Yesterday’s New York Times (December 31, 2006) carried an essay by Public Editor Byron Calame entitled "Truth, Justice, Abortion and the Times Magazine." HERE Mr. Calame’s piece represents a effort by the NYT to address errors appearing in the April 9, 2006 influential NYT Magazine article on El Salvador’s laws prohibiting abortion written by Mr. Jack Hitt. HERE As one familiar with pro-abortion campaigns against the legal regimes of some Latin American and other countries that regulate or prohibit abortion, I viewed the Hitt piece as a contribution to the pro-abortion campaigns to amend or repeal the laws of countries that strictly regulate or prohibit abortion. I do not know what Mr. Hitt’s personal views are on abortion; however, he has written on the topic for the New York Times on other occasions. His article on El Salvador appeared to suggest that the laws of this country dealing with this "sensitive" topic (a word twice-used by Mr. Calame in his discussion of abortion) are in need of re-examination if not revision.
Mr. Calame’s piece was written as a response to the concerns and complaints raised by readers of the New York Times that the Hitt article misrepresented the truth about the conviction for homicide of one of the women discussed by Hitt. Mr. Hitt indicated that this woman had an abortion in the eighteenth week of her pregnancy and was sentenced to a thirty-year prison term for violating Salvadorian law. As Mr. Hitt stated in his article, she "was given 30 years for an abortion that was ruled a homicide." However, as Mr. Calame points out, Mr. Hitt and his editors did not verify the accuracy of this claim by consulting the court records of the legal proceedings involved in this case. As it turns out, the woman gave live birth to her child and then strangled her baby. While Mr. Hitt insisted that the purported abortion was ruled a homicide, he, in fact, had portrayed a homicide as an "abortion." I would hasten to add that any abortion is the wrongful taking of any human life, but I digress.
Mr. Calame points out that Mr. Hitt and the editors associated with the publication of his article had ample opportunity to verify the substance of the court proceedings and why the woman was convicted of homicide. He also points out that Mr. Hitt and his editors relied, instead, on the work of an unpaid translator who also happens to be affiliated with Ipas, an organization that Mr. Calame identifies as "an abortion rights advocacy group." Indeed they are such; however, they are also in the business of selling surgical devices used in abortion procedures. For example, the Ipas website states that one of its commercial products can be considered as "the next generation of life saving reproductive-health technology." HERE This claim is both ironic and flawed, but again I digress. The point I do wish to make is that Mr. Hitt, and, subsequently his editors relied not on the actual court proceedings but on the work of a person associated with an organization that is involved with the effort to change El Salvador’s laws and that has a financial stake in selling and distributing medical instruments used in abortion procedures.
Mr. Calame’s essay focuses on the requirement that reporting, especially of "sensitive" subjects like abortion, must be truthful. He also points out several episodes where something other than the truth about the law of and particular legal proceedings in El Salvador were presented in less than a truthful manner. The excuse offered by one editor associated with this case that the Hitt article was "as accurate as it could have been at the time it was written" is itself inaccurate as Mr. Calame demonstrates. At this point according to Mr. Calame, the New York Times does not appear inclined to do anything further to rectify the falsehoods that were portrayed as truth. He concludes his essay by stating that, "One thing is clear to me… Accuracy and fairness were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have a right to expect." I would add that this assertion should apply not only to Mr. Hitt’s article but any article written for and published by any journal, but especially those having a great influence on public opinion and public policy making. The laws of any jurisdiction, including El Salvador, hold people accountable to known standards of responsibility. If the New York Times concludes that it has a role in this crusade involving the law, it will need to consider that it, too, must be held accountable when it does not meet the standards for which it is responsible to uphold. RJA sj
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Here are two competing Catholic perspectives.
