In the court of law, evidence is the primary tool used to persuade a jury. During a trial, the jury will encounter many types of evidence and the measure of their effectiveness in determining the truth will be directly related to their ability to recognize and evaluate this evidence. The same holds true for determining truth in the court of reason (or if you prefer, the court of public opinion). As consumers in American society we are deluged with an abundance of evidence presented to persuade us. Evidence is presented to us in many ways: on the television, in print, on the internet, and even by our own government. The ability to recognize and categorize evidence and to determine that evidences ability and willingness to tell the truth are ways we as individuals can tell fact from fiction in everyday life.

There are many different species of evidence in the court of reason. Evidence can be defined as "any material that serves as a basis of inferring a conclusion" or "the raw material of argumentation or similarly, the supporting material upon which an argument is based." The three general types of evidence used in the court of reason are authoritative testimony, statistics, and examples. I'm only going to talk about authoritative testimony (having expert or inside knowledge in a certain field) right now as it is the most important and forms the basis for most of what we know. Let me give you an example of what authoritative testimony means. Say you went to visit to the doctor's office. Once diagnosed, you usually chooses to agree with the diagnosis and accept the doctor's advice because the doctor is an expert in his field and is therefore a qualified authority. Problem is that authoritative testimony is a form of indirect evidence because it requires you to draw a conclusion while making an inference and if you are concerned with absolute certainty, circumstantial [or indirect] evidence isn't enough. So in the doctor example, you might be forced to obtain a second opinion to help you reinforce the previous conclusion.

An additional problem for authoritative testimony is that it is based on someone else's opinion of what the facts entail. (Facts can be defined as "bits of verifiable information.") The problem is that facts are not constant because they change as new information becomes available to the experts. (You know, those authorities?) Here is another example. In the 1950's, the fact was that for a balanced and nutritious breakfast, one was to eat bacon and eggs with a tall glass of milk and orange juice. Later , the fact was promulgated that bacon and eggs can clog the arteries and damage the heart. Recently, the fact about eggs changed again saying that they are not as detrimental to health as was thought. It is therefore left up to the consumer of evidence to be ever vigilant in their assessment of a given source's knowledge and credibility. Let me say that again. You have to know who the source is to be able to appropriately weigh a source's bias, experience, motives, and knowledge to determine their credibility.

In a lifetime, an individual will make millions of decisions. The vast majority of these decisions will be based on personal interpretation of evidence. But some of these decisions, especially the larger ones, will be influenced by the evidence presented by interested parties. These interested parties may be persons, groups of people, or even institutions and businesses. Whomever or whatever the interested parties may be, they will be presenting information and evidence that they want to have accepted as the truth. The task of the person receiving this information and evidence is to evaluate its truthfulness. To do so, the person must first establish the ability and the willingness of the source to tell the truth.

In evaluating the two concepts of ability to tell the truth, and the willingness to tell the truth, you must first understand that their is a distinct difference between the two. Though the two concepts intertwine, they are not mutually exclusive. Even though a source may have the ability to ascertain the truth, or facts about a subject, it may not be willing to reproduce these facts. This is especially true if the truth is contrary to what the source is advocating (like, say, the liberal media). Of course the opposite is also true, a source may be willing to tell the truth, but unable to find out the truth. The ability of a certain source to tell the truth is greatly dependent on the source itself. The concept can be defined as the ability of a source to ascertain facts that lead to a truth about the subject being investigated. Thus, the credibility of the source itself is paramount. Is the source knowledgeable enough on the subject to know the truth? A person would not employ an electrician to tell him what was wrong with his plumbing because regardless of how willing the electrician is to tell the truth, his ability to do so is severely limited. The concept of willingness to tell the truth is also very dependent on the source itself. But the willingness of a source to tell the truth also depends on the subject. What risks does the source have in telling the truth? Does the truth help support what the source is advocating? Does the truth hurt the source? These are questions you must ask when attempting to evaluate a source's willingness to tell the truth. The source and its interaction with the subject matter at hand is the gauge in which too determine willingness to tell the truth.

Now let's take a look at two sources of information that are readily accepted as credible by the majority of the American public. One will be the weekly newsmagazines (specifically Newsweek) and the other will be the government. To determine the ability of both the Newsweek and the government to tell the truth, you must first evaluate their capabilities to find the facts. As sources of factual evidence or material, the newsmagazines and the government should be questioned thoroughly. Even though these two institutions are often viewed by the public as credible, this is not always the case.

