Applied Epistemology

Yeah, I linked to the same organization (the Center for Media and Democracy) several weeks ago for their report on "video news releases" (i.e., corporate/government spin made to look indistinguishable from, and be broadcast as, TV news). They've been admirably aggressive about reporting the substitution of propaganda for journalism.

It also brings up important issues in applied epistemology: who should you believe? What exactly is implied when someone is paid off, or is biased?

For example, I browsed through PRWatch's discussions, and found a snarky exchange with a producer of VNRs who defended his work as never saying anything untrue (has he never heard of half-truths?), and hence being a valuable way of informing the public about (e.g.) new medicines. He accused the CMD writers of doing the same thing that he does, since they profit from sales of their books. He also included a link to the Activist Cash website, which is a (mostly dated) site tracking money given to environmental and consumer groups, written from a blatantly pro-corporation point of view.

So what, exactly, does it prove to point out that someone makes money from what they say?

The short answer is: nothing. At least, it doesn't tell you anything about the accuracy of what's said. For example, if I'm writing a math textbook, and I tell you that "7 + 5 = 12", the fact that I make money when you buy copies of the textbook obviously doesn't affect the truth of that claim in the least. To think that a claim is false because of who said it, is the fallacy known in Ye Olde Logick lingo as the argumentum ad hominem, the argument against the person.

Nonetheless, it seems eminently reasonable to not believe something said by an obviously biased source. Isn't that the same thing? No, though the difference is a bit subtle and easily confused.

It's a reasonable rule of belief to not accept the word of a biased source without independent corroborating evidence. So when (A) Phillip Morris's spokesperson says that second-hand smoke isn't dangerous, don't believe it. Or when (B) President Nixon says "we're not bombing Cambodia", don't believe it. Etc.

The error occurs when we equate "don't believe it" with "it is false". The proper response is to suspend judgment.

So in example (A), we don't take Phillip Morris's word on faith. We only take the further step of rejecting their claim as false because (presumably) we have heard or read other sources that have convinced us that second-hand smoke is dangerous. Likewise in (B), we don't believe the President, he has an obvious motive to lie. But we don't believe that we did bomb Cambodia until we read reports from people on the scene, read declassified Pentagon documents, etc.

So when some pharma-flack tells us that his client's eczema medicine is the best cure for skin diseases since Jesus, don't believe it. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.

As for the charge that the guys who run SourceWatch and its affliated sites profit from sales of their books and are thus no different from producers of VNRs, it's a really poor analogy: the claims that SourceWatch make do not make a profit for them (they're not saying "our book cures cancer!"), whereas the VNR's claims, if accepted as true, do. Likewise, the ActivistCash website is relatively uninteresting, since it doesn't trace the money back to any self-interest-serving left-wing cabal. In fact, the amusing thing the site shows is that many of the foundations that fund anti-corporate leftist groups are themselves the legacies of huge corporations (the Ford Foundation, the Pew Trust, etc.).