Here's an idea.
The podcast, "Serial," shows how neither the law nor journalism
are perfectly objective.
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This episode of "Idea Channel" is about "Serial."
Before we get into the thick of it,
I want to state what is maybe obvious,
but I think is worth emphasizing.
"Serial" is based on true events.
An actual woman was actually murdered.
It's important, I think, out of respect
for Hae, her family, her friends and anyone
who has lost a family member and had
to deal with legal proceedings, or worse,
public scrutiny, that we-- meaning us and you,
handle commentary surrounding "Serial" with respect.
Not kid gloves, necessarily, but respect.
So that is what we are going to try to do.
OK.
So now, "Serial" is a podcast.
It's produced by WBEZ and "This American Life,"
and it's hosted by journalist, Sarah Koening.
In its first season, Sarah tells the history of
and story of her interactions with a group
of people surrounding a murder in Baltimore in the late '90s.
That of Hae Min Lee by Adnan Syed.
The "allegedly" is missing because Adnan was convicted.
He's currently serving life in prison.
Adnan not maintains his innocence.
Via telephone from prison, he relates his version
of the story and responds to Koening's every bit
of unfolding evidence which seems, in turns, to acquit
or condemn him.
This is the central tension of "Serial."
Did Adnan do it?
Did he kill Hae?
Koening invites this speculation in many ways.
And much of "Serial's" considerable audience-- I mean,
it was the number one podcast on iTunes for several weeks.
It has its own incredibly active subreddit and even podcasts
about the podcast.
This audience excitedly engages in that invited speculation.
And for me, this collective flailing
bumps into two other tensions, of which "Serial" is maybe
a symptom, or maybe of which "Serial"
takes knowing advantage.
Specifically, the tension that arises from the expectation
that both the law and journalism be, or attempt to be,
objective.
I'm not sure either is.
And to a significant degree, I'm not
sure either law or journalism can be objective.
And as I'm finishing this sentence,
I can sense the comment fingers warming up.
So before we get too much farther,
let's talk about objectivity.
In one sense, objectivity is a framework
for the existence of things.
We might ask, what exists objectively?
Meaning, absent any one or thing who might perceive it.
For example, if tomorrow, we all start
looking at or talking and thinking about the mountains,
are they still there?
It's a pretty good bet, most of us
have no concrete reason to believe
that mountains are the result of collective, subjective
perception.
In another sense, objectivity is knowledge or action,
free from interference of the knower's or actor's own biases.
If one is being objective, then they're
not letting their own opinions or beliefs
get in the way of their perception
or delivering of the truth.
The facts.
So how does this work for two of the five estates?
Well, in jurisprudence, the philosophy of law,
there is a question of whether the law is upholding
a moral code which is natural Traditionally,
theories of natural law hinge on the idea
that insofar as law upholds morality, that morality
exists as part of nature.
And through reason we, as humans, uncover it.
That it objectively exists.
And so that is why the law has merit.
"Serial" is an NPR show, but it doesn't go that deep.
What more readily applies here, to the law and journalism,
is the largely-held belief that in the carriage of both,
practitioners must be uninvolved,
unbiased, pragmatic, open-minded.
In a word, objective.
Which is, I'll say in another word, I think, impossible.
However, I don't say that it necessarily
follows that either is broken.
At least, not on their own terms,
due to that impossibility.
OK, now let's get back to "Serial."
"Serial's" driving force is generated
when the familiar "overturning the wrongful conviction
of a charming character" narrative meets real and actual
conflicting accounts of experts and eyewitnesses,
both on the show and after-the-fact,
as to the quality, completeness or plausibility of evidence.
And it's all set within a system that we're
brought up, at least in the States,
to see as disinterested, especially in neat narratives.
Concerned to the utmost with justice.
Whatever is right is right, and the system
will deliver exactly that.
"Serial" shows us how that's not necessarily the case.
It doesn't show us that Adnan is definitely innocent.
