Fake-But-Accurate and the Schiavo Case

Rathergate may have embarrassed CBS, but it won’t be the last fabrication of “fake-but-accurate” documents that we’ll ever see. There are signs that the impulse to “improve” the dull facts is at work in the Schiavo controversy, too.

One instance is almost commonplace. ABC News took a poll of public reaction to Congressional intervention and reported overwhelmingly negative sentiment. A large majority of respondents, we are told, approve the Florida decision to starve Terri Schiavo to death. The author of the story accompanying the poll clearly regards its findings as proof that pro-Terri sentiment is confined to a small group of zealots.

The problem with that analysis is that the poll’s questions were patently designed to influence the answers. Orin Kerr – not a proponent of federal intervention – reprints and analyzes what was asked. The case was framed in these terms:

Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years. Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible. Her husband and her parents disagree about whether she would have wanted to be kept alive. Florida courts have sided with the husband and her feeding tube was removed on Friday.

What’s your opinion on this case – do you support or oppose the decision to remove Schiavo’s feeding tube?

This question insinuates as “facts” assertions that are, to say the least, controverted. Mrs. Schiavo’s heart, lungs and other organs function normally; she is not on “life support” as that term is normally understood. The extent to which she is conscious and her prospects for improvement are hotly disputed. She has never had an MRI examination to determine the physical severity of her brain damage. It’s no surprise that respondents, by a 63% to 28% margin, favored removal of the feeding tube, given the situation presented to them, but the presentation travesties reality. ABC News, whose raison d’être is assembling facts, can scarcely have been unaware that it was distorting the issues. Apparently, it, like CBS News reporting on George W. Bush’s National Guard service, didn’t care.

Less routine is possible skullduggery uncovered by Power Line. Left-wing commentators have made quite a bit out of a memorandum, allegedly circulated to all Republican Senators, touting Terri Schiavo as “a great political issue”. The unsigned document, apparently not on anyone’s letterhead and not in standard format, consists of brief bullet points, mostly describing one version of then-pending legislation. Two bullets, however, opine about the politics of the situation, to wit,

• This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.

• This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

Power Line’s observation makes sense: “It does not sound like something written by a conservative; it sounds like a liberal fantasy of how conservatives talk.” Very definitely, it is not how members of the Senate leadership and their staffs talk. If this “memo” is not a fabrication, it is the unsupervised production of some low-level staffer, not an insight into what motivates Republicans. The attention that it has received, with no corresponding stress on its unknown origins and the absence of indicia of reliability, show that the spirit of Dan Rather lives on.

Update: Power Line, after further investigation, presents strong arguments for fakery. The clincher comes from a reader, who observes that the so-called memo is headed “S. 529, The Incapacitated Person’s Legal Protection Act”.

The Real S.529 is a bill introduced by Grassley on 3-3-05 to establish a US anti-doping agency. No competent staffer would create a talking points memo with the wrong S. number on it.

As Power Line says, “Maybe there is an explanation. But the burden now is clearly on ABC and the Washington Post to explain why they are not the victims of a hoax.” Given that the reporter who broke this story claims to have received it from an unimpeachable source that he is not at liberty to reveal, “victims” may be too generous a term.

Update II (3/23/05): More from Power Line: Most of the purported memo’s text was copied from a post at the Traditional Values Coalition Web site. The two points quoted above were added. This fish smells worse and worse.

Update III (3/23/05): A Power Line reader offers this argument: “The reason the authenticity of the Schiavo memo is not in dispute, is because those in a position to know haven’t disputed it.” That is exactly the same as one of CBS’s arguments for airing the forged Killian memos: The White House hadn’t declared them fake, so they must be real.

The fallacy is that, if the memo is forged, Senate Republican leaders are not “in a position to know” where it originated and can’t do anything more than say, “Not me” (as Senator Santorum, for one, already has). There isn’t much use to such denials, which the Left won’t believe in any case.

So far as I am concerned, the erroneous bill number and the absence of any indication of origin are clear signs that no one associated with the GOP leadership wrote this document. Maybe the author was a particularly tone-deaf right-wing free lancer, but the theory that it was deliberately crafted to blacken Terry Schiavo’s advocates is more plausible.

Update (4/7/05): It turns out that a Republican did write the “talking points”, though not one who could be accurately described as a “party leader”. For my latest thoughts, vide The Schiavo “Talking Points”: Only Sort of Fake.

Comments

[Jason]

Oopsie! Can't *wait* for the prominent retraction on your blog.

Hugs and kisses,
Jason

[Chris Lloyd]

Protest needed in PA!!! I have not followed the dispute over Terry Sciavo very closely in the past, but after a conversation with a friend yesterday, I felt moved to find out more. I am shocked that this is happening in America! If this was a case of a dog being starved, there would be no doubt that it was abuse and inhumane. How can so many people feel less compassion for a human being?? I guess that many people do not know or understand all of the issues and are basing their opinion on mis-information. I find myself compelled to do SOMETHING for this woman, and have been searching the internet for information on any protests taking place in Pennsylvania? I have found nothing...does anyone else feel the way I do? Perhaps if enough people in other states protest at their state capitol it will influence Governor Bush to step in and stop the insanity! I am willing to spend Easter Sunday at the state capitol or anywhere else that my voice can be heard.

[Rod Stanton]

The MSM continues to smear America with disinformation broadcast as "news". Their bigotry is almost beyond belief.