Suppose you run your own business, a place in which you
treat your employees like family. They trust you because you have been fair to
each of them on every occasion; and you trust them because they gave the
business all they have, making it run as smoothly and profitably as it can ever
be.
Relations among the employees have always been harmonious,
and so they have between you and them. But then one day, during a gathering of
the families, an employee confesses that he has been stealing from the company
for years. He says he took advantage of the general sense of trust that
prevails in the office to enrich himself through various schemes he concocted
over the years. But he swears he ended the bad habit, and expects everyone to
forgive him because he has repented, and he promises never to steal again. So
the question is this: Do you trust this man?
Before you answer this question, consider the following: Of
all the journalists and commentators that populate the information sphere, you
have a handful of favorites. You like them so much; you await the publication
of their installments like an addict awaits the next fix to arrive. And then
one day, while reading the column of one such journalist, you are stunned to
see him reveal that he has been lying to his readers for a long time. He
expects you to forgive him, however, because he has repented; he has confessed
and he promises never to lie again. Do you trust this man?
If you're not sure what you would do in a real situation,
you can test yourself by reading a column that was written by Tom Gross in
which he confesses to committing journalistic sins. The column came under the
title: “The Media Has long Covered Up for Assad” and the subtitle: “He was
called a 'modernizer' and 'reformer' even as his people were tortured and
disappeared.” It was published on April 7, 2017 in the Weekly Standard.
Tom Gross does not just say: We, journalists and
commentators separately and collectively commit sins of commission and/or
omission all the time; he does more than that. In fact, he speaks in the first
person about journalistic sins he has committed personally. Of course, he does
not say he did so out of malicious intent, but cites the excuse that his boss
“forced” him to lie to his readers. Here is how he put it:
“I was the Middle East correspondent for the Sunday
Telegraph [where] the force of fashion, and the eagerness by some staff to try
and impress left-wing colleagues at the other papers (perhaps fearing that they
may at any moment have to look for a job elsewhere followed the prevailing
group think, however one-sided it might be … I was forced by my editors to give
the impression that Assad would likely be a reformer … I was also sometimes
asked to describe Yasser Arafat as moderate.” Do you believe this man or trust
anything he says?
Now that you know all this, and whatever your feeling toward
Tom Gross may be, what do you make of the way he ends his column? Here is that
passage:
“Today there is discussion about 'fake news.' But fake news
is easy to spot and is taken seriously only on the fringes of the internet. It
is distorted news by respectable and reliable media that is of more concern,
and that has led to much bad policy-making by officials over the years”.
Here is someone who was – and may still be – as bad as the
situation he describes. He is supposed to have repented, but he is talking
about other sinners as if they were different and separate from him. If
anything, his attitude answers the question that was asked earlier on two
occasions: “Do you trust this man?” And the answer can only be an emphatic no.
This being the case, we are compelled to suspect and reject
everything that came in his latest column; the summation of which reads as
follows:
“There has never been any indication that Bashar Assad would
be anything other than the dictator he is now. Just as there has never been any
indication that Assad's backer and funder, Iran 's president Rouhani, is a
'moderate' despite being described as such by the media”.