Extra Credit Assignment #1

Extra Credit Assignment #1

measurement of media freedom

Idea: Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones for the survival of modern democracies. Empirical evidence and observation suggests that democracy grows in tandem with the ever-expanding freedom of the press.

Concept: freedom of the press

Organization:

In my opinion, freedom of the press has three basic indicators. A country with freedom of press should satisfy all the following requirements:

1. No existing de facto law, regulation or censorship agency should make media succumb to prior restraint

2. Basic laws or constitution protect free speech (political) and they are actually enforced

3. Media should not be largely (50% or higher) state-owned

First, prior restraint is a classic indicator of freedom of the press. The supreme court of the United States established this legal precedent in Near v. Minnesota, which recognized the freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent cases. I hold the opinion that this prior restraint test is very significant and effective in restricting government control over media. Under prior restraint rule, government does not have any excuses to establish censorship institutions such as propaganda department to pre-screen media content.

Second, rule of law is a basic safeguard which is designed for political liberty protection. And a confirmation in the constitution or basic laws that guarantees political free speech is the prerequisite of the freedom of the press, which can effectually limit government power abuses in subsequent punishment, if any.

Third, media ownership is also an crucial indicator of freedom of the press. Hayek's proposition in The Road to Serfdom is very incisive when explaining the side-effect of state monopoly, which also applies to state-owned media. State's direct involvement and bias in the media industry will crush the natural competitiveness in free market and eventually it will impinge on the freedom of the press.

I hold a minimalist view of freedom of the press which classify media freedom only in regard to its observable institutional procedure and ownership rather than some specific violation cases and outcomes. A minimalist view is more objective and reliable. I also hold a dichotomous view toward the freedom of the media. If a country does not satisfy all three indicators, then it will be classified as not free. If a country meets all three indicators, then it will be classified as free. There is no middle zone in my method. As a result, the measurement level in my standard is nominal measure.

About validity, reliability and replicability:

First of all, three indicators rely on each other and every one is indispensable. Without prior restraint this specific practise requirement, the definition of free speech will be too ambiguous. Without the guarantee of free speech, prior restraint restriction will be meaningless because state can implement subsequent punishment anyway. Without free media market, in state monopoly media do not have incentive to practise their freedom so that the preceding two requirements will be futile. So as far as I am concerned, my measurement is valid.

All my three indicators are based on subjective observation rather than objective speculation. Related fact and statistics can be found in pertinent laws, regulations and media reports, and my measurement is not specific-case-violation oriented. So my measurement is reliable and replicable.

Existing concepts and measures:

In Press Freedom Index issued by Reporters Without Borders, there are 6 indicators that reflect media freedom:

1. PHYSICAL VIOLENCE

2. NUMBER OF JOURNALISTS MURDERED, DETAINED, PHYSICALLY ATTACKED OR THREATENED, AND ROLE OF AUTHORITIES

3. INDIRECT THREATS, HARASSMENT AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION

4. CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP

5. CONTROL OF MEDIA, JUDICIAL, BUSINESS AND ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE,

6. INTERNET AND NEW MEDIA

The Press Freedom Index is more based on subjective individual perceptions, and there are often wide contrasts in a country's ranking from year to year. So the reliability of this Press Freedom Index is questionable. In my opinion, my measurement has succinctly included these indicators and more based on objective observation.

a very good paper

Autocratic Stability and Democratization 
The Impact of Political Economy and Governance

Q&A about Darwinism's falsifiability

me:


hello, I have a question not related to comparative politics but related to my curiosity 

Today's slides referred to the conception of 'falsifiability', and it says creationism is a non-falsifiable statement. I totally agree with that, but I thought that darwinism's version of genesis is also unobservable so that it is non-falsifiable. According to Popper's definition of science, do you think Darwinism is a scientific theory? 

Martign:

Hi George,

That is a very good question. I am no expert but I do know that there is quite some criticism out there saying that evolutionary theory can explain everything and therefore nothing. This criticism thus considers evolutionary theory non-falsifiable.

