Editorials

The theme of the week’s news is lying. President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have now shamelessly adopted the Big Lie technique perfected by Nazi propagandists. They have jointly and severally repeated not once but often their latest Big Lie, that they didn’t tell Congress earlier Big Lies in order to coerce a yes vote on going into Iraq. Senator Reid is calling them on it, though I haven’t yet seen Reid quoted as using the L-word, possibly because American politics tends toward genteel euphemisms. The British, who can be seen in parliamentary debate on late-night TV, have no such scruples. Tony Blair has been called a liar by members of his own party, by the British press, and by British bloggers, one of whom branded a particular Blair statement as “utter bollocks.” In fact, a Google search on “bush liar” or “blair liar” produces many charges against each of them.  

On the state level, the discussion about who authorized a big relocation payment for UC provost M.R.C. Greenwood has produced a good crop of charges and counter-charges. Former regent Velma Montoya has a letter in Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle which stops just short of applying the L-word to UC’s president: “In his current distortion of the facts in an attempt to avoid responsibility for this unwise appointment, President Dynes has exposed his even more serious misrepresentation of the facts to the UC Board of Regents at the time of the Greenwood appointment. “  

“Distortion of the facts” and “serious misrepresentation” seem to have become part and parcel of public life these days. It happens all the time in Berkeley—one local official is called “Pinocchio” by his fans because he has the bad habit of “misrepresenting” and “distorting” even trivial, inconsequential and easily checked items of fact in public meetings.  

Lying has always been part of public discourse. What’s changed is that now it’s possible to fact-check almost any statement quickly. There will be a video-tape or an e-mail to document what was actually said, and there will be an ardent blogger to report the results of checking the facts, and perhaps even a conventional (“MSM” in bloggerspeak) media outlet willing to out a liar. That’s not to say that rapid-fire electronic information transmission doesn’t produce its own share of distortions, misrepresentations, untruths and outright lies, of course, compounded by acceleration of dissemination.  

“What is truth?” That’s Pontius Pilate’s cynical question to Jesus Christ, posed right before pronouncing a death sentence. It has provided fodder for centuries of theological and philosophical discussion, with still no obvious conclusion. Are candidates telling the truth when they promise to cut taxes and increase services? Are they lying to the electorate? Does it change things if they’re lying to themselves as well? Political puffery has always been winked at, but is puffery on the part of non-elected officials more serious? Is it worse for Scooter Libby to lie under oath while he’s feeding at the public trough than it is for George Bush to lie in his infrequent press conferences? Is it worse for Bill Clinton to lie about adultery than for Bush to lie about weapons of mass destruction?  

In the face of all this outright lying, the job of the media becomes even more confusing. Is it enough simply to report what was said by the person in authority, or must the responsible reporter take it one step further and independently check the truthfulness of the statement? And if the conscientious journalist is supposed to go beyond mindless acceptance of statements from officials, whether made in press releases or off-the-record, how is this to be done? It’s difficult, it’s expensive, and sometimes it’s not possible even with the best efforts. So if a reporter suspects that someone is spinning him or her, is the remedy just not to publish the spin? These are all questions that Bob Woodward should be asking himself right about now. Or that he should have asked himself in mid-June when he first got wind of the Valerie Wilson spin story. His answers will be interesting. 

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