Because the New York Times’ decision to call a lie a lie has inevitably spurred complaints of editorializing and durn liberal bias, out trots public editor Liz Spayd to explain why—even though she is an apologist for false balance—it is sometimes acceptable to say Donald Trump lied. Political editor Carolyn Ryan laid out the qualifications for calling something a lie:
■ It is not used for matters of opinion, but only when the facts are demonstrably clear.
■ Intentionality is important — in the case of Trump and birtherism, he repeated the lie for years, in the face of overwhelming facts that disproved it, suggesting this was a deliberate attempt by Trump to deceive.
■ It is not used to police more frivolous disputes among political candidates or political factions.
So you get to lie all you want as long as it is, in the Times’ estimation, on a frivolous political issue? That’s comforting.
While the other two factors in the “lie” determination are basically out of the dictionary definition of the word, Trump has carved out a large gray area in the intentionality department and taken up such permanent residence there that he’s having it covered in gold spray paint. Sometimes he lies very obviously, knowing what he’s doing—birtherism being a prime example. But Trump lies so habitually and unthinkingly that many of the flatly untrue things he says might not meet the intentionality requirement in the sense that he hasn’t given any thought to whether they were true.
Does the Times think it’s a lie if with 10 seconds of research or even casual thought Trump could find out it wasn’t true—but since he didn’t put 10 seconds of thought into it, he isn’t 100 percent sure he’s saying something untrue? Not caring what the truth is or if you are saying something untrue becomes a defense against charges of lying here.
Spayd has another hedge to put on use of the word “lie” to describe factually inaccurate things Donald Trump knowingly says:
I think The Times should use this term rarely. Its power in political warfare has so freighted the word that its mere appearance on news pages, however factually accurate, feels partisan. It feels, as Ryan said, as if you’re playing the referee in frivolous political disputes.
Oh, well. By all means let’s let a “feeling” that it would be partisan keep us from using the dictionary definition of “lie.”
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