Transparency and forgiveness
I find the story of Eason Jordan’s resignation from CNN disturbing, but not for the reasons Scott Rosenberg suggests:
I’m not shedding tears for the CNN executive. I’m always amazed at the stupid things CEOs, politicians, news honchos and other people who hold public responsibility will say in public (and do in private), thinking that the inherent power of their position grants them carte blanche and wraps them in Teflon. If they need to be beaten up over and over again until they really, really understand that — as the saying goes in blog-land — “off the record is dead,” fine.
It’s certainly true that remarks that formerly would have been private now are made not just public but super-public. But I don’t think we can survive the new transparency if we keep up the same old standards of criticism. I’ve said plenty of stupid things in my life. (Heck, I may be saying one right now.) Most have been in private. Some have been in public. And some things I said in public would look downright dastardly if viewed as isolated sentences. If we’re going to make more of the private public, we also have to give the benefit of the doubt, forgive, and laugh off the occasional offensive and stupid remarks. Otherwise, no one will survive the glare of the public.
Yes, I think that’s true of Jordan, Larry Summers and even Dick “Go f_ck yourself” Cheney. Transparency requires forgiveness. [Technorati tags: transparency jordan media]
If you want to see what the opposite of forgiveness looks like, take a gander at the organized piling-on in reaction to Mitch’s recent bloggery.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Amen
Dave makes an outstanding point: transparency demands ruleset changes, specifically, forgiveness.
Amen!
Joho the Blog: Transparency and forgiveness: It’s certainly true that remarks that formerly would have been private now are made not just public but super-public. But I don’t think we can survive the new transparency if we keep up…
I’m afraid we’re not getting anywhere closer to that world of forgiveness just yet– remember, forgiveness is contigent on apology in our culture. I do hope we (as a society) get to understanding each other first. I was maligned myself leading up to the WebCred conference, and try as I might I could not get him to apologize. The most important value to me through these ordeals is to try and understand the viewpoints of eachother as interactors in a civil society.
David, I know you’re a man of values. What I was hoping to do better here was to understand the “inductive identification” of the conservative and military mindsets who deeply incensed by Jordan’s comments. They saw that a slur against some soldiers was a slur against all. This is a bit unusual to me. See more at Shoot The Press.
I called our Congressmen to get his update today. I think he’s happy to have it all behind him. Only Dan Kennedy of the Phoenix (as far as I could tell) called attention to the fact that Barney Frank is an anti-war liberal, and still stood up pretty strongly for our fighting men and women.
David, unfortunately, sadly, you have an error right here:
“Otherwise, no one will survive the glare of the public.”
This isn’t quite correct. It’s more like “No one will survive who is not supported by enormous ranting propaganda machines.”
Not that I like that. But it is the logical implication. It isn’t going to be happy little blogging bears all playing tea-party patty-cake in conversations. Rather, it’s huge ear-splitting screamers drowing out all else.
Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss?
Leaving me to wonder: do you still believe that the blogs naturally foster a culture of forgiveness? Or perhaps it is only particular to a common singer archetype of blogging?
[Seth, funny running into you hear. Didn’t see you come this way on the C-line this evening…]
Trust and Consistency
To the extent that our world may be shifting from modern to postmodern, we should expect changes to the prevailing notions of respectability and trust. See for example this discussion on Transparency and Forgiveness, which asks what standards of critic…
Jon, yes I do. Fostering != causing. And, of course, the Net famously also fosters flaming.
So do we end up merely saying “People are sometimes kind to each other, and sometimes mean to each other?”. It’s certainly true, but hardly profound.
Or is it “People should be kind to one another”? But what if there are sustantial advantages (economic, political) to being mean?
Here’s a thought to ponder: Do guns foster a polite society? :-)
We agree that the net, and the blogs in particular, are not value-neutral. So what is behind the assumption that they values they promote are good?
Most of our exercise of social values is based on trust, so it’s understandable when you converse among people you know and trust, you exercise good values. Perhaps that underlies your assumption here?
Forgiveness is not about apoligizing but changing interpersonal behavioral relationships. When the perpetrator can acknowledge that their committment will be not to offend, then the victim is free to choose to accept that committment and move on. The onus, as it should be, is upon the perpetrator to make amends without humiliation acknowledging the right of the victim to not subjucate oneself to a stage of maschiosism to satisfy the sadistic needs of the perpetrator..