15 ms·

Terrorists vs. Bathtubs

58 points by krosaen 13y ago

krosaen 13y ago
transcript here: http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/jun/21/terrorists-versus-bath-tubs/transcript/ http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/jun/21/terrorists-versus-bath...
gruseom 13y ago
This interview is entirely about spin. It never once asks what the truth is [1]. Brooke Gladstone: Now, let's take today the argument over NSA surveillance. Where would you come down on this? Peter Sandman: Well, it would depend on who my client was - [Brooke laughs] Brooke Gladstone: [Pause] I can see why you have such a nice apartment. Peter Sandman: [Laughing] Brooke Gladstone: Peter, thank you very much. Peter Sandman: My pleasure. Can "journalism" get more oleaginous? Such a program should not be called On The Media, but Of The Media. [1] Edit: to be fair, she does say "That's not true" at the beginning, re the number of murders with hammers.
- herge 13y ago
  Are you a regular listener of On The Media? They don't report the news, they report on how the news is reported. So techniques, trends, and ways that the news and the media, including Mr. Sandman, report news and facts.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    I've listened a few times and developed the impression that its main preoccupation is its own insider status. There's no reporting at all in, for example, this piece. Let's not assume that a PR consultant (Mr. Sandman) belongs naturally to "the news and the media" without mentioning the much larger question of whether an independent press would be dominated by PR in the first place.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      You should listen to OTM more. It's media criticism, so what reporting it does will necessarily seem like navel-gazing. But there's been some really great stuff on it. A less... lubricated... venue for this kind of analysis is Jack Schafer's work for Reuters. Schafer has none of the insider status that OTM does.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      BBC Radio Four also has a programme called "The Media Show" which is pretty good. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq)
- runn1ng 13y ago
  But that's the point of the article. That so much depends on the spin and the truth gets lost.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    I didn't see that point in the article. Can you quote a sentence that is about any lost truth?
    - UVB-76 13y ago
      The entire article is about truth, perception, and perspective.
    - tankenmate 13y ago
      Loosely put in coder terms, you are interested in pass by value. This article acknowledges that some people pass by value, but instead this article focuses on pass by reference. They aren't saying that no one cares about direct values, they are concentrating on what happens when people use indirection. I.e. this is an article about perception management, not about what the facts are or who is "right" or "truthy".
- gnosis 13y ago
  If you want serious media criticism, you have to look to the independents, not to the mainstream media. A great example is the weekly radio show CounterSpin[1], from the media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). [1] - http://fair.org/counterspin-radio/ http://fair.org/counterspin-radio/
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I wouldn't exactly call FAIR "independent". OTM is an NPR show; I suppose it's dependent on NPR member stations or something. FAIR is ideologically dependent on the progressive left. If I have to choose dependencies, I'll go with NPR middle-of-the-roadness. Thankfully, I don't have to choose, and so can enjoy FAIR's podcast while augmenting it with other sources. Thanks for sharing that; I had no idea they had a podcast.
    - gnosis 13y ago
      FAIR is independent of any mainstream media outlet. While NPR is nothing if not mainstream.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I don't disagree, but you see how fuzzy a concept "mainstream" is, right? CNN is owned by a massive media conglomerate. NPR isn't. In that sense, NPR is independent. Meanwhile, there's plenty of outsider content to be found under corporate umbrellas, too. The Koch brothers, for instance, fund Cato.
        jrochkind1 13y ago
        And likewise, how fuzzy a concept 'independent' is, when you start digging into it. But, yes, everyone has an ideology, it is true. Even people on NPR. Even those with the most mainstream ideologies, where you don't even notice it's an ideology because it's just the status quo -- that's an ideology too. If you think FAIR's analysis is biased by their ideology, that may be. (And to show that about someone requires, well, showing it, not just showing that they have an ideology, as everyone does) But it seems a semantic stretch to claim they are not 'independent' because they are 'ideologically dependent on the progressive left' -- "ideologically dependent", what does that even mean?
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Indeed. Early is this quote: SENATOR BILL JACKSON: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. BROOKE GLADSTONE: That’s not true, by the way. They then fail to address the objective truth: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was [with] AK-47s and all other rifles. There's also more deaths from cars than with shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. He was making a point; rather than addressing the point, the critics drill in to one small verbal error and dismiss the inconvenient objective truth.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    I forgot about that when I said the program doesn't once ask what the truth is. You may be right that they gave a misleading answer, but at least they (momentarily) brought up the question.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    "There's more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s" is not anywhere close to reality. If we restrict to rifles (about 5% of homicides where a firearm is used) and broaden to all blunt instruments, we get the same ballpark, not a clear win for the rifles. I can't find anything that calls out hammers specifically, but lumped in a category with baseball bats and tire irons and golf clubs and 2x4s and wrenches and candlesticks and lead pipes, I'd be amazed to find hammers dominating. It is certainly a perfectly reasonable position to assert that the number of homicides which used a rifle are low enough that a focus on reducing them is a misguided assignment of priority, even before discussion of particular mechanisms. This happens to be a position I hold. But you don't get to make a point by making false (and false by an order of magnitude) statements.
