Replies

We need to pass a law called the "We will F*** you up if we catch you lying act" for "Journalists" who are caught lying.

There needs to be serious financial or jail penalties for attempting to use the broadcast system to manipulate public opinion.

They are misusing the broadcasting system as a weapon, and we need to make them suffer consequences for doing that.

Well...if that’s the case... they wouldn’t even get themselves hired.

Why? Because people calling themselves ‘journalists’ and who routinely LIE.... probably also lied to get their job.

Makes ya wonder. This just proves my belief that all problems are ultimately HR PROBLEMS

There needs to be serious financial or jail penalties for attempting to use the broadcast system to manipulate public opinion.

There are potential serious financial penalties for lying & manipulating. Do you know who is in charge of imposing those penalties? You and me, we the people are in charge of imposing penalties for their traitorous behavior.

There is no law nor should there be. There is only the free market solution.

Stop paying for the crap sandwiches, you know, they are going to serve you every day.

Stop funding the LEFT MEDIA CARTEL

If an engineer or an architect's design is flawed, and a bridge or building collapses - they are liable. If a physician misses a diagnosis, or prescribes the wrong drug and a patient is hurt - he/she is liable. If you go to the grocery store and they sell you tainted meat - they are liable. Why aren't journalists liable for passing off uncorroborated bs, and lies, as truth?

We need to pass a law called the “We will F*** you up if we catch you lying act” for “Journalists” who are caught lying.

No we don’t.

Free Speech (and freedom of the press) means nothing if you can legally shut down something you don’t like.

Look at the UK. They have such laws. And they are not being used as you would want. They are being used to silence critics of the government. That is the way these laws always turn out.

So you do what President Trump does - point to the members of the media and call them liars and fake news.

I have said this on many occasions and I will say it again: “Those who call themselves “journalists” should be held to the same scrutiny and background checks that you or I would be when we go to purchase a firearm. No exceptions.”

There is a Constitution in this country, and part of it says

Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s in there for a reason. That reason is not that "journalists are objective.” The reason is that Americans are free to think, and to express their thoughts.
And the reason for that is not that all Americans think well, but because the Americans do not accept the proposition that government think is trustworthy. It is not for the government to tell me that journalists are not objective and not always truthful - it is up to me to figure those things out for myself. And, having figured that out, to promote those ideas to the extent of my own desire and resources.
But there is something the government legitimately can do about Establishment journalism. Establishment journalism is wire service journalism, and the wire services only date back to the advent of the telegraph in 1844. The Associated Press was in being by about 1850. The Sherman AntiTrust Act only dates to 1890, and the AP was aggressively monopolistic before and after 1890. In fact it was successfully sued by another wire service under Sherman in 1945.
But even that is not the point. The point is that, according to Adam Smith
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. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
the fact that the AP “wire” is a continuous virtual meeting of all major journalism outlets in America which has been ongoing since before the Civil War implies that "a conspiracy against the public” among journalists is presumably in effect. And anyone who starts with the a priori assumption of independence among journalists is being naive.
But what would "a conspiracy against the public” by journalists look like? Put another way, “What motives do journalists have in common?” Adam Smith suggests an answer to that:
The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors . . .
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. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
But what good is it if you, as a journalist, simply tell people you agree with them? How does that cause them to see you as their “leader and director??” It may make people more disposed to listen to you, but it doesn’t change their mind about their default assumption that they know their own minds and anyone else need not assume that they know better. No, the motive is change the minds of the public and cause them to look up to you.
In addition, journalists need to attract attention by telling people things that the public does not know. The problem with that is, that journalists are not rocket scientists. And the public at large is not, either, and would not understand if told anything really subtle. The only way journalists can tell people things they don’t already know is to report news of things that just happened, which the public has not heard yet. And the news which is interesting is almost uniformly negative. The upshot is that journalists report bad news about American society, thereby attracting attention and casting American society in an unflattering light. And thereby promoting the idea that journalists are above and looking down on American society. Included in that is the conceit that “journalists are objective.”
The truth is that although everyone should try to be objective - and I hope you do - nobody can know that he, or anyone who agrees with him, is objective. To claim that you are (not are trying to but actually are) objective is effectively to admit that you are not even trying to be objective (what would “trying to be objective” look like if you think that you are objective?). Thinking that you are objective is the essence of subjectivity.
In the case of journalists, who are negative and know it and will tell you that “If it bleeds, it leads,” a journalist who claims that “journalists are objective” is claiming in effect that negativity is objectivity. And “the conceit that negativity is objectivity” is hard to improve on as a definition of cynicism.
Journalists are cynical about society and - concomitantly - naive about government:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no [government]; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
The conclusion is that journalists’ “conspiracy against the public” is the promotion of the conceit that breaking news is important (in practically any situation other than a battle, that is untrue), the conceit that journalists are objective (and properly command respect as “leaders and directors”), and that cynicism towards society is justified, and properly justifies metastasized government.
Individual Americans are allowed to think that (within limits, considering that acting on such cynicism could easily turn antisocial), but a unified propaganda Establishment of any sort - let alone one promoting cynicism - is not legitimated by the First Amendment. The Associated Press destroys the ideological diversity of “the press,” and it is in violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act. It was found so by SCOTUS in 1945, but the idea of breaking up the AP was not even sought, nor thought possible as a remedy, in that era. But this is the 21st Century, and as the Internet and FreeRepublic.com illustrate, the mission of conserving scarce expensive communications bandwidth in spreading the news nationwide is now obsolete. Communication bandwidth is now dirt cheap. The AP systematically libels American society, white Americans, and Republicans. Both as groups, and as individual members of those groups. It should be sued into oblivion.
In the meantime, we should take to heart another quote from Theory of Moral Sentiments:
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.
We need to pool our “incredulity” here on FR in order to limit our tendency to "give credit to stories which [we are] afterwards both ashamed and astonished that [we] could possibly think of believing."

