How Not To Correct the Record

Updated below, 7/26/13, 11:30 am.

Further update 7/26/13, 1:40 pm: The sentence that this post discusses has now been fully corrected, and both the errors and changes acknowledged by TNR. Kudos. H/T Jonathan Adler at VC.

Recently, I wrote about the Zimmerman trial and my disappointment (if not complete surprise) at how irresponsible many journalists, scholars and lawyers have been in reporting, discussing, and drawing conclusions from that case. As I noted there, one of the most serious, and most obviously incorrect, of the many widespread errors about the case is that Zimmerman racially profiled a seven-year-old black child. Now, the original police log of Zimmerman's calls has been available to everyone with an Internet connection and two minutes to spare since March of 2012. Nevertheless, on July 16, 2013, The New Republic published an essay in which a distinguished law professor wrote the following (emphasis in original):

. . . Zimmerman was an edgy basket case with a gun who had called 911 46 times in 15 months, once to report the suspicious activities of a seven year old black boy.

That sentence contains three factual errors (the broader article contains others), two of which I noted in my prior post. First, and probably of least importance, many of Zimmerman's 46 calls (reporting 43 incidents) were made to the non-emergency police number (not just to 911). Second, and of more import, Zimmerman made 46 calls over 7.5 years (not over 15 months). Third, and most egregiously, Zimmerman's call (to the non-emergency police number) regarding a seven-to-nine-year-old black boy was placed because Zimmerman was "concerned for [the] well being" of that child, who was walking unaccompanied on a busy street (see page 37).

After being alerted to at least some of these errors, TNR eventually edited the sentence. Two changes were made — one acknowledged at the bottom of the TNR article, and one unacknowledged — while a third error was left unaddressed. The acknowledged change addresses the least damaging of the three errors: TNR replaced "called 911" with "called the polics [sic]," thus implicitly acknowledging that many of GZ's calls were to the non-emergency number rather than to 911. A more damaging error remains: that GZ made 46 calls within "15 months," instead of over a period of 7.5 years, as the call log readily shows.

But it's TNR's unacknowledged change in response to the third, most serious, error that really chafes. Here's how the sentence now reads (once again, italics in the original):

. . . Zimmerman was an edgy basket case with a gun who had called the polics 46 times in 15 months, once to report on a seven year old black boy.

Seriously?

TNR replaced "report the suspicious activities of a seven year old black boy" with "report on a seven year old black boy." The charitable characterization of this edit is that it is very, very lawyerly. Yes, the TNR piece no longer explicitly falsely claims that GZ called the police about a black boy because GZ found the child suspicious. But in the context of a paragraph meant to demonstrate that "[v]igilante justice . . . is especially menacing to minority racial groups who are often sterotyped as criminals," and in the absence of disclosing the benign (indeed, laudatory) reason why GZ did call police, the reporting of GZ's call about "a seven year old black boy" — complete with incredulity italics — strongly implies what the article only technically no longer says: that Zimmerman "reported on" a young black child because Zimmerman stereotyped that child as a criminal.

Either the author or TNR's editors honestly believe that Zimmerman racially profiled the child and that his comments to police about being concerned for the child's welfare walking along a busy street were pretext (and that readers shouldn't be given all the facts and allowed to make up their own minds), or they intentionally misled readers about the truth in order to make a point. (In this regard, it's also worth reflecting on the choice to describe as "a seven-year-old" a boy that Zimmerman described to police as "appr[oximately] 7-9" years old. It would have been equally accurate to have described the child as eight or nine.)

When I'm not blogging about the Zimmerman case, I write and teach at the intersection of law and science. As anyone who works in that area knows, public trust in science is indispensable. We need the public to participate in research, and we need them to fund research. And so it's really important not to conduct research on people without their knowledge and consent, not to fabricate or cherry pick data, not to hype your results, and to correct the media (or your university's PR person) when they get it wrong. I've written before about the importance of science communication and about a few science communication "fails," one in which the record was corrected graciously, and the other in which it was corrected (sort of) defensively and grudgingly. But TNR's covert non-correction correction is an entirely different species of response. It's one thing to make a mistake about facts. It's quite another to double down on damaging falsehoods after having your mistake pointed out. In that respect, TNR's cure here is worse than the disease.

What's at stake when we write and talk about the Zimmerman case is somewhat analogous to what's at stake in science communication. If you only want to preach to the choir, then I suppose that readers who only want to hear their own views echoed back to them will neither notice or care that you get the facts wrong along the way. But if the goal is instead to move out of entrenched positions towards some sort of common ground, then both "sides" will have to commit to some basic rules of intellectual honesty and good faith, or the conversation can't get off the ground. Playing fast and loose with the facts is not scholarly. It's not journalistic. And it's an excellent way to erode the foundation of trust that's necessary for the constructive conversation that we should be having.

