A Hot Summer's Day

Yesterday’s NYT magazine had a pretty good article on Wikipedia and the folks who make it “go”…its admins. Interesting stuff. I’m a BIG Wikipedia fan, in case you haven’t noticed. And while I’ll usually put in the standard “grain of salt” disclaimer whenever I cite the wiki on a controversial subject, I’ve never really seen (with my own eyes) blatant bias or anything less than an absolutely neutral point of view in any Wikipedia article.

Wikipedia may not exactly be a font of truth, but it does go against the current of what has happened to the notion of truth. The easy global dissemination of, well, everything has generated a D.I.Y. culture of proud subjectivity, a culture that has spread even to relatively traditional forms like television — as in the ascent of advocates like Lou Dobbs or Bill O’Reilly, whose appeal lies precisely in their subjectivity even as they name-check “neutrality” to cover all sorts of journalistic sins. But the Wikipedians, most of them born in the information age, have tasked themselves with weeding that subjectivity not just out of one another’s discourse but also out of their own. They may not be able to do any actual reporting from their bedrooms or dorm rooms or hotel rooms, but they can police bias, and they do it with a passion that’s no less impressive for its occasional excess of piety. Who taught them this? It’s a mystery; but they are teaching it to one another.

Well, I wouldn’t be “weeding out subjectivity out of my own discourse.” But that’s an entirely appropriate thing to do with the Wiki. Good job, Wikipedians!

I can’t believe I let the publication of a report by the BBC (PDF alert!) on its internal investigation into bias slip right by without comment. I know I read it and I know I read a lot of the comment surrounding the report by pundits in the British media and elsewhere. My lack of a post about the report is sort of mysterious (to me, anyway), given the Beeb’s bias has been the subject of a lot of ranting on my part. The BBC and its “unique” viewpoint has long been a hot button of mine.

So, anyway… along comes Robin Aitken, a veteran of 25 years of reporting for the BBC and author of a book titled “Can We trust the BBC?”, writing in yesterday’s WSJ on this subject.

I experienced a sense of vindication recently when I read that the BBC was about to publish a document admitting a pervasive liberal-left bias in its output. As this was the theme of my recent book, "Can We Trust the BBC?," it seemed I would be able to indulge in a spectacular bout of I-told-you-so-ing. Alas, that brief, heady moment proved premature. For while the report is a careful piece of research, it pulls its punches when it comes to bias within its own News and Current Affairs department--where it matters most. Richard Tait, chairman of the BBC's "Impartiality Steering Group," point-blank denied that there is any bias in its news output. The Beeb has never been distinguished by a culture of robust self-criticism.

[…]

And there has been wide-scale failure. On every issue of public policy and political controversy, the BBC's instincts are to side with the progressive, liberal wing of politics.

The war in Iraq? Opinion within the London newsrooms was overwhelmingly opposed to military action from the start and has never wavered since. Man-made climate change? The BBC has jettisoned all semblance of impartiality on the issue; it now openly campaigns with a constant stream of scare stories. The Arab-Israeli conflict? The BBC's sympathies are firmly on the side of the Palestinians, who, having achieved the status of permanent victims, escape skeptical examination of their actions and motives.

“OK,” sez you, “What’s the difference between the Beeb, and say, NBC or CNN? Isn’t the entire media biased, by definition?” Well, yes, that’s true insofar as it goes. The difference is reach and reputation. With the exception of CNN, the American print and electronic media are remarkably insular. Their audience(s) isn’t in Syria, Gambia, or Kazakhstan, it’s in the US of A. The Beeb, on the other hand, has a truly global reach and a reputation (however tarnished, of late) for impartiality and fairness in their reporting. Multiple generations in the former Soviet bloc grew up thinking “The News” and the BBC World Service was synonymous; the Beeb was one of best weapons the West had in winning the Cold War. Today’s listeners/viewers get a radically different slant on their news…what the West (read: The UK and the USA) does, is, and stands for is nearly always suspect if not outright wrong. It’s arguable as to whose side the Beeb is on in today’s Information War. A neutral person would suspect their sympathies lie with our enemies, based upon the Beeb’s day-to-day reporting. And I’m not the only one who notices. The trick is doing something about the problem.

For those of you who blog and use Site Meter…are you having issues with Site Meter today? As of 1155 hrs, SM sez I’ve had zero visitors today, now that I’ve finally managed to get SM to actually, ya know…load. Up until about 20 minutes ago all I got was a cryptic MS/IIS system message about scripts failing to run properly and timing out before completion (“The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property Server.ScriptTimeout or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools.”). It appears that the only thing that’s actually working in Site Meter right now is the Summary Page (with no current data); all other reports and functions are “currently unavailable” and I should “Please wait a few minutes and try again.” All in all, this doesn’t look good.

Summer is well and truly here and the AC is quietly humming loudly droning away. Those of you familiar with RVs know that the AC units are roof-mounted; mine sits just about three feet behind and to the left of me as I sit at the desk. I’m only about 18 inches shy of being able to reach out to touch the thing from where I sit. The noise and vibration, which are considerable, tends to get to you after a while, but it’s certainly better than the heat…which is already present. It’s 85 degrees as I write, on it’s way to somewhere north of 90 today. I love it. Except for the noise. It’s always sum’thin, ya know.

Today’s Pics: That little girl outlined in the top photo, who is the graduate in the photo taken just last year, is getting married this coming Thursday. My granddaughter, married. I don’t have any serious issues with the concept, Gentle Reader, aside from not being able to attend the wedding (poor planning on my part, let’s leave it at that). But the intellectual concept, as in “they DO grow up,” is much, much different than reality smacking you in the face: You’re old and getting a whole helluva lot older, with each passing day. Aiiieeee.

Family photo: Rochester, NY. Spring, 1997.

Graduation photo: Brunswick, Maine. June, 2006.