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  It never once asks what the truth is At least one more time than what you point out, a more significant time really, did one of the participants raise the question of what the truth is too: "But whether they’re actual stories or fictional stories is really... remains to be determined. But they, they are telling us stories." But yeah, it was a piece about PR and how it's done. Peter Sandman is clearly very good at it. I was somewhat surprised to see some hints that he was sympathetic to 'my' side -- he's the one that raised the question of whether the government was telling the truth above. But it also seems he's quite willing to work for whichever 'side' is paying him; I wonder if he ever would turn down a job because he thought he was doing evil, or if he just avoids thinking about which side is actually 'right', or promoting something harmful or helpful to humanity at large.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    At least one more time than what you point out, a more significant time really Gah. Usually I try to be more careful with the throwaway phrases. Thanks for getting my point anyway.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  The point of this interview was the manipulation of perceptions. Sandman is a guy whose job it is to do just that: manipulate perceptions, without regard for the reality (though if he does his job right, he's not directly lying). OTM _is_ one of the better programs around, but it is, as the title states, "on" the media. That is, a reflexive looking at the media and how it covers issues. It's mostly pretty good, though at times Brooke in particular strikes me as rather pointedly naive (with her cred and background, she really shouldn't be). I've got a copy of her comic/book The Influencing Machine, which is also mostly pretty good, though there were multiple occasions I wanted to reach through the page and shake Brooke.
brentm 13y ago
Not all direct impact is physical. By design the effect of terrorism is much greater than its direct impact on a single personal physical well being. Comparing it to bathtub deaths is just not apples to apples.
- rayiner 13y ago
  It's so ironic that people compare terrorist deaths to car accidents and bathtub deaths in the same sentence as they talk about the chilling effects of surveillance.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    How is that ironic? The first is a rhetorical device for claiming a threat is inflated. The second is about negative consequences of inflating the threat.
    - twoodfin 13y ago
      I assume rayiner's point was that, as far as we know, nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans' communication. Maybe a few people have been killed, but surely it's vastly less than the number of bathtub deaths. So by the logic of this inane post, nobody should get too upset about NSA surveillance.
      - joering2 13y ago
        > nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans' communication Maybe. We don't know that. We would have to know beyond any doubt how this information is being used. I can imagine it being a tool to play foreign politics; even affects places like Iraq, Afghanistan, you know, where people do die. > nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans' communication Maybe. But its also ironic that being US citizen and living on US soil you are supposed to be protected by the law of the land. If they vacuum everything for 10 years or so, imagine how many people could be found not guilty of robbery, homicides, drug dealing, etc, only if their attorneys would have access to their clients' NSA files. Who knows? Maybe even there is someone recently executed in this country that their NSA chart would have proven they were innocent. That may be over-stretch but you believe noone innocent is doing a lifetime right now because they couldn't prove that they have not been where prosecution claims they were (don't get me even started on "innocent until proven guilty").
mehwoot 13y ago
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html In 2002, 451 people were killed and ~2,300 injured in 134 separate terrorist attacks in Israel. From a population of about 7.7 million people. If that were the U.S., that would be 18,300 deaths annually and close to 95,000 people injured. Point is, whilst terrorism is designed to affect people psychologically more than the physical effects, you can't simply ignore it. A balanced response is needed and surely that includes some element of intelligence gathering on who is causing these attacks. Where to draw the line is a valid question, but to reject terrorism completely as irrelevant is stupid. People who discuss these issues in terms of absolutes ("we should never give up any freedom") are rarely considering the reality of the situation. The reason I find this so disturbing is it is exactly the wrong way of approaching the situation. If we say terroism only killed X people so it isn't worth sacrificing these rights, we are saying there is some level of deaths that these rights are worth scarificing for. Personally I feel the balance between privacy and security is one that should be figured out beforehand and not changed in response to events, otherwise people who want to abuse such power will always have an incentive to play up and exagerate how much danger we are in. The rights we have when 1 person dies from terrorism should be the same as when 20,000 people die. But I don't believe that should be the right for every person to keep everything they do private. That just isn't living in reality.
- vinbreau 13y ago
  Part of the problem is that 'terrorist' is an ill defined word. Your stats are couched in rhetoric as a result. Everyone agrees on what a hammer is, or an AK-47, not so true on the term terrorist. Also, that term is used by many factions to describe various oppositional forces. Are those stats lumping together only the US Government's definition of terrorist, or is it a global standard somehow amalgamating all the various and disparate ideas of what a terrorist is? Looking at that link I see we are discussing terrorist as defined by "data from the Israeli foreign ministry." It's a very one-sided data argument. Terrorist is a real term with a globally liquid definition. It makes it very difficult to discuss the topic with any sort of rational discourse.
  - 13y ago

