I opened my August 7th copy of the Los Angeles Times and was delighted to see the Times focusing some attention on the Central Valley. See Victor Davis Hanson’s piece entitled Follow the water: The west side of the Central Valley supports California’s booming agricultural prosperity. We can’t afford to let it go dry. In short, his view is that agribusiness is the victim in California’s water wars.
Trying to figure out people’s unintentional bias is one aspect of critical thinking. I’m straight-forward with you that I see the world from the bottom up, the way working people do. I’m an environmentalist who wants to see something recognizable about the world we live in passed on to our grandchildren.
The experiences we have shape our thinking and make us into the people we are. Lots of it comes from our culture, the way our relatives thought about things, and where we went to school.
Hanson is a contributing editor of City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute. The mission of the Manhattan Institute is to “develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.”
That just may decode into less business regulation and having the poor and the sick, and the old people pay their own way. You can read high praise on City Journal’s website coming from William J. Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories.
Bennett states: “City Journal is, quite simply, one of the best things in the entire intellectual conservative movement, and thus one of the best things for intellectual life in America. City Journal is critical reading, each and every time it publishes.”— William J. Bennett, Radio Host, Washington fellow, The Claremont Institute
Okay, let’s go on. Hanson represent the conservative point of view of agribusiness that environmentalist and the Delta Smelt are to blame for our recent drought, with some apportionment of the blame to the salmon industry. I was disappointed. I really want to read something new.
Hanson states that during the drought, “…water deliveries to farmers were drastically reduced. Chaos followed. Thousands of acres of crops were idled. Farmworkers were laid off.”
Talking about farmers personalizes everything, doesn’t it? It calls up an image of a lean, weather-beaten, Gary Cooper type whipping off his sweat-stained cowboy hat, to stare up at the relentless sun in the sky, while his crops wither at his feet. It sounds a lot different if we’re talking about agribusiness.
What I’d really like is for Hanson to read the Pacific Institute’s economic report on how farmer’s did during the three-year drought. The Pacific Institute is a nonpartisan research institute that works to advance environmental protection, economic development, and social equity. That’s pretty clear, though having worked as a researcher for my working life, I know that science is not blind and bias can creep in at fundamental levels.
About the drought they state: “Analysis of state and federal data released over the past year finds that contrary to much of the media reporting, California’s agricultural community proved flexible and resilient, generating agricultural revenues in 2007, 2008, and 2009 that were the highest on record (emphasis mine), and agriculture-related occupations remained a stable portion of total jobs available in areas directly impacted by water supply restrictions.” See my blogs about the Delta Smelt.
The Pacific Institute’s point of view vs. the Manhattan Institute. You choose.
Once journalism followed, as best as humanly possible, the ethic of presenting an informed and balanced point of view–objectivity in short. Much of today’s media no longer pretends to be objective in handling an issue. The reader is given full disclosure as to the writer’s point of view. Reader/viewer beware.
You pretty much know what Fox News perspective is going to be. And how much to believe of the Matt Drudge Report. Even the National Enquirer. Journalism now expects critical thinking from its readers at a time when critical thinking in the American reading and viewing public seems to have hit bottom. Vampires, ghosts, aliens, Flat Earthers, werewolves. Everything can be true nowadays. Everything.
Once in a while you think American credulity has hit bottom, but it seems there’s always a new low. And we block off points of view that do not support our own. You do it. I do it too.
What’s to be done with us as human beings? I keep hoping that there’s a pendulum effect to rationality. We are oscillating out to the extreme of the pendulum’s swing. Soon, I hope soon, rationality will return. My wildest dream is that civility will return with it.
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For more reading on the topic of the media see Brooke Gladstone’s new book The Influencing Machine reviewed at the New York Times, which I’ve heard described as just a “liberal rag.”