‘Inverse truth’ and the Times

By Luke Warm

Professor of Mendacity, University of Munchausen

First of all, I would like to remind all students enrolled in this class–Mendacity 101–that our primary purpose is to find subtle, even invisible and certainly inaudible, ways of misleading the public through the good graces of journalism.

For quite some time, I’ve been wanting to talk about a nifty way of distorting reality. I call it “inverse numeration,” though others have dubbed it, less decorously, “pulling the bull” and even “straight-out lying.”

The concept of “inverse numeration,” also known as “lying with numbers,” is well known in the world of public relations. It is not taught in our journalism schools because to many J school profs, the tactic simply stinks to high heaven.

To which proscription I respond that things only stink if they are smelled.

The object in this class is to make our debasement of truth so subtle that it cannot be noticed.

It’s a somewhat abstract concept, this idea of “inverse truth,” and I despaired of finding a means of conveying it to students succinctly and precisely.

And then The New York Times obliged me in its edition of January 7, 2010. Right smack-dab on Page One in the upper right corner of my paper edition of the Times, the boldface headline blazes, “PARTY IS SHAKEN AS 2 DEMOCRATS CHOOSE TO QUIT.”

To sink the hook further, a second boldface head states, “SENATE IN THE BALANCE.”

A deck head grinds the point home: “Pressure on Obama Agenda From G.O.P and the Economy.”

Note the artful way copy editors have enticed us into this story by presenting as “fact” that the Democratic Party is “shaken” by the news that two veteran senators are stepping down. To Democrats reading this headline, that must indeed be frightening news.

And my God! The Senate is “In the balance”!

What is a good Democrat to do?

Woe are they!

This concept, though false, has been slipped into the consciousness of thousands of Times readers who never read past the stack of headlines.

As a connoisseur of mendacity, I declare this a masterful job. Much of the work is done before we even get to  the story.

Now, before starting to read the story from the top, allow me to direct your attention to the story’s end. Please read the third-from-the-last paragraph. This is the secret divulged, the key to undertstanding how this masterpiece of mendacity was pulled off using the technique I call “inverse numeracy.”

Here is what it says:

Despite the focus on the Democrats’ problems, Republicans are faring worse this year in terms of resignations putting seats in play.

An alert reader at this point deep into the story’s jump on Page 20 might wonder, Why all the hoopla about the Democrats’ woes on Page One, if the Republicans are in worse shape?

Excellent question. First let me respond that in this course, Mendacity 101, we make a rule not to delve into the motives of writers who pander lies to the public. This is not a class in morals. Technique is what we are after, a dissection of the handiwork of deception, and this example is a classic of the type no matter what its authors’ motives might have been.

Having issued my standard disclaimer, I might suggest–MIGHT, I said–that the Times authors and no doubt the editors who drive them, were looking for a way to juice the story or, putting it politely, “enhance the reader value” to make it worthy of Page One treatment. Now in the past year, there have been plenty of headlines about the opposition party’s woes. So many stories, in fact, that one more story about troubled Republicans would be a crushing bore. But if we could stand the story on its head, twist the “facts” one-hundred-eighty degrees, by gum, we’d have something worthy of Page One that would cast the Democrats–the dominant party–as underdogs.

Who cares if it’s true or not? Page One is our God!

Maybe that series of “thoughts”  flashed through the Timesmens’ minds. I don’t know or care.

For pure unabashed mendacity, this story is a shining example.

For here, deep in the story, second line in the third-from-last paragraph, we get the damning math:

In the House, 14 Republicans and 10 Democrats are retiring, and Representative Robert Wexler, Democrat of Florida, is retiring, leaving one vacancy.

Do the math, please: Fourteen Republicans and 11 Democrats. Just to review the basics, an exercise they apparently don’t conduct at the Times, fourteen is a greater denomination than eleven. Thus the peril for Republicans in the House of Representatives is actually greater than the danger to Democrats.

Does this news seem to belie the threatening tone of the Page One headline: “PARTY IS SHAKEN AS 2 DEMOCRATS CHOOSE TO QUIT“?

By now, a suspicious reader might wonder if those people who plunked down two bucks for the paper aren’t being had. And, of course, they ARE being duped, in a most glorious and artistic manner!

But there is more beauty to this painting. Please read the third line in the third-from-last paragraph:

In the Senate, six Republicans, including several in swing states requiring expensive campaigns, and four Democrats, including Mr. Dodd and Mr. Dorgan, are retiring.

Once again, and I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but when such an august publication as The New York Times has trouble making judgments based on simple arithmetic, I feel the need to caution students not to fall into the same pit of bad counting.

So please repeat with me, “Six is bigger than four.”

Six Republicans are in trouble, and of the four Democrats, the loss of Sen. Christopher Dodd seems actually to have strengthened that party’s chances, because the new candidate is perceived as more popular and thus stands a better chance than Dodd of being elected.

That being the case, then the numbers are double against the Republicans, six to three.

“PARTY IS SHAKEN” would thus seem to apply more aptly to the Republicans.

Now do you see what I meant by “inverse truth” and “inverse numeration”?

In this article, figures, that is ,the perception of figures, which are widely perceived as unable to lie, have been nimbly inverted to literally reverse the meaning of the actual numbers.

Moreover, and this is important to the credibility game newspapers like to play with their readers, if a critic called attention to this massive deception, the authors and those puppet-masters known euphemistically as “editors” can always respond that the real numbers are in the story, albeit buried in the third-from-last paragraph.

Look now at the very top of the story, the lede sentence:

WASHINGTON — The sudden decision by two senior Democratic senators to retire shook the party’s leaders on Wednesday and signaled that President Obama is facing a perilous political environment that could hold major implications for this year’s midterm elections and hi sown agenda.

Knowing what we now do, having analyzed the newspaper’s own numbers using our knowledge of simple arithmetic, we can see that this line is complete hokum. Republicans’ political environment is far more “perilous” that the Democrats, but for some reason the Times prefers to cast the Dems in the underdog role.

The second paragraph of this Times story also collapses from the weight of numerical fraud unmasked:

The rapidly shifting climate, less than a year after Mr. Obama took office on the stength of a historic Democratic sweep, was brought into focus by the announcements that Senators Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakaota would retire rather than wage uphill fights for re-election.

“Rapidly shifting climate”? Such hyperbole would disintegrate if juxtapposed directly with the numbers the authors chose to expose only in their third-from last paragraph.

The “climate” for Republicans in the Senate would, by the third-from-last paragraph numbers, appear twice as grim as the weather experienced by Democrats.

What class! What mental dexterity!

It certainly doesn’t take higher math or a sophisticated computer program to lay bare this textbook example of journalistic mendacity.