There is a Constitution in this country, and part of it says

Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s in there for a reason. That reason is not that "journalists are objective.” The reason is that Americans are free to think, and to express their thoughts.
And the reason for that is not that all Americans think well, but because the Americans do not accept the proposition that government think is trustworthy. It is not for the government to tell me that journalists are not objective and not always truthful - it is up to me to figure those things out for myself. And, having figured that out, to promote those ideas to the extent of my own desire and resources.
But there is something the government legitimately can do about Establishment journalism. Establishment journalism is wire service journalism, and the wire services only date back to the advent of the telegraph in 1844. The Associated Press was in being by about 1850. The Sherman AntiTrust Act only dates to 1890, and the AP was aggressively monopolistic before and after 1890. In fact it was successfully sued by another wire service under Sherman in 1945.
But even that is not the point. The point is that, according to Adam Smith
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. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
the fact that the AP “wire” is a continuous virtual meeting of all major journalism outlets in America which has been ongoing since before the Civil War implies that "a conspiracy against the public” among journalists is presumably in effect. And anyone who starts with the a priori assumption of independence among journalists is being naive.
But what would "a conspiracy against the public” by journalists look like? Put another way, “What motives do journalists have in common?” Adam Smith suggests an answer to that:
The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors . . .
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. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
But what good is it if you, as a journalist, simply tell people you agree with them? How does that cause them to see you as their “leader and director??” It may make people more disposed to listen to you, but it doesn’t change their mind about their default assumption that they know their own minds and anyone else need not assume that they know better. No, the motive is change the minds of the public and cause them to look up to you.
In addition, journalists need to attract attention by telling people things that the public does not know. The problem with that is, that journalists are not rocket scientists. And the public at large is not, either, and would not understand if told anything really subtle. The only way journalists can tell people things they don’t already know is to report news of things that just happened, which the public has not heard yet. And the news which is interesting is almost uniformly negative. The upshot is that journalists report bad news about American society, thereby attracting attention and casting American society in an unflattering light. And thereby promoting the idea that journalists are above and looking down on American society. Included in that is the conceit that “journalists are objective.”
The truth is that although everyone should try to be objective - and I hope you do - nobody can know that he, or anyone who agrees with him, is objective. To claim that you are (not are trying to but actually are) objective is effectively to admit that you are not even trying to be objective (what would “trying to be objective” look like if you think that you are objective?). Thinking that you are objective is the essence of subjectivity.
In the case of journalists, who are negative and know it and will tell you that “If it bleeds, it leads,” a journalist who claims that “journalists are objective” is claiming in effect that negativity is objectivity. And “the conceit that negativity is objectivity” is hard to improve on as a definition of cynicism.
Journalists are cynical about society and - concomitantly - naive about government:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no [government]; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
The conclusion is that journalists’ “conspiracy against the public” is the promotion of the conceit that breaking news is important (in practically any situation other than a battle, that is untrue), the conceit that journalists are objective (and properly command respect as “leaders and directors”), and that cynicism towards society is justified, and properly justifies metastasized government.
Individual Americans are allowed to think that (within limits, considering that acting on such cynicism could easily turn antisocial), but a unified propaganda Establishment of any sort - let alone one promoting cynicism - is not legitimated by the First Amendment. The Associated Press destroys the ideological diversity of “the press,” and it is in violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act. It was found so by SCOTUS in 1945, but the idea of breaking up the AP was not even sought, nor thought possible as a remedy, in that era. But this is the 21st Century, and as the Internet and FreeRepublic.com illustrate, the mission of conserving scarce expensive communications bandwidth in spreading the news nationwide is now obsolete. Communication bandwidth is now dirt cheap. The AP systematically libels American society, white Americans, and Republicans. Both as groups, and as individual members of those groups. It should be sued into oblivion.
In the meantime, we should take to heart another quote from Theory of Moral Sentiments:
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.
We need to pool our “incredulity” here on FR in order to limit our tendency to "give credit to stories which [we are] afterwards both ashamed and astonished that [we] could possibly think of believing.”
In reality “liberals” in general, and journalists in particular are at war with wisdom, skepticism, and caution. They are sophists working to suppress discussion of facts and logic by philosophers:
sophist 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments. philosopher O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage." "Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]
Journalists are sophists who freely engage in ad hominem attacks and the use of red herrings. “Conservative" talk show hosts, OTOH, are philosophers (in the etymological sense) who by and large restrict themselves to logic and germane facts - because they have to in order to contend with the sophists.