading them from locations inside Iraq). And administration supporters are showing every inclination to duplicate the errors of Douglas Feith and the OSP on a larger scale -- starting with a conclusion and cherry picking any evidence that will support it.

The OSP and its defenders today are operating under a series of assumptions. They assume that any amateur can analyze raw data as well as a professional, that intelligence professionals who disagree with them are inherently biased, and that their own views are not biased. Above all, they fail to understand what is wrong with beginning with a conclusion and working backward to support it. Indeed, convinced from the start that their conclusion is right, they presuppose that the facts must support it and that anyone who disagrees can only be speaking from bias and preconception. This is what critics call faith-based (or even Feith-based) intelligence.

Further Reflections on Media Bias

I should clarify what I said yesterday to make clear that I believe the mainstream media do have bias -- indeed, many biases. I simply do not believe it is anything like the simple ideological bias many people allege. I believe that the following biases exist in the mainstream (US) media:

(1) A U.S. Bias: Most Americans, including mainstream media, are not interested in what goes on beyond their borders. American news tends not to report on events in other countries, or to report very superficially, unless the U.S. government has directed their attention to another country, or something very sensational (like an earthquake or massacre) has happened.

(2) A Bad New Bias: People sometimes complain that all they hear is bad news, but this is in the nature of news. Does anyone want to hear about all the cars that didn't get into accident and all the people who weren't crime victims today?

(3) A "Man Bites Dog" Bias: We've all heard the addage that it is not news when a dog bites a man but it is news when a man bites a dog. This creates an abnormal slanting of the news that journalists do not often acknowledge. If we hear about every time a man bites a dog and nothing about most dogs biting men, we end up getting a very distorted view of the frequency of those events. People end up keeping their dogs locked up in the house to protect them from those deranged, bite-happy men out there, while scarcely giving a thought of the risk from dogs. This could explain why there is such fear and anxiety over school shootings when really there are any number of greater dangers to children, and why so many people are in a tizzy over bird flu and think nothing of more common diseases.

(4) A Short Attention Span: Events happen that briefly make the news and become stale within a few days. I used to call this the November Rule. The biggest story of the year would take place in November and would be so exciting we would still be hearing about it at the end of the year. Nothing else stayed in the news so long.

(5) A Washington Bias (or a horse race mentality): We hear a great deal about presidential contenders and what they are doing, or about the President's trip overseas. Debates over proposed laws tend to be addressed in terms of whose political career they enhance or harm, rather than on how they impact ordinary people. Presidential campaigns are addressed in terms of campaign strategy and who is going negative rather than what they are actually proposing. (Granted what they propose is usually as little as possible, all carefully polls tested and honed in focus groups).

(6) A Seize-the-Initiative Bias: Whoever gets the media's attention first has a huge head start, and all others are left playing catchup. A classic example of this is in all those studies we hear about that walnut oil or fish oil or whatever is the key to health and longevity. Questioning and qualification follow much later and are drowned out in the hoopla. This type of bias worked in George Bush's favor when he took the initiative in seeking war in Iraq; it works against him when leakers expose whatever he is up to.

(7) A Sensationalist Bias: Not only do sensational stories sell best, but often the first account of a story, based more on rumor than fact, tends to magnify the event and the more mundane truth only later emerges. Wild rumors about violence in the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina are an obvious recent example.

(8) Finally, and closely related to all of the above, superficiality. Treatment of events in foreign countries or outside the beltway tend to be superficial, while inside-the-beltway, electoral politics stories are only superficially less superficial, giving in-depth discussion of political maneuvers but little analysis of their policy consequences. A short attention span is simply another sign of a lack of interest in in-depth coverage. So, too, do sensational and man-bites-dog stories. (Rare events are less likely to have overall social significance than common ones precisely because they are rare events rather than a common pattern). And the advantage that goes to whoever talks first shows a lack of serious, in-depth investigation and a willingness simply to report what one is told.

Interestingly enough, all these biases are particularly strong in the mainstream media when seeking to be objective. Being objective tends to be seen as simply reporting an event and quoting conflicting opinions on what it means, rather than doing in-depth investigation. Serious, in-depth stories about real but non-glamorous societal issues, with plenty of follow up invariably treat a subject too large to be easily covered. Such stories are more likely to appear in a quality advocacy publication or, if they appear in mainstream media, to make no pretense of being unbiased.

Reflections on Media "Bias"

There's a funny thing about media bias. No one will admit to benefiting from it. Conservatives have long complained about a liberal bias while radicals complain about a pro-establishment bias and now liberals (or progessives, if you prefer) are trying to prove a conservative bias. But no one ever acknowledges a media bias in their favor. Incidentally, this is not only an American phenomenon. While George W. Bush denounces Al-Jazeera as little better than a propaganda outlet for anti-American propaganda, Osama bin-Laden complains that Al-Jazeera is hopelessly biased against him.

So what accounts for the conviction on the part of activists of all stripes that the mainstream media are biased against them? Someone has commented that whenever anyone cries bias, it reveals his or her own bias more than anything else, and there is certainly something to that. To many people no doubt it is simply a matter of believing that if the media don't agree with me, they must be unfairly biased. But I believe that for more sophisticated activists the explanation is somewhat more complex.

Activists, regardless of their issue, have more detailed, specialized knowledge of their subject than the general public, including most journalists. But their detailed specialized knowledge is biased. They know about activity other activists are undertaking for their cause, the harm caused by whatever they oppose, the good done by fellow activists, the facts that support their positions, and the various studies and arguments undertaken by the more scholarly members of their movement. They know little about their opponents, other than that they are a bunch of lying scoundrels who manipulate evidence to support their false positions. If the mainstream media ignore a set of activists, this can only be proof of a hostile bias. If an outlet in the mainstream media undertakes to do a story about the issue dear to these activists, the story is most unlikely to be satisfactory. Its treatment will be superficial and often ill-informed. It will leave out details considered essential by activists, but of little interest to the general public (or to journalists). It may well get some of its facts wrong, in ways that to an activist can only seem like deliberate ignorance or hostile bias. Important argument the activists use to support their position will either be ignored, oversimplified, distorted, or just plain misunderstood. And, worst of all, the mainstream outlet will actually take those scoundrels on the other side seriously and give them equal time. Only advocacy journals, that treat the activists and their cause in depth and make no attempt to cover the other side, can be trusted to report without hostile "bias."

And then, of course, there are the people who are less in-depth and simply believe that Fox New (or, for that matter, Mother Jones) is "fair and balanced" because they agree with it.