58 points by krosaen 13y ago

transcript here: http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/jun/21/terrorists-versus-bath-tubs/transcript/ http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/jun/21/terrorists-versus-bath...

gruseom 13y ago

This interview is entirely about spin. It never once asks what the truth is [1]. Brooke Gladstone: Now, let's take today the argument over NSA surveillance. Where would you come down on this? Peter Sandman: Well, it would depend on who my client was - [Brooke laughs] Brooke Gladstone: [Pause] I can see why you have such a nice apartment. Peter Sandman: [Laughing] Brooke Gladstone: Peter, thank you very much. Peter Sandman: My pleasure. Can "journalism" get more oleaginous? Such a program should not be called On The Media, but Of The Media. [1] Edit: to be fair, she does say "That's not true" at the beginning, re the number of murders with hammers.

herge 13y ago
Are you a regular listener of On The Media? They don't report the news, they report on how the news is reported. So techniques, trends, and ways that the news and the media, including Mr. Sandman, report news and facts.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I've listened a few times and developed the impression that its main preoccupation is its own insider status. There's no reporting at all in, for example, this piece. Let's not assume that a PR consultant (Mr. Sandman) belongs naturally to "the news and the media" without mentioning the much larger question of whether an independent press would be dominated by PR in the first place.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    You should listen to OTM more. It's media criticism, so what reporting it does will necessarily seem like navel-gazing. But there's been some really great stuff on it. A less... lubricated... venue for this kind of analysis is Jack Schafer's work for Reuters. Schafer has none of the insider status that OTM does.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    BBC Radio Four also has a programme called "The Media Show" which is pretty good. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq)
runn1ng 13y ago
But that's the point of the article. That so much depends on the spin and the truth gets lost.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I didn't see that point in the article. Can you quote a sentence that is about any lost truth?
  - UVB-76 13y ago
    The entire article is about truth, perception, and perspective.
  - tankenmate 13y ago
    Loosely put in coder terms, you are interested in pass by value. This article acknowledges that some people pass by value, but instead this article focuses on pass by reference. They aren't saying that no one cares about direct values, they are concentrating on what happens when people use indirection. I.e. this is an article about perception management, not about what the facts are or who is "right" or "truthy".
gnosis 13y ago
If you want serious media criticism, you have to look to the independents, not to the mainstream media. A great example is the weekly radio show CounterSpin[1], from the media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). [1] - http://fair.org/counterspin-radio/ http://fair.org/counterspin-radio/
- tptacek 13y ago
  I wouldn't exactly call FAIR "independent". OTM is an NPR show; I suppose it's dependent on NPR member stations or something. FAIR is ideologically dependent on the progressive left. If I have to choose dependencies, I'll go with NPR middle-of-the-roadness. Thankfully, I don't have to choose, and so can enjoy FAIR's podcast while augmenting it with other sources. Thanks for sharing that; I had no idea they had a podcast.
  - gnosis 13y ago
    FAIR is independent of any mainstream media outlet. While NPR is nothing if not mainstream.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I don't disagree, but you see how fuzzy a concept "mainstream" is, right? CNN is owned by a massive media conglomerate. NPR isn't. In that sense, NPR is independent. Meanwhile, there's plenty of outsider content to be found under corporate umbrellas, too. The Koch brothers, for instance, fund Cato.
      - jrochkind1 13y ago
