Wiley Miller on think tanks

I'm loving the Non Sequiturs about Danae setting up her think tank.
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I think Wiley must be reading the blog. Stop lurking and show yourself!

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Not just for think tanks, but I find the following extremely useful in evaluating the culture/principles/ethics of any organization:

Compare:
-- What an organization says it values compared to what it actually values
-- What an organization says it does compared to what it actually does
-- What an organization actually does compared to what it actually values

From: Patterson, J. & Kelehear, Z. (2003). Lessons about culture from NASA�s experience. The School Administrator, 60 (11), 35.

A fourth comparison might well be: What an organization doesn't do that should be a logical follow on to its stated values.

Have you seen this piece by Philip Meyer of UNC Chapel Hill?

In the age of the Internet, mere transmission no longer adds value to information. The way to add value to the surplus of data is to process it to help the reader select it and make sense of it. That requires interpretation, and interpretation requires objectivity in the scientific sense. I call this objectivity of method as opposed to the he-said/she-said objectivity of result. In other words, journalists should act more like scientists: collect information, look for patterns, construct a theory, and then provide an objective test of the theory. Objectivity in this sense means asking a question of the data in a way that will protect you from being fooled by the answer.

Journalism, like science, is tentative in its conclusions. It should be as transparent as science, leaving a paper trail of data that other investigators can retrace and arrive at the same or better conclusions.

The reporters who bought the White House line on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were not being objective investigators. They were just parroting their sources, fearful of alienating them. Thats stenography, not reporting. Correspondents in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau got the story right because, not having a Washington outlet, they were not in a symbiotic relationship with the official sources and had to use shoe leather to seek out the working stiffs in government and the military. Objective inquiry, not advocacy, made their effort successful.

Journalism, like science, is tentative in its conclusions. It should be as transparent as science, leaving a paper trail of data that other investigators can retrace and arrive at the same or better conclusions.

And how does this transparency occur, what with the anonymous sourcing so common across the board in political media? (Disclaimer: I appreciate the anonymity of the blurgs, but what insane person is going to base anything important on anonymous blurg comments?)

Who here couldn't call bullshit on Judith Miller? Who was responsible for sacking Donahue for "poor ratings"? I mean sh*t, Donahue was on the telly, with guests and all, that we could eyeball -- and that was pretty dang transparent relative to the daily NYT and WaPo drumbeat. I WISH we could blame the Washington Times or World Nut Daily, but it weren't them.

There's a basic fallacy here -- that journalism is interested in doing its work transparently. One would assume that getting the objective information out would be effective, but why would it be effective for AGW? Do we assume that conflict and yelling isn't interesting? For example, if we look at the political
tag-teaming
that went full-bore prior to the war; they weren't interested in having the cards fall where they may and neither will AGW counteradvocates. I mean, there's a cohesive groundwork that's laid out, and then the follow up "news" stories just land into the ready made bed with a soft, cushioned pffft.

Correspondents in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau got the story right [...] Objective inquiry, not advocacy, made their effort successful.

Pfew. If it wasn't for those guys we would have fell ass backwards right into a Vietnam type quagmire. Good thing they were successful.

I saw this one today in the Targum and I immediately thought about this blog. Are you sure the authors aren't lifting material from you?

DEI --- Danae Enterprise Institute

By Jim Ramsey (not verified) on 04 Oct 2007 #permalink

"Thats stenography, not reporting."

I've heard reporters defend this, as they're afraid they'd be labeled Editorials by saying something different.

Ridiculous is what it is.

By Evinfuilt (not verified) on 04 Oct 2007 #permalink