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ex•ac•ti•tude noun \ig-ˈzak-tə-ˌtüd, -ˌtyüd\ – the quality or an instance of being : exactness [–Merriam-Webster Dictionary]
Many years ago, as the family was travelling to Los Angeles in a Renault R16, Dad and I got into a disagreement. It was not a fight, it was a disagreement regarding geography. Now my memory places me in third of fourth grade. Our teacher had provided us with one of those, “did you know” gems and I had just related this information to the occupants of the car. I did so incorrectly.
The trivia item was the one about Reno being farther west than Los Angeles. Reno, 119 degrees west, Los Angeles 118 degrees west; it’s a slight difference but most people would probably not guess correctly since Los Angeles is on the Pacific Coast. And to my juvenile mind that was what mattered, proximity to water. And that is how I must have phrased my recently learned factoid, “Reno is closer to the ocean than Los Angeles.”
I was promptly corrected. With equal promptness and increased emphasis I restated my position, I think we now call it “doubling-down.” My escalation was met in kind and before long it was made clear that my theory was WRONG. I may have cried, in those days I was quite the cry baby. I’m sure I cried.
What was seared into my brain that night was importance of having ones facts straight and presenting said facts correctly. I had the essence of my thesis right but I had presented it in such a fashion that anyone with the most basic grasp of geography would have said, “Uhhh, I don’t think so.”
Whether I was a stickler for details prior to that I don’t know. I do know that I am now. This coupled with a good memory for stuff like that, due I’m certain to the granules of lecithin my grandmother sprinkled on my Special K (no I’m not making it up) has made me a cornucopia of information.
Fourteenth President? Franklin Pierce (I’ve managed to commit all of them to memory). Bore and stroke dimensions of the Chrysler 273 V-8? 3.63 x 3.3,1". Oh you have a 318? Same stroke, 3.91" bore.
Major variants of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress? Don’t even get me started.
Aircraft of World War Two held a particular fascination for me as a pre-teen. This means most movies or documentaries about WWII are unwatchable. Apparently I am the only person who appreciates the difference between a correct D-B 600-engined Messerschmitt 109 and an incorrectly Merlin-engined 109. And if my mind starts festering on the sums of money paid to the hack that assembled this mish-mash of half-truths for The History Channel my outbursts of incredulity make the program unwatchable for everyone else in the room.
And then some kid from Harvard invented Facebook.
In many ways Facebook plays to our better angels. It engages our instinctive need to connect. We are able to share what’s going on in our lives, offer encouragement and reach out to others when in need. And then there’s those other “angels.”
We all know where we stand on the political spectrum. I have made known my generally progressive views that are buffered by some experiences that have shown me how the other half lives. Notable among these experiences was my four year hitch in the Marines. And through the miracle of Facebook I have reconnected with some of my brothers-in-arms. I am convinced that I am the lone liberal in that group. My nom de plume is no accident. Some of the stuff that gets posted on those news feeds is...well, to call it B.S. is an insult to cattle everywhere and the fine work they do. Which is not to say I haven’t found items on my left-leaning friends’ pages that defy credulity, I have. They just lack that ruddy, red-state, racist rhythm and rhyme. But what they share is a complete disregard for accuracy, veracity, exactitude. Now the free dissemination of half-truth mish-mashes is a national pastime. No, it’s worse than that- it’s a disease. A pandemic that replicates itself or worse, someone “likes” it, then “shares” it and then “posts” it. Mendacity found its host in people millenia ago but now it has the hypertext transfer protocol pathway the pathogen needs to spread. And I am now infected too.
Last week I launched a broadside of progressive incredulity in response to some of the aforementioned right-wing invectives. But my fusillade missed its target and two people unconnected to the initial debate became embroiled in their own controversy. And so the place where we share, encourage and reach out is also the place where we entrench, discourage, and reject.
Here I begin to question my motives. Do I want us all to just get along? Is my desire for reasoned debate so noble? Am I just sick and tired of the crap that people gorge themselves on and vomit back into the digital ether? Or am I just lazy? All that stuff to be sifted through and evaluated, it’s too much. And I’m not computer literate enough to create a smart key that takes me instantly to snopes dot com. I need help. I want things the way they were, before the free flow of information exploded in ways no deregulating Reagan staffer ever imagined. Storylines were checked and re-checked. Facts were verifiable. And, “Some people say,” was not a credible source. People had standards, veracity, exactitude. And standing on the beach in Los Angeles was a far west as you could get.
