The Write Agenda and the Heritage Foundation: Studies in the Noise Machine

(You is used in the general second-person sense in this essay, rather than in any specific reference to any particular website. It is also used to address the readers of this essay.)

If any of you have read a book called The Republican Noise Machine by David Brock, you might recognize some of the commentary tactics being used by the website The Write Agenda. I am always leery of a group where I have to really dig to find who is the organizer/author/creator of a site. I also hate people masquerading as logicians when they're not. I suspect that the The Write Agenda could learn more about this technique from the Heritage Foundation.

A short summary of The Noise Machine's basic point is that much discourse in the United States is unsubstantiated argumentatively. Yet, there is a growing movement to accept unsubstantiated discourse as just as valid as the substantiated kind. We can see this in the growth of opinion-based journalism. I think that's what's going on with both of these web sites. I use the Heritage Foundation, as Brock uses it as an illustrative example in his book. Sometimes it helps to have a comparison when one has trouble seeing the trees in the forest individually.

Under the guise of logic, rhetoric and discourse in the field of publishing, The Write Agenda is launching a biased campaign against a variety of targets. The site purports that this is a logical exchange of ideas. If it were, would The Write Agenda feel the need to threaten readers if they disagreed with the site and agreed with the people TWA is writing against?

Bottomline? Keep an open mind, review all facts and above all . . . be careful what you post . . . it’s getting litigious out there! Lawsuits and Cease & Desist Letters against authors are on the rise. Loyalty to some self-proclaimed publishing “watchdogs” may have a price.

Pretty subtle, that. It looks like they want you to consider all the facts, but then they suggest that if you are for the people they are against, well, who knows what could happen to you...that's pretty clear. I'm not sure how else I can read that sentence. If there is another intent, it's time for a rewrite.

Let's do an analysis of argumentative technique. At TWA, you can read a post about Yog's Law. Let's take a look at a tiny part of it. I could do this all day at the site, but I have a life, so we will only deal with one illustrative point. However, feel free to play this game yourself. It helps avert Alzheimer's. So you can see the sentence in situ, it's linked.

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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.