The weekly newsmagazines rely on their image of a factual, in-depth news source. They would like the reader to believe they are going deeper into stories than the average daily newspaper. They attempt to lead the reader to believe they can present better and more in-depth coverage since they are not under the same time constraints as a daily paper. Yet this is the very reason newsmagazines should be questioned as a credible source. By the time the newsmagazines gather their information, write their story, and get it printed, it has become old news. The story has probably been covered all week in the daily newspapers, especially if it was one of national scope such as the question "did Bush know?"

Because of this, newsmagazines tend to featurize their news stories. In doing so, they tend to stray from straight, factual, truthful news writing into the realm of editorializing and speculation. The danger in this is that the newsmagazines present themselves as credible sources on the news of the world. The newsmagazines gather loads of minuscule facts about the subject and combine them with the hard news facts of the story. This leads to the appearance that the source is extremely knowledgeable on the subject matter. Among all of these trivial facts on the subject, the truth is often lost.

The ability of the United States Government to tell the truth is much less limited than that of the newsmagazines. The government has at its disposal thousands of individuals whose only jobs are to gather information and facts about certain subjects. Whether it is spies for the CIA working in the field or one of many committees formed to investigate something, the government has a constant flow of information on many subjects. As a source, the government's ability to tell the truth is impressive but this alone does not make them a credible source as they have a lot to lose if the unfiltered truth is known.

In determining the willingness of either of these two sources to tell the truth, the subject matter in which the evidence is being presented is important. In the case of newsmagazines, subject matter is relevant due to the political slant of these magazines. In some stories politics do not enter as factors, but in a majority, they are factors. The largest of the newsmagazines, Time and Newsweek, openly admits that their magazine is somewhat slanted. (Care to guess which way?) Though they may appear to present facts about a story, the reader must be on the look out for bias and loaded language. For example, how about this gem from the article I mentioned, "The fact that the nation�s popular war president might have been warned a little over a month before September 11�and that the supposedly straight-talking Bushies hadn�t told anyone about it�opened up a serious credibility gap for the first time in the war on terror." Facts that are basically truthful can be slanted to make them lead the reader to believe something that is not true. The newsmagazines also have a bad tendency to simply skim over facts that are damaging to their friends, while they will dig deeply into facts that are damaging to their enemies. This combines to make the newsmagazines less than trustworthy.

When the question is whether the government is willing to tell the truth, one must look at which administration is in power and what their policy line is on the subject at hand. Many believe that the intelligence gathering arms of the government are immune to the red tape and bureaucratic mess that other government agencies must wade through. But, this is not true, the intelligence gathering agencies are bureaucracies just like the other agencies. There is the usual political infighting, and power plays that plague other agencies' willingness to tell the truth. The idea that the information is objectively selected and weeded out as it goes up the line of the hierarchy of that agency does not address the factor of human subjectiveness. The first instinct of most humans is to be subjective because that first instinct is of survival, and if that includes dropping a piece of information that might make the present administration's policy look bad, then so be it. The instinct to watch one's own back is strong within the government. It is in this way that vital information is not passed up or down the line, and therefore usually not passed on to the public. The government may have the ability to tell the truth, but its willingness is severely hampered by politics and personal interests.

As citizens and consumers, we must be ever vigilant in our interpretation of evidence presented as authoritative testimony. When determining a piece of evidence or data's truthfulness, we MUST consider the ability and willingness inherent in the source to tell the truth. If this source is hidden to the public (but not the editors) by such titling as "unnamed" or "anonymous" we must also evaluate the presented evidence through the further filters of enhanced skepticism and wariness. Newsweek's reliance on this method of hiding sources is inhibiting the American people's ability to weigh the value of the presented authoritative testimony. Once again, they show there liberal bias by downplaying the Clinton administration's culpability while accusing the Bush administration of failure to take action, in one instance, "6 day after taking office" while in another instance for failing to overturn communication problems between to agencies (CIA and FBI) that have been ongoing for decades. Unrealistic and deceptive? You bet! I beg you, as we go forward into this new cycle of the "Washington scandal"feeding frenzy to ensure that as you read you do so with a critical eye.

Anyway, for them what care...