Monsters
Further thoughts on Glenn A. Wright’s farewell to Vermont, previously scheduled for today, will be postponed until Monday in order to provide a timely explication of the latest transgressions of Vermont’s established news organizations.
These transgressors are the big guys, the Burlington Free Press and WCAX-TV (Channel 3), meaning they have more power to misinform. That’s why it’s more important to call them to account.
Alas, the villain (or at least one of them) in the Free Press case is Sam Hemingway, who is generally a good reporter. In fact, the News Guy is one of many Vermonters who think the Freep goofed when it took Hemingway’s column away some years ago. Hemingway was no Jimmy Breslin or Mike Royko (or, for that matter, the other Hemingway); no one turned to him just to see how a master handled 800 words of English prose. But he was intelligent, prudent, and hard-working. His column gave the paper some personality, which it needed then and needs even more now.
But Hemingway was neither intelligent nor prudent in Wednesday morning’s story about the latest sighting of what might be “Champ,” the supposed lake monster of Lake Champlain, a local version of the celebrated Loch Ness Monster (that’s the Loch above, sans monster).
Oh, he seems to have gotten the facts right enough. This guy with a camera-equipped cell phone saw something weird in the lake near Burlington’s Oakledge Park, filmed it for about two minutes as it struggled in the water, and put the film on YouTube. To his credit, Eric Olsen, the fellow who took the cell phone video, did not rush to the conclusion that he had filmed a lake monster. Perhaps he did rush to a reporter, but that’s OK.
We may also proceed under the assumption that Hemingway quoted Olsen correctly, and accurately described the video, a still picture of which illustrated the story, which the Free Press editors, to their discredit, put on Page One.
But then came the….ahh, verification process, which Hemingway began by citing one Loren Coleman, identified as “a cryptozoologist based in Portland, Maine,” who concluded that the video “needs to be looked at very seriously.”
Then, in what can only be called a excess of pseudo-responsibility, Hemingway finds yet another cryptozoologist, Scott Mardis of Winooski, who pronounced the video “very impressive.”
Here the careful reader will note that Hemingway did not describe his first cryptozoologist as, for instance, “holder of the Cadwalleder Chair in Cryptozoology at MIT,” nor the second as, “chair of the Cryptozoology Department at the University of Chicago.”
That’s because there is no such chair and no such department. Not at MIT or Chicago or Harvard or the University of Vermont or any accredited institution of higher education.
That’s because crytpozoology is not a science, at least, not as recognized by the scientific world.
Which is hardly proof that the cryptozoologists (‘crypto’ means ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’ in Greek) are wrong, or that there is no “Champ.” It does mean that a story that quotes them should let its readers know that these folks do not strictly follow the scientific method, and are often considered outright frauds by those who do.
In The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, (ABC-CLIO 2002) , Michael Shermer & Pat Linse say Cryptozoology “ranges from pseudoscientific to useful and interesting, depending on how it is practiced,” but that it is “not strictly a science…papers on the topic are rarely published in scientific journals, no formal education on the subject is available, and no scientists are employed to study (it).”
Simply noting, as Hemingway did, that “cryptozoology is the study of purportedly nonexistent or mythical creatures,” is not sufficient.
Here’s what else should be in every story about a “Champ” sighting: Considering that the first reported sighting dates back to 1883, either this is a very long-lived creature or there are at least two of them. You see, the way it works (you may want to send the children out of the room for a moment), it would take at least one guy Champ and one girl Champ to produce champettes to continue the species.
And since stuff happens – death, you know, or disability – there would really have to be several of them. And if there were, their existence would not be in doubt.
Only toward the end of the story did Hemingway tell us that the one actual scientist he talked to, UVM biology professor Ellen Marsden, said the object in the lake was possibly a drowning moose.
Less fun but more likely.
Now let us turn to Channel 3 on Wednesday evening, which led its six o’clock news by telling us that, “the state’s fiscal crisis is only beginning.”
Wow! We have a fiscal crisis. What fun!
Oh, Phooey. Actually, we don’t have a fiscal crisis, except under the singular definition employed by WCAX. A state has a fiscal crisis if it can’t raise enough money to pay for the functions it has determined to undertake. Thanks to the passage of a state budget Tuesday, Vermont has no such crisis.
It does face a potential shortfall next year. But by definition, a problem that might arise sometime hence is not a crisis. Crises are immediate. They occur at “a decisive point or situation,” according to the dictionary. That point is not yet here. If it gets here, we can start talking crisis.
One might argue (though it would be a weak argument) that the state’s Unemployment Insurance Fund is close to a potential crisis. Whether or not anything potential can really be critical, the Fund really is in theoretical danger, at least, of going broke in the not too distant future. But that hardly amounts to a fiscal crisis for the state.
In reporting about the Legislature’s effort to deal with the Unemployment Insurance problem, correspondent Andy Potter, standing outside the House chamber, told us that the Legislature would not cut unemployment benefits, adding, “lots of politics behind that.”
No! Did he mean that citizens were urging lawmakers not to take steps that would cost said citizens money? What do these people think this is? A democracy or something?