And it doesn't condemn the justice system in any real way.
But it does illustrate a practice of law
that is, maybe necessarily, open to a little bit
more interpretation than is widely portrayed or considered,
when it comes to criminal law, at least.
Koening says, pretty much off the bat,
that she's not convinced of Adnan's guilt.
At the very least, not of his motive.
She portrays Adnan's defense attorney, Cristina Gutierrez,
as professional but having worked perplexing.
Jim Trainum told Koening that he had concerns
about Jay's interrogation, but that otherwise,
the case the detectives built was pretty good.
Better than most, he said.
While Deirdre Enright, from The Innocence Project,
had no shortage of concerns regarding
how Adnan's case was handled.
The eyewitness testimony was mostly
imperfect, let's call it, as eyewitness testimony
tends to be.
Stories from main players flip-flopped.
Highly-technical evidence was maybe misunderstood.
And did the whole trial, perhaps,
have vaguely racial undertones?
It's possible.
Yet, almost 15 years ago, in that room,
a jury took less than two hours to convict Adnan.
For some of us, the constantly-shifting quality
of the evidence might be curious or upsetting,
but ultimately is secondary to the fact that justice was done.
Hae's killer was caught.
For others, "Serial" presents a story that begins
"CSI," but ends was almost Kafkaesque.
At first, we might harbor some hope
that the likable subject will prevail despite the odds,
but quickly it becomes clear that the system
and the circumstances are infinitely larger and more
complicated than his situation ever was or will be.
Or as Mr. Cohen says in William Gaddis's "JR,"
there is no question of justice or right or wrong.
The law seeks order, Miss Bast.
Order."
Which is to say, the aim of the law
might not be the objective determination
of what is just, but rather the continued and orderly
functioning of the law.
And I wonder if that's not just another kind of objectivity,
only on different terms.
In my opinion, the merit of the law
is not built upon that natural morality we
talked about a few minutes ago.
At least not entirely.
For most of us, we follow the law
for a combination of reasons.
Because yeah, it upholds moral principles,
but also because we want to.
Because we are expected to.
Or because if we don't, we get punished.
Law is comprised of expectations and norms, as much if not more,
than it is upholding some set of objective tenets.
Our law works, as far as it does,
because it's widely understood and systematized,
and commented on, interpreted, revised
and shared between people, citizens, judges, lawyers et
cetera.
Does this endanger it's objectivity?
In one sense, sure.
Anything that invites interpretation
is necessarily subjective, to a degree.
But in another sense, since it's so widely shared,
it means that the law and its institutions
don't just disappear for a person, or even
a considerably large group of people
who might not know they exist or how they work.
In this way, and probably in at least a couple other ways,
the law is not unlike a mountain.
This, I think is what "Serial," and even, sometimes,
"The Good Wife," show us.
That though the law might have some objective moral basis,
it is still very much open to interpretation.
But not, at least not in most cases,
individual interpretation.
The law becomes, collectively, what
is invested into it by the people who practice it, comment
on it, and are affected by it.
And insofar as that investiture produces something
which is communally acceptable, which
aligns with widely-held norms, the systems that
enforce those norms and the subjects of those systems,
it might as well be an objective moral truth.
Knowledge, they say, is consensus.
And so too, it would seem, to a certain degree, is the law.
Whether that makes it right or just
is another question entirely.
And whether Sarah Koening, in reporting
on this particular case, worked with or against that consensus,
or let it all speak for itself, is also another, equally
complicated question to answer.
Is it possible for a journalist to be objective?
And even if it is, do they have some kind of a duty to be so?
The call for objectivity in journalism
is a longstanding, especially in the United States.
But recently, it seems like both its utility
and its presence are being called into question.
Does "Serial" play into that at all?
Next time on "Idea Channel," can journalism be objective?
Should it be?
But for now, what do you think about law and objectivity?
Can the law be objective?
Does "Serial" illustrate any of the principles
that we talked about?
Let us know in the comments.