I have two responses to that line of criticism (and again, I am no expert). First of, I think evolutionary theory is based on a number of simple premises. It posits a clear causal mechanism of how species develop (i.e., survival of the fittest). This is different from creationism which does not provide such a causal mechanism above and beyond simply stating that species have developed the way they did because God made them that way. I also think that, because of its causal arguments, evolutionary theory makes testable predictions about development of species (e.g., if you put a number of giraffes in an environment where all food is located even higher than usual giraffes necks will tend to grow even further over generations). The problem, I think, is that evolutionary theory is often used in an ex post manner. Scientists observe a particular phenomenon and fit evolutionary theory to that phenomenon in order to 'predict' it. This is not a proper scientific approach. However, the problem here, I think, is not the theory per se but how it is being put to work.
Do you think this makes sense? What are your thoughts?

me:

thanks for your time : )

Yes, your explanation is very clear. I googled and found Popper's answer to my question:

In 1976, philosopher Karl Popper said that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme". However, Popper later recanted and offered a more nuanced view of its status:

However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as 'industrial melanism', we can observe natural selection happening under our very eyes, as it were. Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in physics or chemistry.

I am not an expert too, and I think that Popper's statement makes sense. In the giraffe case, I think the observable part is the changing shape of the giraffe, but the changing intelligence of the giraffe is unobservable. There is no evidence could show that the giraffe becomes more smarter in this process. So how to explain the intelligence leap of human being in comparison with apes?

Kant's forth antinomy makes sense to me as well. The theory of evolution may be somewhat problematic, as it seems that any other scientific theories would not lead to the conclusion that a necessary being does not exit.

Martign:

Hi George,

I agree with Popper's statement that good tests of Darwinism are hard to come by. But they are still possible depending on the creativity of the researcher.

About the intelligence leap of humans: I don't think intelligence is unobservable...researchers have been trying to measure and study it scientifically it for some time now (for better or worse) in humans but also in other species (see for instance the work by Frans de Waal on chimps). This is not an answer to why this leap occurred of course (I don't have a good answer to that).

See you in class tomorrow.

What is science?

Here are some excerpts about the nature of science:

The old scientific ideal of episteme--of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge-has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tenative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be 'absolutely certain'.

The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

Sir Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery 

So I left him, saying to myself as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is--For the knows nothing, and thinks that he knows . I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have sightly the advantage of him.


Socrates, in Plato's Apology 


Test everything. Keep what is good.


Saint Paul, First Letter to the Thessalonians 

excerpt from professor Douglass North

Douglass North's statement on Chinese economy (2005) :

This system in turn led to the TVEs and sequential development built on their cultural background. But China still does not have well-specified property rights, town-village enterprises hardly resembled the standard firm of economics, and it remains to this day a communist dictatorship.”

Happy christian wedding

I attended a happy christian wedding last Friday at Suffolk christian church, and here are some pics

monopoly is the by-product of coercion, not Laissez-faire

In The "inevitability" planning, Hayek contends that:

"This conclusion is strongly supported by the historical order in which the decline of competition and the growth of monopoly manifested themselves in different countries. If they were the result of technological developments or a necessary product of the evolution of "capitalism," we should expect them to appear first in the countries with the most advanced economic system. In fact, they appeared first during the last third of the nineteenth century in what were then comparatively young industrial countries, the United States and Germany. In the latter country especially, which came to be regarded as the model country typifying the necessary evolution of capitalism, the growth of cartels and syndicates has since 1878 been systematically fostered by deliberate policy. Not only the instrument of protection but direct inducements and ultimately compulsion were used by the governments to further the creation of monopolies for the regulation of prices and sales. It was here that, with the help of the state, the first great experiment in "scientific planning" and "conscious organization of industry" led to the creation of giant monopolies, which were represented as inevitable growths fifty years before the same was done in Great Britain. It is largely due to the influence of German socialist theoreticians, particularly Sombart, generalizing from the experience of their country, that the inevitable development of the competitive system into "monopoly capitalism" became widely accepted. That in the United States a highly protectionist policy made a somewhat similar development possible seemed to confirm this generalization.The development of Germany, however, more than that of the United States, came to be regarded as representative of a universal tendency; and it became a commonplace to speak--to quote a widely read political essay of recent date--of "Germany where all the social and political forces of modern civilization have reached their most advanced form."

Obviously his argument is undoubtedly conclusive, the evolution of china's state-backed monopoly enterprises can also verify Hayek's proposition.

Lexington: Bargaining and blackmail | The Economist

Lexington: Bargaining and blackmail | The Economist

Hayek's incisive remark on American "liberals"

in The Road to Serfdom--Foreword To The 1956 American Paperback Edition, Hayek refers to the distorted conception of "liberal"

"The fact that this book was originally written with only the British public in mind does not appear to have seriously affected its intelligibility for the American reader. But there is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain here to forestall any misunderstanding. I use throughout the term “liberal” in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftist movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that “liberal” has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control.I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensible term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservative."