The motive game

[erudito]

One of the more noxious "contributions" to reducing public debate to a battle of "my motives are more pure than your motives" is the wiki SourcewatchIt is based on the premise that people's motives really matter (apparently trumping any concern for intellectual worthiness in content) and are explained by the sources of their funding. As long as

Comments

[taavi]

Looks like I touched a nerve

Content

[erudito]

Arguing that tobacco smoking is not harmful against copious scientific evidence is reprehensible behaviour whether or not one is funded by a tobacco company.

Having identified rephrensible behaviour, it is reasonable to look back and explain why. That is why motive is such a big issue in detecting crime. But there has to be a crime first.

Sourcewatch works the other way around. It infers behaviour from funding. Except it doesn't when that funding is union (the Evatt Foundation) or a "virtuous" progressive think tank (the Australia Institute). If the corporate funding of the Australia Institute was spelled out, that would vitiate the underlying premise, because corporate funding would clearly have no implicit moral implication.

And don't worry, as seen in the addenda I added, plenty of folk what to "purge" the media of Bolt et al too.

Re: Content

[taavi]

If there was ever any case of the CIS, IPA, etcetera, making a recommendation that wasn't in the short-term financial interest of those who pay them, I'd be more willing to believe their so called "independence". By contrast, the Evatt foundation was gutted because it regularly pissed the Labour party off.

For example, the Sydney Institute and the IPA both take money from Phillip Morris (and the BAT in the case of the latter) and are on record as defending "smokers rights" and in the case of the latter, denying that passive smoking is a health hazard (see here). Do you consider that reprehensible behaviour?

And you haven't answered the second or third questions.

Re: Content

[erudito]

The health dangers of passive smoking have been way oversold. Smoking can get invasive and some people are particularly sensitive to it, so it is not as simple as Nahan suggests, but his point about the science is broadly correct.

And as any support for market-based policies can be argued to be in the short-term financial interest of those who pay them that would appear to be a "test" pro-market think tanks are inherently going to fail.

As for (2) I prefer to judge cases on their merits rather than go down the "good people" route. (3) Generally yes, with some caveats about persecution.

One of the seminal experiences for me in all this was trying to organise a conference on the ABC and having folk be extremely nervous about saying anything in public, one presenter who was shaking with fear (and not from public speaking) and another who told me later she had been subject to lots of damaging crap afterwards. The Progressivist Ascendancy punishes whenever it can.

[taavi]

straw-manning is not confined to the right. Besides, I didn't say Bolt called them that :) You (and he) regularly complain about an alleged self-appointed moral elite who dominate the ABC, the fairfax press, etc (in which you copy Fox News' "liberal media" conspiracy stuff). I am simply summarising your position as complaining about a "media elite". I apologise if this is a mischaracterisation, but think you are splitting hairs.

No

[erudito]

A prominent columnist complaining about a "media elite" is self-evidently hypocritical.

Complaining about folk who have pretensions to being a moral elite is quite a different thing, hence the term moral vanity.

And it is not a "conspiracy", it is much more like a "club" where anyone can enter provided they genuflect to the correct attitudes, hence the term Club Virtue.