This is the original image taken by AP photographer Mikhail Metzel during a Senate hearing
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This is the image that appeared in the 0/19/2005 USA Today
Only after being caught, did McPaper apologize:
Good riddance to bad rubbish. These people are not "journalists." They are spoiled children who deserve to be unemployed.
Imagine the MSM doing that to a photo of Michelle Obama?/s
Words mean things - but what does the word "journalist" actually mean?Literally, "jour" means "day" - and a journalist meets a daily deadline (or shorter, in the case of "breaking news"). From that perspective, it used to bother me when Rush would say, "I am not a journalist." But on further consideration, I have decided that we are better off recognizing the inherent negatives of journalism:
- The deadline which defines journalism ineluctably produces superficiality. "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper."
- News inherently emphasizes the negative. "No news is good news" - because generally, good news "isn't news." If it's bad news when a house burns down, it must be good news when a house gets built - but whereas the destructive fire is a sudden surprise, the construction of the house is a gradual process which, as Abraham Lincoln suggested with his "framing timbers" allusion, should surprise no one. And therefore isn't news (actually, it probably will make the newspaper - in the form of a paid advertisement seeking a buyer for the house).
- News is inherently unrepresentative. "Man Bites Dog" is the headline the editor wants to print, and "Dog Bites Man" - i.e., whatever is usual - makes page 13 below the fold in the unlikely event that it's in the paper at all.
- Journalism as we know it is extremely biased. Here you would probably expect to hear a litany of examples, but instead I simply refer to the fact that every journalist promotes the conceit that all journalists are objective -and that belief in his own objectivity is the defining characteristic of the man who is not objective.
So I say, accept the fact that "these people" are indeed journalists, doing exactly what journalists do - which is, and ought to be seen as, disreputable.You will say, "but what about the First Amendment and freedom of the press?" To which I reply that freedom of the press is a wonderful idea, and we ought to try it. Journalism presumes to call itself "the press," as if it were a class separate from we-the-people. But in fact, under the Constitution there are only three subdivisions - the federal government, the state governments, and the people. People who don't own a press aren't a separate species from those who do - they simply are people who don't own a press yet. More than anything, the First Amendment reference to freedom of "the press" is supposed to mean that anyone who decides to spend the money for a press (and ink and paper) is allowed to do so.
Those who style themselves "the press" actually depend for their self-definiton on the scarcity and expense of presses, not the "freedom" thereof. If every Tom, Dick, and Harriet had a press, journalists calling themselves "the press" would be no big deal. And that is actually now the case. To all intents and purposes, FreeRepublic.com is a press, and you are able to read this posting (so be that JimRob and his moderators don't object) anywhere in the world.
But is FreeRepublic.com actually a "press" under the intent of the First Amendment, which was written long before the telegraph - let alone the Internet? Absolutely. First, because "the progress of science and useful arts" was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution:
Article 1 Section 8.Under what logical framework is progress in the technology of communication excluded from the Constitution? If the Ninth Amendment means anything at all
The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . .Amendment 9the First Amendment is a floor rather than a ceiling on our rights - and freedom of "the press" does not mean censorship of other, later, communication technologies. Else, can the newswires be censored because the telegraph isn't a printing press?The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Journalism and Objectivity