Biased witness

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Thu Jul 23 13:04:05 PDT 1998


It MIGHT be true, but it would be foolish to rely on that witness only if you really wanted to know the truth. Why rely on this person's word alone ? Chuck Grimes frames it as "he believes this guy". So, now we proceed to draw major political conclusions from a source that we know has reason to bias the reportage.


>>> <Nurev at Kreative.net> 07/22 7:49 AM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>
> >>> Chuck Grimes writes
>
> ---------------------
> I work with a guy who was in ARVIN (the old South Vietnam army) and
> who stayed after the fall of Saigon, through the rest of the seventies
> and immigrated here with the boat people in the early eighties. He has
> returned every few years since to visit his mother and brother, most
> recently as last May. He is strongly anti-communist both from his
> personal experiences and as influenced by the strong anti-communist
> Vietnamese community here in the Bay Area. His limited political
> understandings mostly center on how Asians are treaded in the US. He
> is lower middle/working class and sees the world mostly through the
> moral lens of right and wrong.
>
> Even with that said, I believe him when he characterizes the communist
> regime in Vietnam as mostly criminal,
> _______________
>
> Why do you believe him ? Common sense would tell you
> he MIGHT be biased. If he was a witness in court,
> the obvious question would be "well isn't he rather
> biased on the issue he is testifying on ? Doesn't he
> have a motive to portray those people in a bad
> light ?
>
> Charles Brown

The real world isn't court, and " biased " doesn't mean it's not true.

Joshua2



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