Journalism and Objectivity

Vanity | 11/16/2009 | Vanity

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Ping to my #95. I’d be delighted to have your criticism . . .

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The “news” is merely propaganda

From the founding of the Republic, any given newspaper has reflected the politics of its printer. That was understood by the authors of the Constitution, and by those who ratified the First Amendment.

What changed is that now all the printers are politically simpatico. What caused the change, and when? IMHO (after more thought over a longer period of time than I like to admit) it is the fruit of the wire services, especially the AP. The telegraph was demo’ed by Samuel Morse in 1844 - and by 1848 the predecessor to the AP was forming.

By 1875 people were raising the alarm about the propaganda power of the AP. The AP responded that its members contributed most of its content, and its members were famous for not agreeing about much of anything (which, at the time and traditionally, was true) - so the AP itself was objective.

That argument held some water at the time, but - as we all know - it is far from true today, and hasn’t been true for a very long time. In his 1776 masterpiece Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith asserted that “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” The AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all its member newspapers, and it doesn’t end at all. And is not about “merriment and diversion,” but precisely about business.

Anyone who considers that situation - and does not wish to be seen as utterly naive - would have to ask, “If journalists conspired against the public, what would be their objective and how would it manifest itself?” And Adam Smith has an answer to that, too: "The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires." - Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) Put that way, it is IMHO hard to question the fact that people go into journalism for precisely that reason.

And what would be better calculated to promote the influence of journalists than agreement among journalists

1. not to question each others’ objectivity, and

2. to (rhetorically) stone to death the career of anyone who, claiming to be a journalist, violates rule 1?

And is it not true that that constitutes practicing on the credulity of the public, and thus a conspiracy against it? The 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan SCOTUS decision famously made it extremely difficult for Democrat or Republican politicians to sue for libel or slander. If you read the decision, you learn that not only was it unanimous, and not only were the concurring decisions critical only that it didn’t go far enough, but you yourself will want to cheer the decision, given the facts before the Court at the time. The problem is not the First Amendment, is and not SCOTUS’s vindication of it in Sullivan. The problem is that wire service journalism is an Establishment. And, in point of fact, an anti-conservative Establishment.

There is not supposed to be an Establishment in America. There is only the people. Some few of the people are at any time in government - temporarily (other than a few judges), but otherwise there are people who presently own newspapers, and people who do not yet own newspapers. The First Amendment does not establish journalists as a separate category; it guarantees that anyone who will spend the money for it can buy a printing press. Journalism is neither a title of nobility nor an Established priesthood, both of which the Constitution forbids. It is not legitimately “the Fourth Estate” because there aren’t supposed to be any “Estates” here.

But nevertheless, wire service journalism does function as an Establishment. And the question that raises is, “What legal recourse might lie against it?”

• Obviously the First Amendment does not empower the government to act against journalists. Out of the question as a rationale.

• Just because 1A does not itself empower the government to control journalism, that does not necessarily mean that the people may not vindicate any rights against journalists. In fact, if you express the objective of 1A in terms of the rights of the people, 1A is understood to protect the right of the people to read (and listen to) opinions of their own choosing (the right to print being meaningless without the right of others to read).

• The crunch, then, is the extent to which journalism as an Establishment controls the ability of the people to read or listen to opinions. Journalism as Establishment tends to control the government. Does it use the government to promote its own status as the Establishment? IMHO the answer to that is yes.
  • All “campaign finance reform” legislation is based on the conceit that journalism is above politics. McCain-Feingold was upheld in McConnell v. FEC by a 5-4 SCOTUS majority, thanks to Sandra Day O’Connor (and over the objection of Anthony Kennedy). All CFR legislation is IMHO anathema to the principle that people can spend however much of their own money they wanna to promote their own ideas. CFR restricts that right to only the anointed Establishment journalism (and to self-funding politicians such as Mr. Trump). As the Wall Street Journal pointed out at the time, support for McCain-Feingold didn’t come from the public - it came from "the media.”

  • The FCC puts the government’s imprimatur on Establishment journalism, insinuating that the public should listen to it. And occasionally Democrats raise the issue of banning talk radio on one pretext or another.

  • Jim Acosta can claim that he has a WH press pass of right, and the journalism Establishment supports that claim, and so far the administration is not disposed to fight it legally.

  • My gut tells me that something is hiding in plain sight, too obvious to take note of.

• 1A doesn’t protect journalists if they commit murder; it should not protect journalists from prosecution (or civil suit) under the Sherman AntiTrust Act. The change in the cost of high-speed, long-distance information transfer from infinity (impossibility) to “very expensive” created the wire services. By now that cost has gone from “very expensive” to “dirt cheap.” The wire services are no longer “too big to fail” on that account.

I noted above that journalism is anti-conservative. The reason is that journalism is negative and, in claiming its own objectivity knowing that it is negative, it is cynical. Only a cynic thinks “negativity is objectivity.” And cynicism is the opposite of faith, and thus of conservatism.