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Copyright © 2013 by James Knudsen
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James, Renault R16 - now there was a car! When I had to give up my muscle cars due to gas price increases while I was working my way through college during the oil embargo, I harbored deep hatred for my first "economy" car: A Renault R8. Until a neighbor who had served in the military in Europe saw it and said "you know, I have a wrecked one of those under a tarp in my backyard, and I think it has some sort of special Renault performance package in it." I of course laughed at the idea of performance and Renault in the same sentence, until we tore into it and learned more about what a "Gordini" was. With my car suitably retrofitted, I proudly drove it more than 60,000 miles - and have had fond memories of all Renaults ever since.
ReplyDeleteWith that out of the way: Very nice column on exactitude. While I applaud you yearning for accuracy in writing and reporting, and think we should all strive for it - in the past did we ever really have it? While I will readily agree that too much of the information on the web is little more than bile spewed by prejudiced idiots, my recollection is there was always much of the same broadcast by the "professional" media.
Today's zealots broadcast their own slanted views for free. Yesterday's zealot broadcast the slanted views of their advertisers - or their governments - for a fee. People who believe all they read and hear today deserve their fate, same as those who believed all the news in times past. For me, the problem is that the zealots in the majority could drag the skeptical and/or more informed minority with them back then, same as they can now. My hope is the modern "civilian media" will come to make their task more difficult, rather than easier.
Enjoyed the column !
ReplyDeleteAh, the R16... I also had one and still miss it along with my Volvo 122 wagon. It had some undiagnosable electrical fault, which meant about every ten days it wouldn't start in the morning, would be dragged to the shop and tinkered with, after which all was fine for a couple of weeks, then a repeat of the behavior. Finally traded it in on a VW bus.
ReplyDeleteIn the "Good Old Days" fairness and accuracy in the media was mainly in the eye of the beholder. Time Magazine, as an example, had a large fact checking staff who drove their reporters nutz: The guy on the ground in Vietnam would catch the official US or South Vietnamese version of an event in a lie, citing data to prove his case, and New York would "correct" his story by substituting the official government statistics, thereby negating the point of the story. Same thing happened at the NY Times, or CBS time and again.
All that is different today are the proliferation of sources, it's still monkeys with typewriters. You just have to sort out the gibbering for yourself, alas.
Tom, I believe you because I trust your integrity and wide reading, but it just boggles my mind that "responsible" corporations (Time, NY Times, CBS) would "correct" by overriding data-supported reports with the official government slant. <droopy face>
DeleteThis was an "ironic" effect of trying to maintain standards of accuracy by making sure that the reporters "out in The field", who sometimes made errors in their writing (as everyone, even you and I do from time to time, will) had editorial backup. Mainly it was benign- the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, say- and done in good faith, referring to reliable sources, by the women in the Fact Checking Department.
DeleteOnly when the facts were "controversial", i.e. political, would this occur. But individuals as revered as Sy Hersh, Robert Scheer and David Halberstram had their work affected. There's a reason that Lies of Our Times, or Beyond Chron exist. Fox News is not the only source of faux news.
Fortunately my R8 was so antiquated the electronics were apparently not that much different from the Model T. Unfortunately, the floor of the little beast was not much thicker than aluminum foil, and it didn't take much rust to perforate it. A fact I discovered one night when I opened the passenger door for a girlfriend - who despite this incident later became my wife - and she could not get out of the car because one of her very stylish stiletto heels had stabbed a hole in the floor of the car.
DeleteAs for media transgressions, let's not forget the late '90s when CBS news not only sold out its own "investigative" news team to cover up Nike sweatshop abuses, but had its announcers act as billboards for the company: http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9802a/nikecbs.html
darlin' man.."i want things the way they were"...yeah ..i do too...i think this is what defines me as...older...i know that "things" were different..but i also recognize that generations before me have come to this elevated point...remembered what they knew or chose to know about "before"...and thought it was better before...and i know it ain't necessarily so...(great apologies and kisses to Mr. Gershwin)
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