When Zimmerman's calls are considered accurately, in their entirety, and in some context (all of which I tried to lay out in my prior post), I think that the case they make for Zimmerman as a serial racial profiler is weaker than those who haven't considered that evidence have tended to assume. It's just not the case, for example, that Zimmerman called the police about dozens of suspicious black men and never about white men. Still, I have little doubt that many will consider the call log evidence and continue to conclude that Zimmerman racially profiled black men, including Trayvon Martin. Fair enough; the case for Zimmerman as a serial racial profiler is weaker than it's often made out to be on the basis of factual errors, but it's not nonexistent. But surely, then, that case can be made based on the available evidence, without distorting or inventing facts and without pretending, contrary to all reasonable inferences, that every encounter Zimmerman had with a black male was driven by racism.

A distinguished law professor once poignantly argued (p. 20):

Overuse and abuse of the claim of bias is bad for society and bad for social justice. When a conflict really does involve hatred or deep-seated irrational prejudice, dialogue is pointless and condemnation is appropriate. But the emotionally charged accusation of bigotry is counterproductive when a conflict involves questions on which reasonable people can differ. Playing the race card makes it too easy to dismiss rather than address the legitimate concerns of others. And the accusation of bigotry inevitably provokes defensiveness and resentment rather than thoughtful reaction. The resulting interactions usually don't qualify as speech, much less dialogue. They're generally closer to mud wrestling. No one gets away clean.

Indeed.

Update 7/26/13, 11:30 am: As Jonathan Adler notes over at VC, TNR has edited the sentence once again. It now reads:

. . . Zimmerman was an edgy basket case with a gun who had called the police 46 times in 15 months. 

As Adler points out, the "15 months" is still wrong (it's off by about 75 months, but who's counting), and there's no acknowlegement of the change. Still, the most egregious error has been corrected: all traces of the seven-year-old boy are at last gone from the online pages of TNR (if not from the memories of however many people read the piece in the first 10 days of its existence). 

 

 

Comments

[R Walsh]

The lack of basic research on the Zimmerman matter is staggering.

Last week, I heard Anderson Cooper on CNN repeatedly, over several days of coverage on his show, referring to a study that he claimed shows that the presence of at least one African-American on a jury makes a significant difference in conviction rates. He kept hammering that the all-white jury was a key problem for the prosecution, and referenced the study over and over.

But a 30 second Google check on the study shows that he is wrong. The study discusses Jury POOLS that have at least one African-American -- and the Zimmerman jury POOL did have African-Americans included. He literally did not know what he was taking about, and the study he kept mentioning was in fact entirely irrelevant to the Zimmerman case given that the pool had non-whites.

I did email them, but no one at CNN ever stopped him from mis-characterizing the information because the study gives them evidence that supports their preconceived conclusions so is 'too good to check'.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/study-all-white-juries-more-likely-convict-black-defendants

[Eric Rasmusen]

I've been looking to see if I can find even one law professor who will say that Zimmerman should have been convicted. (Law professors have reputations to maintain, so they are more responsible than pundits.) I am pleased to see that even Prof. Ford in the New Republic agrees that Zimmerman should have been acquitted, under the normal law of self defense:

"The acquittal of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, has led many to indict the jury that delivered the verdict as racists. But because of Florida’s lax laws on self-defense and problems with the prosecution’s case, the verdict was probably justified. The real injustice is that what Zimmerman did was lawful, and the real racial issue here is that thousands of black people are in prison for far less serious offenses.

[Larry Brasfield]

Instead of feeling chafed, or looking at this as outrageous (which it would be among honorable people), I suggest it is more appropriate to classify the article's author, and probably its publisher, as a deliberate deceiver. People who pretend to inform by citing facts, but who do so misleadingly, are unwilling to let readers know the truth, preferring to stuff their own story into the minds of their dupes.

Those who are willing to be dupes are not put off by such behavior, so it follows that they read such deceitful authors or publications merely to reinforce the pattern of thinking they prefer rather than to learn anything actually about the world. I believe this to be a form of "mental masturbation".

The people who provide mental masturbation aids know what they are doing. It is a mistake to heed them except to learn what stories are being peddled.

[anon]

Eric Rasmusen: Isn't the author of this opinion piece at MSNBC a law professor?
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/15/race-justice-and-trayvon-martin/

[4thYearLawProf]

I confess that, even though Richard Thompson Ford is a professor at a truly elite law school who writes in areas of popular interest, I have never heard of him. Maybe the deliberate misstatements regarding the Zimmerman trial are being used as a tool to bring himself into the spotlight? I can't think of any other reason that he would so deliberately lie.