And did Potter and his associates at Channel 3 think the folks on the other side of this dispute – the business leaders who do want benefits cut so their assessments don’t go up as much – are not practicing politics, but are home sipping tea trusting legislators to do the right thing?
(And here’s a bizarre development: That crack about “lots of politics” seems to have been expunged from the script on Channel 3’s web site. Should the rest of us be pleased that someone at the station was embarrassed by the remark? Or disturbed that WCAX is retroactively cleaning up its act?).
But Channel 3 was not done. Its next item had to do with taxes. The budget bill passed Tuesday over Gov. Jim Douglas’s veto cuts income tax rates while selectively raising some sales taxes and closing a couple of loopholes. The net result of the tax changes in the budget bill will probably be slightly lower taxes for most people, slightly higher taxes for those who earn more than $200,000 a year (or those who smoke and drink a lot).
WCAX, though, was determined to inform its viewers that even if they don’t earn big bucks, they’ll be paying a bit more in taxes because of the gasoline tax hike that went into effect this week. They showed tape of economist Art Woolf saying, “well the average taxpayers, they’re going to pay more. And in part that’s due to the gasoline tax hike which hits them all.”
This manages to be accurate and misleading at the same time (with the station, not Woolf, being responsible for the misleading part). It’s misleading because in context, following the report about the partisan split over the budget, Channel 3 seemed to be saying that the gas tax increases were put into effect by that same budget bill, forced into law by those irresponsible Democrats over the objections of Douglas and his fiscally prudent fellow-Republicans.
That isn’t what happened. The gas tax increase was part of a separate bill with much more bipartisan support. One of its architects, in fact, was Republican Richard Westman of Cambridge, the Chairman of the House Transportation Committee. Douglas, who did resist the tax hikes for a while but accepted them weeks ago, signed the measure last week.
And by the way, all the money raised from that tax is to be spent on highway and other transportation improvements, which an honest report would have noted. WCAX’s analysis of state finance is downright cryptozoological.
Tags: Champ, the Free Press, WCAX
June 5th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Submitted June 5, 2009:
Let’s begin with some reality testing.
You write: “To his credit, Eric Olsen, the fellow who took the cell phone video, did not rush to the conclusion that he had filmed a lake monster. Perhaps he did rush to a reporter, but that’s OK.”
Olsen did not contact the reporter. Instead, the reporter did what some news people still do. He developed a good story from some old fashioned shoe leather journalism.
The reality here is that Sam Hemingway, being a good reporter, was alerted to the YouTube posting of the video, and then investigative detectives at his end discovered the contact info on Olsen and me. (I had posted the first examination of the Olsen video in my blog writings of June 1st and 2nd, at Cryptomundo.)
You are correct to note that Hemingway did not go into any extended biographical background about me, but then his story was on the video, not me or not even about cryptozoology. Had he detailed my resume, of course, he would have had to talk about my undergrad degree in anthropology (minor in zoology), my Masters in Social Work, and my doctoral work in social anthropology and sociology. He would have had to talk about all my books, my twenty years of teaching at the university level in New England, my senior research position at the Muskie School for over a dozen year, and my consultant role with the State of Maine for nearly a decade. I have been involved in cryptozoology, professionally for decades, and am a consultant to History and Animal Planet television series on cryptozoology. I also am the director of the International Cryptozoology Museum which has been featured on several documentaries. I think that would have been boring journalism, since the focus was Eric Olsen and his footage.
Early in your blog entry here, you say that “Hemingway was neither intelligent nor prudent.” Of course, that is your opinion but it does not mesh with the evidence you present. For example, you launch into an ad hominem argument when you write: “A story that quotes them [cryptozoologists] should let its readers know that these folks do not strictly follow the scientific method, and are often considered outright frauds by those who do.”
Of course, mainstream professional cryptozoologists, indeed, do follow the scientific method, and to then create a strawman schism by saying that cryptozoologists are “considered outright frauds” by “scientists” is incorrect and dismissive.
It then is very telling that you employ the debunker’s bible, The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience to define cryptozoology. What would you really expect to learn from those folks? Should you not follow your own advice, and use a neutral source to obtain a definition of cryptozoology, or balance your definition with the meaning from cryptozoologists? In essence, you have undertaken to learn about cryptozoology as if someone in the media has decided to educate themselves about the Holocaust by referencing the insights in Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood.
BTW, your remark that “Considering that the first reported sighting dates back to 1883, either this is a very long-lived creature or there are at least two of them,” is embarrassingly simplistic. Cryptozoologists and skeptics agree that we are debating about proposed breeding populations of “Lake Monsters,” and it is illogical to think in terms of one Champ, one Nessie, one Bigfoot, and one Abominable Snowman.
I submit that Sam Hemingway did a good job of balancing his article with various opinions, while basically reporting the story of an intriguing new video showing an unknown animate object in Lake Champlain.
I only wish you would have been as fair in your treatment of him and me, as you seem to have been of the “armchair debunkers.”