Rethink.

An enormous amount of learning is repetition and the reciting that goes along with it.

In complaining about the media being biased, many of us forget that journalists do go to people considered the expert in their subject and repeat that opinion, complete with the facts supporting that opinion, in their work.

They’re learning from people we’ve set up as experts. We’ve given those experts institutional credibility; we’ve given them methods with which to work that can be scrutinized to the smallest detail; we are more than willing, above all, to listen to them and take them seriously.

And then we blame journalists for being suckers, because they’re supposed to have this magical access card to “truth.” We really should be asking why the Leftist activist ideology underlying the mindset of some journalists doesn’t get at truth more often compared to what I’ve outlined above. But if we asked that, we might have to concede that the status quo nowadays is 60′s activism, that the revolution became the establishment in a blink of an eye, and all of us on the Right and Left would have to wonder about our own sincerity.

If we could reflect rightly, we’d have to admit we are being naive in the same moment we are power-hungry. Perhaps there is an innocence in being a journalist (maybe that’s what Woody Allen was hinting at in Scoop) – maybe there is a humility in just wanting to find something out.

So if that’s the case, what do we do about experts?

The deep problem is in the ideology underlying both journalism and expertise. Both things are easily understandable in a democracy: everyone knows that knowing facts are important, and since experts are on the “front lines” of discovering new facts, there needs to be a middle man of sorts to help us sort out issues.

But let’s say you, I dunno, love wisdom. It would seem expertise in-and-of itself is an attack on wisdom, as wisdom might be something related to things we consider religious, i.e. cultural artifacts that have no place in science or scientific-type inquiry. We have professors of religion who compare religions and can tell us everything that religion would say, and tell us which might be the wisest, even though the mere existence of such a professor says that all religion is defunct.

Furthermore, a journalist that attempted to be wise – skipping the experts – could be insane. Recounting objectively what the Church of Scientology has to say could lend a credibility to that institution which wouldn’t exactly be prudent, whether or not such objectivity is accepted by the public or not.

In fact, the more one looks at it, the more journalism seems to depend on expertise, perhaps even is a form of expertise. The idea is that with the facts presented as best they can be, we can all make rational, thoughtful decisions. Nothing like the Huffington Post could ever emerge from a world of experts, could it?

So what do we do about experts and journalists?

Generally speaking, we just need to admit there are things we don’t know, and that there are things we wouldn’t be able to understand always if we did know them. Again, I’m surprised we don’t have this attitude. Nearly every day I encounter people who know better than I do, who act better, or who knew better and acted better. It’s not hard for me, even in my field, to take a backseat and let someone else drive. There is about one nanosecond of a twinge of jealousy, that’s it.

I know most people are willing to admit there are things they can’t deal with expertly: the argument above depends on the fact that people are humble in one area of life! So why do they insist on a general knowledge of what all too human experts say to create truth? Why can’t the private criteria they use for the sake of being humble be applied to what they extol publicly?

Technorati Tags: journalism, rant, media, experts

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