The Volokh Conspiracy - "Dishonest or Insane":

Slate's Chatterbox column is running a new series called "The Fleischer Watch" -- "an ongoing inquiry into dishonest or insane assertions buried inside Ari Fleischer's White House memoir." Here's the first item, posted Tuesday:

In his new book, Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House, Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary, lays out various "biases and predilections" of "the liberal press." Among these is its 'belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems," its insistence that "emotional examples of suffering … are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories," and its tendency to stay "fixated on the unemployment rate." Fleischer might just as well have complained that the press believes the Earth revolves around the sun.

At risk of belaboring the obvious:

1. If the government doesn't exist to solve problems, what the hell do we have it for? We can argue about the particular problems government should solve, and about how successfully government addresses them at any given time, but not, I think, about whether government should be in the problem-solving business.

2. Un-picturesque though they may be, people do tend to suffer when the economy is faltering, as it did throughout the period covered in Fleischer's memoir. If a lagging economy didn't cause people to suffer, there would be no great reason to keep track of the economy at all. Anecdotes about individual sufferers help the public understand in a concrete way what it means to have a weak economy.

3. The principal way people suffer when economic growth is weak or nonexistent is by losing their jobs. The statistic that keeps track of the people who lose their jobs is the unemployment rate (at the moment a so-so 5.4 percent). Fleischer doesn't want the press to focus on the "micro" story of individual suffering, but neither does he want the press to focus on the "macro" story of economic statistics. In effect, Fleischer is saying that it's unfair for the press to cover the economy at all.

Now unfortunately the column doesn't point to the page number on which the quotes appear, so if they appear in more than one place the following might be mistaken. Still, if the quotes are indeed to p. 100 of the book, then the mistake -- or rather mistakes -- seem to be Slate's.

Page 100 starts with the heading "The Liberal Press?," and is followed by a page-long block quote. On the top of page 101, Fleischer says "That's what ABC News said in its influential daily newsletter The Note on February 10, 2004, in a breathtakingly frank and rare internal assessment of the journalism business. The public largely agrees."

1. So already we see something odd about the Slate column: It doesn't even mention that the quotes aren't composed by Fleischer, but actually come from The Note (I think they've been credited elsewhere to The Note's editor, Mark Halperin). Now Fleischer does seem to be endorsing the quote in considerable measure. But when people quote a page of material, they don't always completely endorse every clause. Surely it would have been helpful for Slate to have mentioned that the "dishonest or insane" material statements aren't Fleischer's, but rather someone else's and were simply quoted favorably by Fleischer. Or am I missing something? (Incidentally, if you want to read the quote, the original is here.)

2. There's more. Slate derides Fleischer's complaint about the press's "insistence that 'emotional examples of suffering … are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.'" Believing that such emotional examples are good ways to illustrate stories is as normal and sensible, the item says, as "believ[ing] the Earth revolves around the sun."

But the material that Fleischer quoted says that the press believes "that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories." Slate simply replaced the parenthetical with ellipses. Yet is believing that emotional examples provided by unions or consumer groups are good ways to illustrate stories the same as "believ[ing] the Earth revolves around the sun"?

Is it "insane" (even allowing for some hyperbole on Slate's part) for Fleischer to think that the press shouldn't rely on examples provided by interest groups? Perhaps the interest groups are providing examples that are unrepresentative, or that are in some way spun or incompletely described. Or perhaps not -- perhaps relying consistently on examples provided by interest groups is just fine. But isn't there some difference between complaining about the press's using emotional examples as such, and complaining about the press's using emotional examples provided by interest groups? And if there is such a difference, shouldn't Slate have kept the parenthetical?

3. Quoting the three small items from the whole page, it seems to me, fails to do justice to The Note's criticisms. Thus, The Note quote said:

[The press] does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.
It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

Earlier in the long quote, The Note pointed to the press's belief "that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative effect on economic growth." Presumably, the complaint isn't just that the press is talking about unemployment, but that it's "fixated" on unemployment -- unduly focused on it -- and doesn't deal adequately or fairly with other important economic items.

4. Finally, there are the substantive weaknesses of the "Fleischer Watch" (i.e., Halperin Watch) critique: For instance, when The Note criticized the "belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems," I take it that it wasn't saying that "government doesn't exist to solve problems" -- rather, it was criticizing the belief that government is an effective mechanism to solve the nation's problems, or that the government is a mechanism to solve all or most of the nation's problems. Perhaps The Note put the point more ambiguously than it should have (though Fleischer understandably quoted the ambiguous and less effective parts alongside the clearer and more effective parts). But it seems that Chatterbox resolved the ambiguity by using the least plausible and most unfavorable interpretation.

Naturally, my complaints 3 and 4 are less significant than complaints 1 and 2. But when I put them all together, it seems to me that this inaugural post in the Fleischer criticism series says more negative things about the critic than about Fleischer.

Finally, one note: Because the block quote on p. 100 occupies the whole page, it's possible to at first glance miss the fact that it's a block quote. It does have a ragged right margin, unlike the rest of the text, and if you look closely through the sheet, you'll find that the left margin is indented relative to the left margin on the preceding sheet; but a first look could indeed fail to grasp this. But on second glance, one would find that the very next paragraph, on top of p. 101 begins with "That's what ABC News said in its influential daily newsletter The Note on February 10, 2004"; and a quick search would confirm that the block quote is indeed a block quote.