Which one, dear reader, if either, do you find persuasive:
StephenBainbridge.com
Evangelical Catholicism
Thursday, December 28, 2006
In this piece, "Winter Games," from the Dec. 22 issue of the New Republic, Michelle Cottle describes the now-annual ritual of fights over Christmas displays as "Christmas' war on multiculturalism." Huh? A misprint? Anyway -- at the end of the day, it's a reasonable piece. Too bad she had to clutter it up with cheap shots ("nutters" and "Christmas crazies") about those who resent (what strikes me as) the bizarre insistence in some quarters on pretending that the reason we, in the West, have a big holiday in late December is not the birth of Jesus Christ. Still, I admit, her suggestion -- "unclench and have a cup of frigging eggnog" -- seems a good one.
Joseph Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong has apparently called on Pope Benedict XVI to excommunicate China's state-appointed bishops. Another reason to feel guilty, I suppose, about the recent influx into my house of low-priced, "made in China" toys.
Here is Thomas Hibbs (Baylor), writing about the possibilities for a collaboration between Mel Gibson ("Apocalypto") and M. Night Shyamalan ("Signs"). And, here is Rod Dreher, commenting on the former:
. . . I can't think of a film that is at once so violent and such a protest against violence. For me, the key moments of "Apocalypto" come atop that high altar, when the high priest is ripping the hearts out of and decapitating prisoners, while the bored royal family looks on. They've seen it all before. This is their "normal." Their ho-hum, anesthetized reaction to the unbelievable sadism they're inflicting on human beings is more shocking than any disembowelment. When I saw that, I thought about the concentration camp workers who went about their satanic jobs, then went home to their wife and kids and slept peacefully. And I thought about our ancestors who, not terribly long ago, enslaved Africans and treated them with similar barbarism, and yet were quite civilized. And I thought about how we today are even more civilized, yet we tolerate this -- and indeed quite a few Americans see this as a virtual sacrament. The Mayans in the "Apocalypto" grotesquely sacrificed innocent humans so that they could live as they wished to live; so do we, in our way. I came away from "Apocalypto" unsettled, convinced in an unfamiliar way that there is something deeply, deeply wrong with us humans. We are born to trouble and violence, and will to power.
Penn law prof Paul Robinson, Penn psychology prof Robert Kurzban, and Vanderbilt law/biology prof Owen Jones have posted their paper, The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice. Here is an excerpt from the abstract:
Contrary to the common wisdom among criminal law scholars, the empirical evidence reveals that people's intuitions of justice are often specific, nuanced, and widely shared. Indeed, with regard to the core harms and evils to which criminal law addresses itself - physical aggression, takings without consent, and deception in transactions - the shared intuitions are stunningly consistent, across cultures as well as demographics. It is puzzling that judgments of moral blameworthiness, which seem so complex and subjective, reflect such a remarkable consensus. What could explain this striking result?
The authors theorize that one explanation may be an evolved predisposition toward these shared intuitions of justice, arising from the advantages that they provided, including stability, predictability, and the facilitation of beneficial exchange - the cornerstones to cooperative action and its accompanying survival benefits. Recent studies in animal behavior and brain science are consistent with this hypothesis, suggesting that moral judgment-making not only has biological underpinnings, but also reflects the effects of evolutionary processes on the distinctly human mind. Similarly, the child development literature reveals predictable stages in the development of moral judgment within each individual, from infant through adult, that are universal across all demographics and cultures.
Or do the shared intuitions suggest a common author? Is this evidence of the law written on our hearts?
MoJ-er Steve Shiffrin will be honored in February at a gathering of legal luminaries including Nadine Strossen, Eugene Volokh, Robert Post, Martin Redish, Kathleen Sullivan, Erwin Chemerinsky, and Charles Fried. Loyola Law School (Los Angeles) is hosting a conference titled Commercial Speech: Past, Present & Future, A Tribute to Steven Shiffrin.
David Opderbeck wonders whether groups like the Family Research Council and the Becket Fund are overreaching in their doomsday portrayal of the recent federal court decision holding Prison Fellowship's Innerchange Initiative unconstitutional.
