Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Denmark - Laissez faire welfare


An interesting but ultimately flawed story describing a political & economic system that works as well as and probably better than most where, after extolling the virtues of the Danish system, accompanied by hard facts and figures and even charts for pâté’s sake, the writer then quotes one expat Dane in a thinly disguised journalistic sleight of hand masquerading as objectivity?

How can one person's opinion (right or wrong) stack up against the facts presented in this story and be called objective? Where are the facts and figures supporting that person's opinion? Without facts the point of view is not empirical but strictly subjective. Nothing wrong with that per se but in this case not enough. Presenting a POV without facts approaches mendacity.

Unfortunately journalism like this is all too common. The way the writer adds the section with the Dane from London plays on common American prejudices at worst and is naive but still negative at best. It's one thing to say there's a difference of opinion on the matter but to state so and not support that with any facts has the effect of sowing enough doubt on the premise of the story as to make it easily dismissible in the minds of an unsuspecting reader thereby obfuscating the meaning of the piece and reducing the impact of the article; which in this case is clearly about imparting the notion to millions of USA Today readers that perhaps, just perhaps, there might be another way besides the dog eat dog of laissez-faire globalism.

I hope most readers see through the journalistic device and get the best from the article.

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