	[Eugene Volokh, March 17, 2005 at 3:02pm] Trackbacks "Dishonest or Insane": Slate's Chatterbox column is running a new series called "The Fleischer Watch" -- "an ongoing inquiry into dishonest or insane assertions buried inside Ari Fleischer's White House memoir." Here's the first item, posted Tuesday: In his new book, Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House, Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary, lays out various "biases and predilections" of "the liberal press." Among these is its 'belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems," its insistence that "emotional examples of suffering … are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories," and its tendency to stay "fixated on the unemployment rate." Fleischer might just as well have complained that the press believes the Earth revolves around the sun. At risk of belaboring the obvious: 1. If the government doesn't exist to solve problems, what the hell do we have it for? We can argue about the particular problems government should solve, and about how successfully government addresses them at any given time, but not, I think, about whether government should be in the problem-solving business. 2. Un-picturesque though they may be, people do tend to suffer when the economy is faltering, as it did throughout the period covered in Fleischer's memoir. If a lagging economy didn't cause people to suffer, there would be no great reason to keep track of the economy at all. Anecdotes about individual sufferers help the public understand in a concrete way what it means to have a weak economy. 3. The principal way people suffer when economic growth is weak or nonexistent is by losing their jobs. The statistic that keeps track of the people who lose their jobs is the unemployment rate (at the moment a so-so 5.4 percent). Fleischer doesn't want the press to focus on the "micro" story of individual suffering, but neither does he want the press to focus on the "macro" story of economic statistics. In effect, Fleischer is saying that it's unfair for the press to cover the economy at all. Now unfortunately the column doesn't point to the page number on which the quotes appear, so if they appear in more than one place the following might be mistaken. Still, if the quotes are indeed to p. 100 of the book, then the mistake -- or rather mistakes -- seem to be Slate's. Page 100 starts with the heading "The Liberal Press?," and is followed by a page-long block quote. On the top of page 101, Fleischer says "That's what ABC News said in its influential daily newsletter The Note on February 10, 2004, in a breathtakingly frank and rare internal assessment of the journalism business. The public largely agrees." 1. So already we see something odd about the Slate column: It doesn't even mention that the quotes aren't composed by Fleischer, but actually come from The Note (I think they've been credited elsewhere to The Note's editor, Mark Halperin). Now Fleischer does seem to be endorsing the quote in considerable measure. But when people quote a page of material, they don't always completely endorse every clause. Surely it would have been helpful for Slate to have mentioned that the "dishonest or insane" material statements aren't Fleischer's, but rather someone else's and were simply quoted favorably by Fleischer. Or am I missing something? (Incidentally, if you want to read the quote, the original is here.) 2. There's more. Slate derides Fleischer's complaint about the press's "insistence that 'emotional examples of suffering … are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.'" Believing that such emotional examples are good ways to illustrate stories is as normal and sensible, the item says, as "believ[ing] the Earth revolves around the sun." But the material that Fleischer quoted says that the press believes "that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories." Slate simply replaced the parenthetical with ellipses. Yet is believing that emotional examples provided by unions or consumer groups are good ways to illustrate stories the same as "believ[ing] the Earth revolves around the sun"? Is it "insane" (even allowing for some hyperbole on Slate's part) for Fleischer to think that the press shouldn't rely on examples provided by interest groups? Perhaps the interest groups are providing examples that are unrepresentative, or that are in some way spun or incompletely described. Or perhaps not -- perhaps relying consistently on examples provided by interest groups is just fine. But isn't there some difference between complaining about the press's using emotional examples as such, and complaining about the press's using emotional examples provided by interest groups? And if there is such a difference, shouldn't Slate have kept the parenthetical? 3. *Quoting the three small items from the whole page, it seems to me, fails to do justice to The Note's criticisms.* Thus, The Note quote said: [The press] does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending. It remains fixated on the unemployment rate. Earlier in the long quote, The Note pointed to the press's belief "that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative effect on economic growth." Presumably, the complaint isn't just that the press is talking about unemployment, but that it's "fixated" on unemployment -- unduly focused on it -- and doesn't deal adequately or fairly with other important economic items. 4. Finally, there are the substantive weaknesses of the "Fleischer Watch" (i.e., Halperin Watch) critique: For instance, when The Note criticized the "belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems," I take it that it wasn't saying that "government doesn't exist to solve problems" -- rather, it was criticizing the belief that government is an effective mechanism to solve the nation's problems, or that the government is a mechanism to solve all or most of the nation's problems. Perhaps The Note put the point more ambiguously than it should have (though Fleischer understandably quoted the ambiguous and less effective parts alongside the clearer and more effective parts). But it seems that Chatterbox resolved the ambiguity by using the least plausible and most unfavorable interpretation. Naturally, my complaints 3 and 4 are less significant than complaints 1 and 2. But when I put them all together, it seems to me that this inaugural post in the Fleischer criticism series says more negative things about the critic than about Fleischer. Finally, one note: Because the block quote on p. 100 occupies the whole page, it's possible to at first glance miss the fact that it's a block quote. It does have a ragged right margin, unlike the rest of the text, and if you look closely through the sheet, you'll find that the left margin is indented relative to the left margin on the preceding sheet; but a first look could indeed fail to grasp this. But on second glance, one would find that the very next paragraph, on top of p. 101 begins with "That's what ABC News said in its influential daily newsletter The Note on February 10, 2004"; and a quick search would confirm that the block quote is indeed a block quote.