The strange case of David Aaronovitch’s priorities
In the Times today columnist David Aaronovitch goes to work on the popular idea that we as citizens are caught on CCTV camera 300 times a day. He’s tenacious, dogged and vociferous in his quest to debunk the misconception.
He should be congratulated on his little scoop. It’s worthy of a blogger, in fact. If only, however, he’d shown the same tenacity, doggedness, and vociferousness in chasing down the facts in 2003 when spurious statistics and misconceptions were left to fester in the public imagination without correction and ended up taking us to war.
If I remember rightly, Aaronovitch was quite happy then to take the peddlers of those spurious statistics and misconceptions at their word. Indeed, he crowed those false assertions from his column in a national newspaper. Afterwards, feeling a little sheepish, he said on the subject of Iraq’s WMDs:
If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again.
Given his propensity to shovel down and regurgitate any amount of government say-so since he said that, we can only assume his promise of future disbelief was also a misconception of some kind. Would anyone care to chase it down with Aaronovitchesque tenacity?
I note the irony that Aaronovitch once won the Orwell Prize for journalism. Can anyone pinpoint the precise moment he went from speak to power to speaking for it?
Posted on March 3rd, 2009 at 12:41pm under Culture, media and sport
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• 5 Comments |
If nothing is found then I will etc….
show him this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HSKvaFC39Q
oh and this.
what do you mean you never knew about building 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB9xI5LK-Mk
Guido has made a mockery of journalist who change their turn every once in a while just to sound a little more dramatic / pompous. No doubt David deserves the same treatment.
Compare me to Guido again and you’re banned.
Strange – having read the article, he seems hung up on the accuracy of the claim that we are observed 300 times per day by CCTV cameras. Specifically it’s the magic number of 300 that gets his goat; as though being observed, say, 150 or even 200 times a day proves that we are not a society of constantly-surveyed suspects.
It’s a typical debating society ploy: find the questionable area of a claim (in this case the 300 seperate observations) and expand that question into somehow debunking the whole notion. It was a spurious tactic back in sixth form and it gains no credibility from being used in The Times.
If only he knew how to use Google…