Comment is free, but facts are sacred.

I went searching for an adage without knowing its provenance, "Comment is free, but facts are sacred." It is from an editorial by the editor of the British newspaper Guardian, C.P Scott, written in 1921 to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the founding of the paper.

The relevant paragraph is

A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred. "Propaganda", so called, by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard. Comment also is justly subject to a self-imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair. This is an ideal. Achievement in such matters is hardly given to man. We can but try, ask pardon for shortcomings, and there leave the matter.

A well articulated ideal.

I like that pivotal goal, "It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair." Life revolves around definitions and the word fair is one of the more elusive in English. Does it mean fair as in equality of outcomes? Fair as in equality before the law? Is it fair in the sense of reciprocal accountability as identified by Jonathan Haidt (What the Tea Partiers Really Want by Jonathan Haidt)? So, in some ways, we are left with the question, a great ideal but what does it mean?

But what caught my attention was the discussion immediately preceding the passage with the quote.

Character is a subtle affair, and has many shades and sides to it. It is not a thing to be much talked about, but rather to be felt. It is the slow deposit of past actions and ideals. It is for each man his most precious possession, and so it is for that latest growth of time, the newspaper. Fundamentally it implies honesty, cleanness, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community.

While he is discussing the importance of character (and by broader implication, culture) to a newspaper, or really any large organization, his observation is prescient from an economics perspective as well.

Over the past fifty years economists who focus on economic development have been chasing the magical elixir that leads to economic growth, both in terms of the individual as well as for countries. Why is it that Brazil, with all its resources, is always the country of the future? What are the critical ingredients to success.

In terms of the individual, just as with countries, much of the early research was in regard to access to resources, to capital. Then there was the focus on infrastructure. Then there was the focus on the importance of institutions such as the rule of law and political stability. Then knowledge, and its absence, that was determined to be the critical barrier to development.

At each stage, the insights were valuable but insufficient. Increasingly, now, the focus has been shifting, both for the individual and the nation, towards the impact of values and behavior, to culture. Just as in the past, it is likely that this won't be the whole story, but I suspect it is much of the story explaining the differences in outcomes. We'll see.

But Scott's observation is so pertinent and I suspect one of the reasons that character was put off for so long as an object of study. It is indeed, "a subtle affair, and has many shades and sides to it." To know something you do have to be able to measure it and character is not particularly tractable in that regard. We are getting better at measuring it but there is a long row in front of us.