Editorial Conscience
From TruthAboutIraq
On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, founding editor Kristian W. Holvoet wrote to the other Truth About Iraqi wiki board members the following:
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Indulge me while ascend my soap box for a statement:
There is an old Gary Larson 'Far Side' cartoon with two deer, one looks at the target on the body of the the other, and say "Bummer of a birth mark, Carl."
The same could be said of the title of this wiki. It is a decent enough title. It will clearly draw fire, particuarly if the articles are well written. If we are to avoid the complete moonbattery of the 'Truthers', the editors need to be very, very careful.
We need to be fair. This is not an all or nothing conflict (at least with respect to the truth). The truth is non-partisan. We should attempt to paint the truth 'Warts and All' to invoke Cromwell.
I see this as more along the lines of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist discussions. There were heated arguments, even some demaguoges on both sides. But the letters included truly substantive criticisms of both sides, and awareness of compromises each side was making. In retrospect, we see some of the compromises may have been too costly, but on the whole we believe the net good is much reater than the net negative. Surely, we admit we made some repugnant choices back then. If we are right, and we are very, very good, we very, very lucky, we may have the chance to provide a similar service about the Iraq War.
We should accept contrarian articles, provided they are true. We must not hide or shrink from the mistakes in judgement, oversight or actions. To pretend they didn't happen or don't matter is going to seriously undermine the truth. We should accept the contrarian articles with the same level (no more and no less) of scrutiny and diligent fact checking that we accept of articles that support our positions.
We cannot be sloppy. Period. The main point is, we need facts. We need documentation and references. Anytime we quote someone, say Donald Rumsfeld or Bill Clinton, we need exact, non-dowdified quotes and links to video or transcripts not blog entries that says someone's cousin's girlfriend was at a rally and heard Barack Obama say, "Blah, Blah, Blah..." We also need the context because it matters. A lot.
The greatest risk is when we are debunking the lies. We MUST act with highest intellectual integrity here. The LIE must be stated accurately, the agrument stated with absolute fairness. No Dowdified quotes. No 'Democrats believe...', the 'Left Believes...' no straw men. We must not take quotes out of context. We must not tar with association. No conflating different groups. We will find that politicians are remarkably hard to pin down. That they are so damn good with weasel words, we may never have a true smoking gun quote. We must trust that, given the Truth, people make their own informed choices.
We should also be prepared to be challenged by the truth. We should not reject it because it doesn't match our beliefs. This is the hard part, no doubt about it. In my experience, when confronted with the Truth, people either repent or persecute. They are rarely indifferent. The closer we are the the Truth the more partisans of both sides will react with anger. 'Tis the way of the World, I'm afraid.
Okay, I'm off my soapbox for a while. As you were.
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This is the statement of our editorial conscience that we should all try to remember.
