According to "Too Good to Check", Anderson Cooper “did [his country] a favor” by stopping the rumor that President Obama’s trip to Asia costs $200 million a day on his CNN show on November 4, 2010 (Friedman, 2010, ¶ 1). This event confirms what Mark Twain said a hundred year before the Internet that “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” (as cited in Friedman, 2010, ¶ 1). The story spread around the Internet before the date that President Obama began his trip to Asia. Cooper then researched and discovered that the source of rumor was an anonymous article with unproven figure written by a reporter in India. It was used as a fact by Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a Republican, on his show when he had asked her “where exactly Republicans will cut the budget” (¶ 2). “I think we know that just within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day … This is the kind of over-the-top spending” said Bachmann (¶ 3). “Have you ever seen the president … go over for a vacation where you needed 34 warships [and] $2 billion” said Glenn Beck on his radio show. This is one example of the extent of this unconfirmed report that Cooper illustrated. Despite security reasons, the White House press secretary clarified this issues saying that “I am not going to go into how much it costs to protect the president, [but this trip] is comparable to when President Clinton and when President Bush traveled abroad … This trip doesn’t cost $200 million a day” (¶ 8). Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, also said that “I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy and some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president’s trip to Asia … That’s just comical … Nothing close to that is being done”. Cooper then indicated that President Bill Clinton’s 1998 trip to Africa with 1,300 people and comparable duration cost about $5.2 million a day, according to the Government Accountability Office and adjusted for inflation. In his conclusion, Friedman hopes that there will be more journalist do like what Cooper did and that people will not easily trust and repeat the next foolish lie.
The similar events happen day after day around the world and, I think, this is a serious problem in Thailand. People like to tell story from what they have heard and no one seems to be concerned whether it is a truth or a lie. We were sometimes fooled by some figures or statistic numbers that makes the story sound reasonable. The story from this article is an excellent example for that. Moreover, we are now aware that the media even the standard one does make mistakes. Do you think how much we can trust the media?
Freedom of speech is absolutely essential for democracy. However, is it okay to retell whatever we have been told without checking the fact? What do you think?
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The summary seems to be long, but it's not. Most of them are direct quotes because I think it is more enjoyable if I quote what people have said exactly. It is even more fun if you read from the original source.
ReplyDeleteTarn,
ReplyDeleteWe can be very flexible here. I enjoyed reading your post, including teh long summary paragraph where your combination of paraphrase and quotation is very well done.
Reading it reminded me of the first part of Stephen Law's discussion in his Faith and Reason section in "Faith in the Twenty-first Century." People do often believe things (usually things they want to believe), without stopping to think how likely that believe is to be true and what the supporting reasons and evidence are. I find it hard to believe that anyone could seriously believe that intelligent extra-terrestrial aliens visit us regularly, yet the evidence on YouTube is that many people do believe exactly that. (I think there are good grounds for thinking that there is life elsewhere in the universe, even intelligent life, but there is zero evidence that I'm aware of to suggest that any such creature has even popped into say hello to us, or just to observe.)
Now that you've given us such useful summary of an interesting article, perhaps everyone else will expand the response part.
Lies are always juicier than truth. I'm not surprised when people tend to belive the lies so easily, especially the one that made up so well and the one with dramatic touch to it.
ReplyDeleteThe freedom of speech is, of course, limited. Everyone's free to say whatever they want as long as the speech doesn't violate other people's rights. If it is not so, it could be defamation, whether you're just telling what you've heard or you made it up yourself.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteI thought it was similar to our discussion about faith, too. That's why I chose this article. I'm sorry that I was too lazy to write about it. Besides, I'm not an expert on Stephen Law's essay.
I agree with you that as they never stop to think about evidence, people believe things easily. Even there is strong evidence that something is wrong or they are wrong about something, some people still believe on what they want to believe, which is equal to blind faith. I think this is one of the major causes of political conflicts around the world especially in Thailand.
Thank you, Tarn. You have given an interesting information and good to think about it. I agree with Tarn that it hardly change people's mind or opinion because people hardly accept
ReplyDeletetheir wrong.
I think, it is good to check the information that you have heard from other, but it is ok to retell somethings we have been told without checking the fact because not everyone can check all of it. However, they have to be very carefull with their attitude while they retell somethings. It means they have to confirm the information are checked or not.
After reading Tarn article, the first thing come to my mind is Thai political issues. As we know the situation happening 6 months ago in Thailand,one of significant causes might be the "truth or lie" information which are expressed from several kinds of media.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, I think people should use amount of time considering what they hear or see before believe it. If possible, they should listen both sides of information and from various types of media.