Oh, my god.
Have you guys heard about the existence of "CSI Cyber"?
I cannot wait for all of the extremely accurate portrayals
of [INAUDIBLE].
Let's hear what you guys had to say about the interview
and abstraction.
First things first.
And perhaps most importantly, office hours
is a thing we have figured out.
On February 7th, from noon to 3:00,
I'm going to be hanging out at the IBM Building Pavilion
in Manhattan in New York.
It is a 590 Madison Avenue.
So we'll put all the details in the description.
There will probably be some other details
that we'll figure out the day of.
Like where, exactly, in the Pavilion.
So probably the best way to keep up to date with that stuff
is to follow "Idea Channel" on Twitter.
But, hey, office hours.
Come for 20 minutes.
Come for 5 minutes.
Come for the whole thing.
I'm just going to be there, hanging out.
I have a lot of Deadpool comics that I have to read.
So if no one shows up, hey.
I'm going to be happy because I have Deadpool to read.
But I hope that I get to see a bunch of you there.
And if you can't make it, don't worry about it.
We're going to do more of these in the future.
So don't stress out if you can't make it on February 7th.
You will have another chance, I promise.
And it won't take three years this time.
Again, promise.
Pro-Marshmallow on the subreddit and a bunch of other people
pointed out that my description of the history of money
was not entirely accurate.
And that really, where money started
was with debt and barter economies.
It moved into currency, and then back to debt.
And so to say that money started or went from currency
to abstracted credit and records and stuff is not
entirely accurate.
That is very true.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Watching, also on the subreddit points out
that there was some missing nuance, which I totally
agree with.
John McCain, the person who said that the North Korea
hack was an act of war, is not himself an authority.
He is just a person.
He is a person who works for the government.
But still, not an authority.
And also, the idea that abstraction, in this way,
or applying it to policy or to the actions of nations
isn't necessarily a new thing.
And I think that this is my biggest regret in putting
this episode together.
Which is that I think more historical context would have
been really helpful and would have made
this a lot more informative.
But yeah, thank you for this comment, Watching.
Sandy [INAUDIBLE] wonders whether or not
the portrayal of North Korea and Kim Jong Un in the interviews
really does more harm than good.
And yeah, I've said before that I
think that we should be able to make jokes about anything.
But that it takes a great amount of skill
in order to create humor but also remind people
that the thing they're laughing about is terrible.
And yeah, I question whether or not
the interview accomplished that thing.
Carl Smith says that he agrees abstraction
played a role in all of this.
But then also, if I'm understanding
what you're saying correctly, Carl,
kind of talks about how, as abstraction plays
a larger and larger role in important parts of life,
like foreign policy, it kind of requires
this almost meta-cognition.
That it's important to think about how
we think about things so that when you are reading
into or trying to interpret these abstracted concept
or entities, you're not just jumping right
into a confirmation bias and reading in it what you want to
or what you expect to.
And there were a lot of comments that were along that line.
The line of, well, the United States government,
the people who were reacting to these kinds of things,
they just saw in it what they wanted to see in it.
One of those comments comes from [INAUDIBLE],
who says that you can very easily read this situation
as one where both sides are just looking for an excuse
to "aggressive eyebrow" at one another.
But then goes on to talk about how you can also
see the internet as a kind of cure for itself, which
is an interesting concept that I've never heard
articulated this way before.
That it kind of levels the playing field
in both a scary but also empowering way.
And yeah, I think that is optimistic.
And I applaud that optimism.
Adeptus Forge.
Yes.
Samuel Doten.
Yes.
Wild Performer.
Yes.
This is a great company.
Links to this one and all of the others in the doobly-doo.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work these uncoverers of natural morality.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit links
in the doobly-doo.
And the Tweet of the Week comes from [INAUDIBLE]
who pointed me towards Cachemonet, which you just
have to go to.
Your day is not complete.
You didn't know that yet, but now you do.
Cachemonet.
Your life is going to get so much better.
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