What is Truth, Said Jesting Pilate
So perhaps it does matter after all, what the truth is, who is telling the truth and who is lying, who has it right and who is deceived, what pictures are authentic and what are fake. Is that possible? It looks that way. It looks as if in fact we do care whether on the one hand soldiers of a certain regiment did abuse Iraqi prisoners, or whether on the other hand someone faked up some pictures that purported to show that but in fact (being faked) did not, and gave said pictures to a large newspaper. You can see where it would make a difference. We can all think of other pictures that matter – pictures that we would be shocked, outraged, disoriented to discover had been faked. Pictures of famine victims, massacres, mass graves, rivers full of bodies; pictures from wars, genocides, prisons, crime scenes, riots. Pictures of perpetrators and victims, just as in the Daily Mirror pictures. We don’t want to be deceived about such pictures. We don’t want to get outraged and demand that something be done about a war crime or a violation of the Geneva Convention or an act of stupid brutality, if it didn’t happen. Do we. No. Nor do we want to fail to get outraged and demand something be done if war crimes or acts of brutality did happen and we are deceived about that. We don’t want a tour of Theresienstadt or a Potemkin village, thank you. We don’t want either one of those. We want the truth.
We don’t want a situated truth or a perspectival truth. We don’t want a community’s truth. We don’t want US truth and UK truth and Iraqi truth. We don’t want my truth and your truth and their truth. We want the truth, period. We don’t want the truth the army is happy with, and the one the government is happy with, and the one the newspapers are happy with, and the one the prisoners of war are happy with, and the one the voters are happy with. Do we? I don’t think so. I think we want just the one. The single, general, universal, global, true-for-everyone truth about what did happen and what did not. That truth may or may not be available; that’s a separate issue. But we don’t look placidly at faked pictures and say ‘Well that was true for the people who made the pictures, no doubt, so that’s good enough.’ We don’t conclude that the pictures made something to talk about for a few days and that’s good enough. Sometimes playful irony about the truth just doesn’t butter any parsnips.
Well said!
(admittedly not the most profound comment ever submitted to this site, but still!)
Really? That seems like quite a profound comment to me!
There is an ongoing debate in journalism over this, a lot of which hinges on whether jounrnalists should become advocates – usually for peace – rather than remain objective.
Mick Hume points out that this has led some to argue that the veracity of the Mirror’s pictures is not the “real issue”, and doesn’t like the consequences:
‘So let us get this argument straight. The pictures purporting to show the abuse may be fakes, but “only” insofar as they are, er, not real, ie, fake. The “facts remain the same”, despite the small matter that the photographic evidence which establishes those facts is patently false. And exposing what you feel to be true, rather than fretting about fake photos and manufactured evidence, is the “duty of responsible journalists”.’
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA529.htm
There is also a good debate from last year on open democracy:
Witnessing the Truth
by David Lyon
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-993.jsp
Witnessing whose truth?
by Des Freedman
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-1007.jsp
Hey, thanks for those links.
Well, this is an explosive political issue. And, no, we don’t want journalistic forgeries and misrepresentations. In this particular case, given how touchy soldiers are about their honor, I would expect a libel suit, if otherwise there is no merit to the charges, though I don’t know the particulars of U.K. law. But mostly, the forgeries and misrepresentations are not exercized by those outside the circle of established power, but rather on its behalf. The burden of critical sorting is all the greater there. Still, the sin here, as with “political correctness”, is an aggravated one precisely because it only serves to re-enforce the claims of those in power. A great brouhaha was made over the work of Rigoberta Menchu (?), but saying the she was simply a liar serves as a pleasant distraction from contemplating the horrors endured by Mayans in Guatemala.
“The single, general, universal, global, true-for-everyone truth about what did happen and what did not. That truth may or may not be available; that’s a separate issue.”- That’s quite a large conclusion to be drawn from this one singular instance, isn’t it? And how readily you peer over the chiasmus! Such a construction bears a passing resemblance to Charles Bovary’s hat. (Snide, snide, snide…) But I see that I am no longer needed. I turn you over to Adam above for religious instruction. (He’s right about Kant, though, if not so much Freud. You could use a refresher course in the old Koenigsburgian.) You are free to delete my words free of charge!