[Boballab.wordpress.com]

So your concerned that a media outlet that is leftwing, that has an author that writes a story that fits the major media narrative, doesn't like changing the story away from the narrative to fits the facts?

If that is the case in the immortal words of John McClain:
"Welcome to the party Pal!" since this phenomena goes back to the 1970's at least. Or to put it another way this is just another case of Dog bites Man, nothing new here.

[TallDave]

Thanks for pointing out an egregiously false attack on Zimmernan, an ordinary guy just trying to help.

There's a couple very common misconceptions floating around. One, Trayvon was a known burglar (he'd been caught with burglary tools and stolen goods, which were later linked to a burglary near his school, which we only know because of FOIA requests), and Zimmerman glommed onto him because he was acting like one -- not for any other reason. Two, Zimmerman stopped following Trayvon as soon as he he received the implied request. He only got out to check an address -- at that point the police were coming to his truck and he just needed to tell them where he was when they called back.

So, what happened was that Zimmerman reported a known burglar acting suspiciously, was assaulted by said burglar while trying to find an address, and then killed the burglar in self-defense while legitimately in fear for his life. They should have built Z a statue, not charged him with a crime.

The real tragedy isn't what happened to Trayvon that night -- he was well on the path to jail or death before Zimmerman entered his life. The real tragedy is that in the seventeen years prior no one stepped up and put him on a better path. And that's a tragedy happening every day in black neighborhoods across the country.

[wfjag]

Lessons learned from the Zimmerman trial:
1. The object of the press' scorn will be changed into a white, conservative, whatever he was before;
2. A Brown man killing a Black man in self defense is absolute proof that all White men are racists;
3. Don't sucker punch and ground and pound some guy in a CCW state;
4. People who are protected by armed security guards think everyone else have a duty to retreat.

[Jerome]

"Eric Rasmusen: Isn't the author of this opinion piece at MSNBC a law professor?"

"Darren Lenard Hutchinson teaches Constitutional Law, Civil Rights, and Critical Race Theory at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from Yale Law School."

He has this to say;
'The Constitution requires that prosecutors establish guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” '

I doubt that Professor Hutchinson has ever read that document. He is obviously about as fit to teach Constitutional Law as Barack Obama was, when his cronies allowed him to claim a paycheck for parading his ignorance.

[Sammy12]

Never let facts get in the way of a race story. How about the media continuing to say that it was an all white jury (and still to this day). Sorry but b29 or whatever number she was didn't look white to me.

[Hutchinson on Zimmerman]

Eric Rasmusen,

Law professor Hutchinson says "There was enough circumstantial and direct evidence presented in the trial for a reasonable juror to find that Zimmerman initiated physically aggressive contact with Martin. This finding would virtually negate Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense." He also says, "A juror could rationally conclude that after getting out of his car and following Martin, Zimmerman either attacked or frightened the teen. This finding would have legitimated Martin’s use of force against Zimmerman."

There you have a law professor saying that a jury could have convicted Zimmerman. The article reads like he wanted the jury to convict Zimmerman.

[MrCreosote]

"A juror could rationally conclude that after getting out of his car and following Martin, Zimmerman either attacked or frightened the teen. This finding would have legitimated Martin’s use of force against Zimmerman."

Martin's injuries-Skinned knuckles,single bullet hole in the thoracic area

Zimmerman's injuries, facial and cranial lacerations, broken nose, two black eyes.

Open and shut. The second coming of Jesus Christ acting for the prosecution could not have legitimated Martin's use of force in the eyes of any sane jury.

It's clear enough for any idiot to understand that Martin struck first,and was presenting a very real danger of death to Zimmerman with his pre-emptive violence. The only violence from Zimmerman was his defensive gunshot. Even when he had the opportunity to bash Martin's skull in as Martin was doing to him, he refrained for as long as he could from responding to Martin's aggression with ANY type of force. In other words, he gave Martin every opportunity to stop,but Martin wanted to kill him. Now, I'm not one to take anyone's statements at face value in a situation like this, but Zimmerman reported that Martin said to him,"You're going to die tonight". On its own, that doesn't mean much. Taken in conjunction with Martin and Zimmerman's actions,it is damning. As a veteran of these types of street fights, the basic veracity of Zimmerman's story shines through all the media hype about "evil white racists stalking black pre-teens armed only with skittles". How he described it is almost certainly exactly how it went down,judging by the forensics and my own not insubstantial experience in these matters.

[Auntbea 49]

There is a post at American Thinker which makes sense of the skittles and the carbonated fruit drink (not iced tea) that Martin purchased. It is substantiated by a screen-captured segment of Trayvon's conversation with a friend from Trayvon's Facebook page (now gone). Google " American Thinker Trayvon Martin's final hour". This was written before the trial.