        And likewise, how fuzzy a concept 'independent' is, when you start digging into it. But, yes, everyone has an ideology, it is true. Even people on NPR. Even those with the most mainstream ideologies, where you don't even notice it's an ideology because it's just the status quo -- that's an ideology too. If you think FAIR's analysis is biased by their ideology, that may be. (And to show that about someone requires, well, showing it, not just showing that they have an ideology, as everyone does) But it seems a semantic stretch to claim they are not 'independent' because they are 'ideologically dependent on the progressive left' -- "ideologically dependent", what does that even mean?
ctdonath 13y ago
Indeed. Early is this quote: SENATOR BILL JACKSON: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. BROOKE GLADSTONE: That’s not true, by the way. They then fail to address the objective truth: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was [with] AK-47s and all other rifles. There's also more deaths from cars than with shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. He was making a point; rather than addressing the point, the critics drill in to one small verbal error and dismiss the inconvenient objective truth.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I forgot about that when I said the program doesn't once ask what the truth is. You may be right that they gave a misleading answer, but at least they (momentarily) brought up the question.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "There's more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s" is not anywhere close to reality. If we restrict to rifles (about 5% of homicides where a firearm is used) and broaden to all blunt instruments, we get the same ballpark, not a clear win for the rifles. I can't find anything that calls out hammers specifically, but lumped in a category with baseball bats and tire irons and golf clubs and 2x4s and wrenches and candlesticks and lead pipes, I'd be amazed to find hammers dominating. It is certainly a perfectly reasonable position to assert that the number of homicides which used a rifle are low enough that a focus on reducing them is a misguided assignment of priority, even before discussion of particular mechanisms. This happens to be a position I hold. But you don't get to make a point by making false (and false by an order of magnitude) statements.
jrochkind1 13y ago
It never once asks what the truth is At least one more time than what you point out, a more significant time really, did one of the participants raise the question of what the truth is too: "But whether they’re actual stories or fictional stories is really... remains to be determined. But they, they are telling us stories." But yeah, it was a piece about PR and how it's done. Peter Sandman is clearly very good at it. I was somewhat surprised to see some hints that he was sympathetic to 'my' side -- he's the one that raised the question of whether the government was telling the truth above. But it also seems he's quite willing to work for whichever 'side' is paying him; I wonder if he ever would turn down a job because he thought he was doing evil, or if he just avoids thinking about which side is actually 'right', or promoting something harmful or helpful to humanity at large.
- gruseom 13y ago
  At least one more time than what you point out, a more significant time really Gah. Usually I try to be more careful with the throwaway phrases. Thanks for getting my point anyway.
dredmorbius 13y ago
The point of this interview was the manipulation of perceptions. Sandman is a guy whose job it is to do just that: manipulate perceptions, without regard for the reality (though if he does his job right, he's not directly lying). OTM _is_ one of the better programs around, but it is, as the title states, "on" the media. That is, a reflexive looking at the media and how it covers issues. It's mostly pretty good, though at times Brooke in particular strikes me as rather pointedly naive (with her cred and background, she really shouldn't be). I've got a copy of her comic/book The Influencing Machine, which is also mostly pretty good, though there were multiple occasions I wanted to reach through the page and shake Brooke.

