Fake News for Big Brother

[David Howe]

at Tuesday, April 29, 2003 6:16 PM, Tim May <timcmay at got.net> was seen
to say:
> I don't see any basis for supporting a "law against lying."
> Unless a contract is involved, lying is just another form of speech.
>
> Should a church which claims that praying to the baby Jesus will save
> one from going to Hell be prosecuted for lying?
They aren't *knowingly* lieing - that is the point. Church types firmly believe hell exists,
and only pestering a omnipotent and omniscient being (who therefore already knows what they
wanted to say, and could do something about it if he chose to) will prevent them visiting it
(as opposed to actually being nice to other people and so forth, which would at least be
productive)

> Should a newspaper be prosecuted for publishing a claim that the
> Sumerian prediction that Nibiru, aka Planet X, will stop the earth
> from rotating on May 15, 2003?
Nope. but they should be prosecuted if they front-page splash it as "earth doomed, we have
two weeks to live, there is no hope" and fail to mention that it is a religious prediction
that the scientific community has a few issues with....

> Should someone be prosecuted for saying the Holocaust never happened,
> or was exaggerated greatly by the Jewish lobby?
That is borderline. given that the accepted body of fact admits that the Holocaust not only
happened, but was pretty much as described by the Jewish lobby, then any claims that it
didn't happen should be accompanied by pretty convincing evidence. Not that I think the
Holocaust justifies what is going down with the palastinians, but I don't think it can be
denied that it actually happened.

> The answer to all libertarians, and the answer embodied in the First
> Amendment to the United States Constitution, is "No."
If there were no distinction between what could be presented as fact, and what couldn't, a
lot of marketers would be a lot happier. Of course, I am writing from a UK viewpoint, but I
suspect that the US has similar rules about advertising that (for example) claims that a
given car can get 250km on a single tank of fuel, when it is lucky to get 25...

> Of course, the idea of reputation matters. And--Declan can correct me
> or clarify things--newspapers and perhaps even reporters have
> professional organizations and other "standards and practices" type of
> seals of approval. Something like "This newspaper is a member of the
> National Assocation for the Advancement of Uncolored Journalism," or
> somesuch.
As I understand it, the idea of "impartial journalism" was a marketing gimmick - to sell
wire news to local papers without having to adjust it to the local "slant"

> Probably the Weekly World News ("Baby Eats Own Hand, Aliens
> Suspected") would not be a member in good standing of the NAAUJ.
"best investigative journalism on the planet" - MiB ;)

> And the newspaper which published the deliberately false arson story
> should at the least face suspension.
Or the police could have contracted for an extra page (small batch, a few dozen copies) that
they then substitute for the real one in the editions sent to the criminal concerned.

> This doesn't mean government should be involved in deciding the answer
> to Pilate's famous question, "What is truth?"
doesn't mean they can't answer the question "what is a *deliberate* lie"