How credible are we?

Today on NPR the questions was “Should you be penalize for the actions of your family?” OK, I was pretty quick with a “Hell no!” Then the example they used was of the New York Times editor in Jerusalem, whose son has volunteered for the Israeli Army. The question became, can he be objective in his reporting?

Well to begin with I thought the first question was totally miss leading, and implied that a family member had done something egregious where someone needed to be penalized, and I didn’t think that was a fair representation of this situation.

That said, I found myself pulled in a number of ways by this dilemma. My first knee jerk reaction was he should be reassigned given the magnitude of hostilities between Israeli and its Arab neighbors, but then I had to take a step back. As the various experts banged away at the issues I could see the points they all were making, no matter what their viewpoint was.

I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about this, but I did start to put myself in the place of this father and son. In a way I’ve been there. I have certainly experienced the worried and pain of a parent whose child is in the military, and has been put in harm’s way. Many people have assumed that they knew how I would feel on a subject based on the fact that I have children in the military, one severely wounded in battle, or as a member of Soldiers’ Angels. Rarely have they been completely correct in their assumptions.

All of us are impacted by the lives we choose to live, the random acts that occur in that life, and by choices others make whether they are close to us or not. This is exactly why none of us can truly be objective. We can only speak from the accumulation of our experiences. The question isn’t if he can be objective, it is how will this situation, added to all his other life experiences effect how he interprets what he is reporting on? I’m reminded of the joke about three blind guys, each standing a different place around an elephant describing what they feel with their hands, leads them to believe there are three different animals there with them. We are all handicapped and empowered by our past and present when interpreting an experience. Does this make our reporting more or less valuable or credible?