Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Lynch Mobs and Persuasion Bunches:
[1]The New York Times reports, in an article about the Eason Jordan
resignation from CNN and bloggers:
[S]ome in the traditional media are growing alarmed as they watch
careers being destroyed by what they see as the growing power of
rampant, unedited dialogue.
Steve Lovelady, a former editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and
The Wall Street Journal and now managing editor of CJR Daily, the
Web site of The Columbia Journalism Review, has been among the most
outspoken.
"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail," he
lamented online after Mr. Jordan's resignation. He said that Mr.
Jordan cared deeply about the reporters he had sent into battle and
was "haunted by the fact that not all of them came back."
Now I realize that "lynch mob" is figurative, and hyperbole at that.
Still, figurative references and analogies (even hyperbolic ones) only
make sense to the extent that the analogy is apt -- to the extent that
the figurative usage, while literally false, reflects a deeper truth.
The trouble is that here the analogy is extremely weak. What's wrong
with lynch mobs? It's that the mob itself has the power to kill. They
could be completely wrong, and entirely unpersuasive to reasonable
people or to the rest of the public. Yet by their physical power, they
can impose their will without regard to the law.
But bloggers, or critics generally, have power only to the extent that
they are persuasive. Jordan's resignation didn't come because he was
afraid that bloggers will fire him. They can't fire him. I assume that
to the extent the bloggers' speech led him to resign, it did so by
persuading the public that he wasn't trustworthy.
So Jordan's critics (bloggers or not) aren't a lynch mob: If they're a
mob, they're at most a "persuasion mob." What's more, since they're
generally a very small group, they're really a "persuasion bunch."
Maybe if a persuasion bunch tries to persuade people by using factual
falsehoods, they could be faulted on those grounds (though that too
has little to do with lynch mobs). But I've seen no evidence that
their criticisms were factually unfounded, or that Jordan quit because
of any factual errors in the criticisms. (Plus presumably releasing
the video of the panel would have been the best way to fight the
factual errors.)
We should love persuasion bunches, who operate through peaceful
persuasion, while hating lynch mobs, who operate through violence and
coercion. What's more, journalists -- to the extent that they love the
First Amendment's premise that broad public debate helps discover the
truth, and improve society -- ought to love persuasion bunches, too.
When the only power you wield is the power to speak, and persuade
others through the force of your arguments (and not through the force
of your guns, clubs, or fists), that's just fine. Come to think of it,
isn't that the power that opinion journalists themselves wield?
In any of event, figurative usages and analogies are good when they
help us engage in clear thinking. Unsound analogies lead to muddled
thinking -- and, come to think of it, they usually flow from muddled
thinking, too.
References
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/technology/14cnn.html?
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