brentm 13y ago

Not all direct impact is physical. By design the effect of terrorism is much greater than its direct impact on a single personal physical well being. Comparing it to bathtub deaths is just not apples to apples.

rayiner 13y ago
It's so ironic that people compare terrorist deaths to car accidents and bathtub deaths in the same sentence as they talk about the chilling effects of surveillance.
- gruseom 13y ago
  How is that ironic? The first is a rhetorical device for claiming a threat is inflated. The second is about negative consequences of inflating the threat.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    I assume rayiner's point was that, as far as we know, nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans' communication. Maybe a few people have been killed, but surely it's vastly less than the number of bathtub deaths. So by the logic of this inane post, nobody should get too upset about NSA surveillance.
    - joering2 13y ago
      > nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans' communication Maybe. We don't know that. We would have to know beyond any doubt how this information is being used. I can imagine it being a tool to play foreign politics; even affects places like Iraq, Afghanistan, you know, where people do die. > nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans' communication Maybe. But its also ironic that being US citizen and living on US soil you are supposed to be protected by the law of the land. If they vacuum everything for 10 years or so, imagine how many people could be found not guilty of robbery, homicides, drug dealing, etc, only if their attorneys would have access to their clients' NSA files. Who knows? Maybe even there is someone recently executed in this country that their NSA chart would have proven they were innocent. That may be over-stretch but you believe noone innocent is doing a lifetime right now because they couldn't prove that they have not been where prosecution claims they were (don't get me even started on "innocent until proven guilty").

mehwoot 13y ago

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html In 2002, 451 people were killed and ~2,300 injured in 134 separate terrorist attacks in Israel. From a population of about 7.7 million people. If that were the U.S., that would be 18,300 deaths annually and close to 95,000 people injured. Point is, whilst terrorism is designed to affect people psychologically more than the physical effects, you can't simply ignore it. A balanced response is needed and surely that includes some element of intelligence gathering on who is causing these attacks. Where to draw the line is a valid question, but to reject terrorism completely as irrelevant is stupid. People who discuss these issues in terms of absolutes ("we should never give up any freedom") are rarely considering the reality of the situation. The reason I find this so disturbing is it is exactly the wrong way of approaching the situation. If we say terroism only killed X people so it isn't worth sacrificing these rights, we are saying there is some level of deaths that these rights are worth scarificing for. Personally I feel the balance between privacy and security is one that should be figured out beforehand and not changed in response to events, otherwise people who want to abuse such power will always have an incentive to play up and exagerate how much danger we are in. The rights we have when 1 person dies from terrorism should be the same as when 20,000 people die. But I don't believe that should be the right for every person to keep everything they do private. That just isn't living in reality.

vinbreau 13y ago
Part of the problem is that 'terrorist' is an ill defined word. Your stats are couched in rhetoric as a result. Everyone agrees on what a hammer is, or an AK-47, not so true on the term terrorist. Also, that term is used by many factions to describe various oppositional forces. Are those stats lumping together only the US Government's definition of terrorist, or is it a global standard somehow amalgamating all the various and disparate ideas of what a terrorist is? Looking at that link I see we are discussing terrorist as defined by "data from the Israeli foreign ministry." It's a very one-sided data argument. Terrorist is a real term with a globally liquid definition. It makes it very difficult to discuss the topic with any sort of rational discourse.
- 13y ago