News-Record.com

... just because we haven't had one for a while, this one on the reality-based community and its opponents' discontents:

"Occam's Razor does make [it] the simplest thing in the world to believe you're going crazy, and it's not exactly out of the realm of possibility that the sinking feeling in your stomach does mean something's amiss, but again. We have more access to information from more sources than at any other time in our history and if you still can't find anything to substantiate your inherent belligerent crapola, it's time for a mental regime change already."

-- Athenae at First Draft.

One of the things that distinguishes good journalists from ... well, from other types of journalists in particular and other types of people in general is that they tend to rely on evidence, standards, definitions -- discernible reality, in other words.

In the context of the whole world, the fact that other people might not is fine: We'd be a sadder and grumpier group without faith and imagination, and without the visionaries who find a way to make the best of our imaginations real and the earthly saints who manifest that faith and spread it.

Sometimes faith becomes the functional equivalent of reality. That can make the world a much better place, or a much worse one. And the greater the gap between faith (or imagination) and reality when there are real-life consequences either way, the greater the likelihood for trouble.

At least as far back as the Marx Brothers movie "Duck Soup," and possibly as far back as ancient Greece, those caught red-handed doing something they oughtn't have been reduced to a defense along the lines of, "Well, who you gonna believe -- me or your lyin' eyes?" (I think "lyin'" was not in early versions but was added later. To my Southern ears, it works better; your mileage may vary.)

One probably apocryphal story I've heard has the line coming from a man caught in the act of adultery. Another, more plausible though no more supported by evidence, has it coming from a New Orleans politician. (But not, so far as I can tell, Rep. William Jefferson, who might have amended the phrase to read, "Who ya gonna believe, me or my money-stuffed freezer?" But I digress.)

At its base, in this defense a transgressor calls upon a victim/witness/associate to take the transgressor's word over whatever tangible evidence or definition might call the transgressor's word into question, no matter how irrefutable that evidence might be.

It is a plea, in other words, to deny reality, to understand the nature of the people and institutions involved as if that reality does not exist and to act -- or decline to act -- as if that reality does not exist.

Some people are receptive to such pleas. But will I be, if you and I are standing out on the sidewalk and water is puddling in my shoes? If I observe, "It's raining," and my friend says, "No, it's not! Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?" I'm gonna believe my soakin'-wet feet and, thus, my lyin' eyes, Every. Single. Time.

Especially when my reporter ID is hanging around my neck.

Chip Scanlan, Poynter Institute writing guru extraordinaire, on what exposed fake-memoirist James Frey should have written.

I can't add anything to that.

UPDATE: When I first called up this Scanlan post, it was blank, and I thought that Scanlan had intended for it to be (i.e., that Frey should have kept his mouth shut). Turns out there's a real post here, and one worth reading. But it was funnier the other way.

Actually, I can answer the first part: Thane Peterson is a contributing editor at Business Week Online, and he's concerned about civility:

We shouldn't confuse negativity, which is often justified and informative, with incivility, which isn't.

INSULT TV. A few weeks ago, Zell Miller, the 72-year-old Democratic senator from Georgia who is supporting President Bush, felt MSNBC-TV's Chris Matthews was peppering him with harsh questions and cutting short his answers. Miller become so frustrated he told Matthews he wished we lived in the day when he could challenge the hyperaggressive TV host to a duel. Shades of Alexander Hamilton. ...

While many heaped scorn on Miller for his quaint nod to politics past, I actually applaud him in this instance -- even though I don't support his politics and don't condone his vitriolic attacks on Kerry at the GOP convention. Miller is to be congratulated for not impugning Matthews' motives or calling him names, as many politicians would have done.

It's important to remind people -- strongly if necessary -- that their actions have crossed the line. I support [New York Times ombudsman Daniel] Okrent, who recently wrote a column naming -- and condemning as a "coward" -- a San Francisco blogger who ended a note to a New York Times reporter with these words: "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war."

The guy in San Francisco sends a reporter an abusive but private e-mail, and Okrent holds him up to public ridicule in front of an audience of millions on the Web site of The New York Times, complete with the guy's e-mail address, as a way to "remind" him that his e-mail "has crossed the line"? I'm sure that felt quite cathartic. But it also was bullying, plain and simple, and unworthy of The New York Times. (Okrent's defense, as quoted by Peterson: "... I thought about it, and I decided that someone who goes out at night and paints a swastika on the door of a synagogue doesn't want it written about either." Ah, so a private communication expressing difference, however rudely, is equivalent to public desecration of property with an underlying message of religious bigotry. Ooooooh-kay.)

I don't condone uncivil discourse, the headline on this post to the contrary. But sometimes "uncivil" is in the eye of the beholder, and in any event, despite what Peterson thinks, even greater incivility, or worse, is not the solution.

"The media like grief stories. Reporters interview the widows and ask that invasive, stupid question: 'How do you feel now?' Our most human, empathetic response to the terrible suffering of others is that of the three friends of Job. For a whole week they sat silently at his side. Silence in the face of huge grief is the best way to respect it."

--The Rev. Donald W. Shiver, Jr., President Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary in New York, on press coverage of the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (Via Ted Pease, professor of journalism, Utah State University)

Job's friends had it right back in the day, and Shiver had it right in 2002: In general, the best response to enormous grief on the part of those close to the bereaved is physical closeness, coupled with a respectful silence.

The problem, for us in the media, is that we don't do silence well. Silence runs against our every professional instinct. We feel we have to fill the pages and screens. Yes, we have to be with our friends and neighbors, but we also have to talk about the circumstances that have led to the mourning and what will, or should, happen as a result.

Even under those circumstances, though, silence has its place. Many of the most striking newspaper front pages published after the 9/11 attacks consisted mainly of a single large photograph, accompanied by a 1-word headline and just a few text blocks referring readers to articles inside the paper. For all the hoopla surrounding former president Ronald Reagan's obsequies, the most memorable moment of the week might have been C-SPAN's shot of Nancy Reagan leaning over to kiss her husband's coffin, accompanied only by the sound of wind over the microphones.

Unlike in 2001 and 2002, I'm not involved in our 9/11 coverage this year. The journalist in me grumbles a bit about that, but the part of me that thinks Job's friends knew what they were doing is telling the journalist to be grateful for the opportunity to sit still and listen.