Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Pivot to the General

In "Agents of doubt :How a powerful Russian propaganda machine chips away at Western notions of truth" Joby Warrick and Anton Troianovski construct a powerful evidence-based narrative.

They begin the story with a compelling timeline graphic that separately documents the actions of Russian officials and Russian media alongside the contemporaneous events in Britain. As they point out "Russian media have disseminated as many as 46 false stories" about the Skripal nerve gas attack in Britain. And, using the projection method popular with certain elements in the West, "Moscow has repeatedly rejected [the] accusations, while suggesting that Britain is responsible for any confusion over what happened in the Skripal case."

The WaPo writers explain that the problem goes well beyond the attempted murders of the Skripals.

"Yet the same tactics that were observed in the wake of the Skripal poisoning have been employed multiple times since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, in each case following roughly the same script. When pro-Russian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew members, Russian officials and media outlets sought to pin the blame on the Ukrainian government, suggesting at one point that corpses had been trucked to the crash site to make the death toll appear higher."

So far so good. Great reporting.

But the car goes off the road. Here we go:

"While many of the individual stories are easily debunked, the campaigns have had a discernible impact, as measured by opinion polls and, occasionally, public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments. In October 2015, months after U.S. and European investigators concluded that Flight 17 had been brought down by a Russian missile fired by separatists, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told CNN that the culprit was “probably Russia” but suggested that the truth was unknowable."

Wait. Why are the authors suggesting that the doubt expressed by Donald Trump about Russian responsibility for the downing of Flight 17 is somehow a representative example of successful sowing of doubt by the Kremlin in presumed rational Western leadership? Surely the authors have noticed that Donald Trump leans heavily toward Russian in his public pronouncements and actions. And that a full scale Justice Department investigation of Team Trump ties to Russia is proceeding apace.

Notice that the authors avoided quoting Trump's nonstop "doubts" about  the findings of U.S. intelligence regarding Russia's avid support of candidate Trump in the 2016 election with the distribution of the hacked DNC emails. "It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

Unfortunately, the WaPo, similar to the NYT, employs the dubious standard - we only know what we know for sure and anything we suspect about a politician needs to be treated as false. As a result, the opposite of what we suspect needs to be treated as true. Therefore, if we suspect that Trump and his team collaborated actively with Russia (We actually know this, by the way, but, whatever), and we are trying to discuss the reaction of Western leaders to Russian propaganda, we do not know Trump's complicity for sure, so when Trump expresses doubt about the facts that contradict Russian propaganda, we can use Trump's expressions of doubt as a solid example of confusion in the West rather than as a clear example of collaboration with Russia to advance his own personal interests.

In other words, if journalists want to assume Trump may be innocent of any particular wrongdoing, even in the face of all available evidence, that does not justify a presumption that Trump is definitiely innocent. Assuming someone may be innocent does not mean the person is innocent and does not justify coming to conclusions that are only true if the person is innocent.

Adding insult to injury, from a journalistic perspective, this device of presumed innocence creates a false frame that Trump is definitely innocent of any collaboration with Russia, criminal or otherwise.

One indicator of the logical flaw shows up in the statement "public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments." followed immediately by a single flawed example - Donald Trump. The logical fallacy here is the pivot to the general - drawing a general conclusion from a specific case where more careful objective analysis of the specific case would yield a different conclusion. This pivot from the specific to the general is often used by conservatives as a debating tactic to avoid reasonable evidence-based inferences. (more to come on that in future posts.)

As a journalistic failure, this logically flawed practice is related to the problem of minimalism given context in The Problem With Appearances. Reporters assume the best is true if they do not know for certain that the worst is true.

This is not the first time WaPo has employed this dubious journalistic standard that results in implied false conclusions. While WaPo has been head and shoulders above the NYT the past two years, this example is particularly egregious because Trump, together with Fox News, and in support of the Kremlin has been the key operative in the West to create as much confusion as possible about the facts. As a consequence, this journalistic breach, repeated yet again, is deserving of a "Bottomless Pinnocchio".

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