Thursday, December 8, 2016

Importance of Credibility

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not a big fan of credibility. I think truthfulness is much more important and ultimately much more valuable.

--Hiram

Sean said...

Pundit accountability has long been lacking. All the people who told us that the Iraq War was going to be some painless walkover that would pay for itself and not require an occupation are still spouting their nonsense on the cable channels, too.

John said...

Hiram,
You just had to complicate this discussion. A random source for you.

Sean,
Can you admit that both the right and left have bias?

Or are you sticking with the "Right = Liar" belief system?

John said...

A cool image from the source above.

Sean said...

"Can you admit that both the right and left have bias?"

Sure. But calling for "accountability" only now is hollow. The same media outlets that are being lambasted for "liberal bias" today are the same ones that uncritically reported everything they were told by the Bush Administration in the run-up to the Iraq War. I'm all in favor of accountability, but it has to go both ways.

John said...

Sean,
Yes these media outlets did report what most sane people thought at the time.

We were unsure about WMD's...
And we were really tired of hearing about No Fly Zones...
We were scared because crazy Muslims had just killed 1000's of us...
However "Of course rational humans will be happy to be freed and thankful if a brutal dictator is removed..."

Who knew so many of them were frickin crazy...

John said...

By the way, I scream at the TV and my Parents whenever FOX News says something stupid... Does that help?

Anonymous said...

You just had to complicate this discussion. A random source for you.

On the other hand, you can't build a high performing team that puts trust over truthfulness.

I don't identify bias with having an opinion. Should I?

==Hiram

Sean said...

"Yes these media outlets did report what most sane people thought at the time."

No, they uncritically parroted the administration line. Funny, isn't your link that started this off all about how the media in the 2016 election couldn't shake its "centrist orthodoxies"? Or, are you just OK with that when it suits your point of view?

"We were unsure about WMD's..."

Dude, that ain't what was said.

John said...

This is an interesting read.

I hadn't heard this little detail... Maybe the Left leaning media suppressed it... :-)



Anonymous said...

Which team do you think would be more successful. One whose members didn't trust each other but whose actions were based on an accurate assessment of the facts? Or a team whose member did trust each other but whose actions were based on an inaccurate assessment of the facts? Is trust more helpful than truth?

--Hiram

John said...

By the way, I tried to get a read on the bias of Current Affairs Magazine and did not find much.

Derrick here thinks it is left leaning entity given his knowledge of the Editor/

One more for fun.
Politfact Bias

By the way, I only came upon this because someone told me it showed up on his facebook.

John said...

I personally think that people do not have or make enough time to wade through all the facts and analyze what it means. (ie truth)

Therefore they need to trust someone else's perceived "truth". Remember the graphic:


To be persuasive we must be believable.

To be believable we must be credible.

To be credible we must be truthful.

John said...

Now I am pretty sure that Bush truly believed Iraq had WMD's.

So he told his "truth"...

Of course Sean disagrees with me on this.

John said...

What I am amazed by is that Trump can lie often and blatantly... Yet his core believers still see him as credible, believable and persuasive...

So maybe not telling the truth in the details is okay as long as the big picture is truthful.

John said...

This may not work for a news outlet though...

However FOX News and the Washington Post customers seem to be accepting of them both reporting very different truths.

Maybe Jack was right... "We can't handle the truth!!!"

Or maybe this is closer.

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." Marcus Aurelius

Laurie said...

I can't believe you make a comment implying fox news are and Wapo equally inaccurate.

John said...

I am sorry. I was incorrect, WAPO only was a little Left of center.

Apparently Mother Jones, New Republic, Media Matters, Salon, Think Progress, Huffington Post, etc are the mirror images of FOX News.

Anonymous said...

What I am amazed by is that Trump can lie often and blatantly...

Trump's misstatements aren't lies in a conventional sense. That's because he doesn't use language to convey meaning, he uses it to react to stimuli. Trump is childlike, in his public persona, composed entirely by id. What he says in public is binary, it translates into one of two meanings, "I like it now", or "I don't like it now."

--Hiram

John said...

I am not sure if it is child like as much as CEO / Showman like. After years of listening to CEO speeches I have realized that often they say what they think the people need to hear to encourage them. And often that means they say things that us mere mortals wouldn't.

Keeping us normal folks excited, engaged and hopeful is hard sometimes.

John said...

The big challenge is achieving balance/credibility so people are willing to keep listening to you speak.

Sean said...

"Now I am pretty sure that Bush truly believed Iraq had WMD's.

So he told his "truth"..."

Sure. But the problem we're talking about here is the media. The media, instead of merely parroting Bush's line, could have gone to any of the numerous sources that called his claims into question and given them an equal airing. Instead, you had folks like Judith Miller at the New York Times uncritically publishing nonsense.

John said...

Who exactly were these reliable sources that could prove Iraq had no WMDs in 2002?

And were they correct or incorrect?

Sean said...

"Who exactly were these reliable sources that could prove Iraq had no WMDs in 2002?"

The UN weapons inspectors had a better idea of what the Iraqis had than we did, but we chose to ignore them.

I mean, seriously, at this point trying to claim that the WMD rationale was valid is the height of absurdity. For cripes sake, even Colin Powell has apologized for spreading that nonsense.

John said...

This is interesting... Frontline Powell Interview

However I see nothing about lying.

Sean said...

"However I see nothing about lying."

Yet again, you're arguing against a point I didn't make. When you're interested in discussing the point I did make, please let me know.

John said...

Your point is that news organizations should have reported on something that was pretty doubtful at that point in time. Apparently 16 agencies were in agreement... And think the news agencies should have known better. I guess I think that is asking a lot of them.


"The reason I went to the U.N. is because we needed now to put the case before the entire international community in a powerful way, and that’s what I did that day.

Of course walking into that room is always a daunting experience, but I had been there before. And we had projectors and all sorts of technology to help us make the case. And that’s what I did. I made the case with the director of central intelligence sitting behind me. He and his team had vouched for everything in it. We didn’t make up anything. We threw out a lot of stuff that was not double- and triple-sourced, because I knew the importance of this.

When I was through, I felt pretty good about it. I thought we had made the case, and there was pretty good reaction to it for a few weeks. And then suddenly, the CIA started to let us know that the case was falling apart — parts of the case were falling apart. It was deeply disturbing to me and to the president, to all of us, and to the Congress, because they had voted on the basis of that information. And 16 intelligence agencies had agreed to it, with footnotes. None of the footnotes took away their agreement.

So it was deeply troubling, and I think that it was a great intelligence failure on our part, because the problems that existed in that NIE should have been recognized and caught earlier by the intelligence community."

Anonymous said...

I am not sure if it is child like as much as CEO / Showman like.

A CEO has to be careful what he says, if he owns a public corporation, because if is untruthful he risks having the SEC on his back. That was never an issue with Trump because his company is private and not subject to SEC rules.

--Hiram