No, I don’t think it is a large conclusion to draw from this one issue. Because that’s the point. If truth matters in one case, it matters in other cases. It’s no good wanting to know the truth about whether or not the dossier was sexed up, say, and then pretending the truth doesn’t matter at other times – and people do want to know the truth about whether or not the dossier was sexed up, don’t they.
I completely agree about Menchu – exactly my point. That’s what I mean about the Potemkin villages.
I know I’m free to delete your words. And don’t think I won’t. But I’ll leave Charbovari’s hat; I think it’s kind of funny.
The case of the Daily Mirror photos is an interesting one.
“Truth is contextual”. There is a trivial and uninteresting sense in which this is true. And there’s an important and substantial sense in which it is false. The Daily Mirror photos illustrate both senses.
To deal with the trivial and uninteresting sense first, imagine that you been sent the Mirror’s photos in the post, with no supporting explanation. And imagine someone asked you “Do you think the photo is a hoax?” Surely you’d say – “Well, I don’t know what the photo is meant to show”.
A hoax is intended to deceive. Perhaps this is meant as (say) a piece of pornography; in which case the question of deception or hoax doesn’t arise. The question of whether or not the pictures are a hoax only arises when someone (in this case the Mirror) puts them forward as evidence of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. That’s to say, the question of hoax only arises when the pictures are presented in a particular context.
In that very limited sense the question of truth is contextual.
However, this is all obvious stuff and doesn’t matter. What does matter is that once the question arises – do these pictures show British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners – then either they do or they don’t. And that’s not a matter of my truth or your truth or any particular context or perspective.
The question whether these photos show British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners is a question with a yes/no answer, valid for everyone.
There is a different question: did British troops in fact abuse Iraqi prisoners. It may well be the case that abuse took place but that the photos are not photos of abuse. This doesn’t alter the fact that the question about the status of the photos has a yes/know answer.
Good point about context. I’ve had arguments about this (is there anything I haven’t had arguments about, I wonder? could it be that I’m an argumentative person?). For instance once in a discussion of the cognitive effects of reading versus watching moving pictures – I pointed out that pictures don’t make arguments, and my arguee retorted that they most certainly do, look at that picture of the naked crying little girl running down the road after the napalm attack! But that only ‘makes an argument’ because you know the context, I pointed out. Without that it could be a picture of all sorts of things, and you would have no idea what the argument was – but he refused to believe me. So I had to kill him.
Imagine a gang war, and one side was a lot bigger and had a lot more weapons and vehicles and money. And they were just so totally kicking ass on the other guys, and they were the kind of people who really don’t have much honor. So they wanted to flash pictures around of how bad they had kicked ass, you know bragging on it and everything, but it would be such a cheap shot to do that. People who they needed to be neutral would be all sympathetic about the guys who were getting their asses kicked, if those pictures got flashed as bragging.
So they did it as news.
Your brother, with his ass in the air. Your father on the ground with a leash around his neck. All around the world.
Because no matter how far the investigations go, those images have gone all the way. And the images themselves are an act of degradation.
Why was anyone surprised about this?
The The Daily Mirror was rabidly pro-Saddam from the start and opposed the liberation of Iraq in the most hysterical manner – a position which will look ever more ridiculous as Iraq rises from the ashes of Baathist terror. It was happy to print the silliest of predictions of doom from John Pilger and his pro-tyranny cohorts. These ludicrous rants were just as fictitious as the photos in question.
Its willingness to demonise the British Army, and gloss over the evil of the regime we disposed of, bordered on treason at times. They were ON THE OTHER SIDE throughout this war and that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Some abuse of prisoners has happened – but the idea that a few idiots making a bunch of terrorist suspects stand around in their underwear is in any way comparable with Saddam’s mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis is absurd – or rather highlights the absurdity of those making those claims.
If Bill Clinton had liberated Iraq he’d have been a hero and liberal opinion would have lauded him but while Clinton signed a bit of paper wishing Saddam’s downfall, George Bush actually did it. Liberal opinion hates anyone who can distinguish been good and evil and, moreover, hates anyone who actually accomplishes anything in the real world as this merely highlights their own impotence.