If we don't neutralize the Academic/Hollywood/Media complex, it hardly matters what we do.
Benghazi? Don't mention it. Fast and furious? Don't mention it. Cronyism on a scale never done before. Don't mention it. Corruption on a scale never seen before. Don't mention it.
Romney's statements. All gaffes, don't say how, but they're gaffes. Romney's inability to communicate or connect with the average Joe? Make it up, and keep repeating it until it's true.
If we don't neutralize the Academic/Hollywood/Media complex, it hardly matters what we do.
That is undeniable IMHO. I have studied the issue pretty deeply, I dare say, over the decades since the Carter era when I belatedly understood the fact of bias in the media and - relatively quickly - became bored with people sawing sawdust with example after breathless example proving what I already knew was true. But of course, we want to keep - and enhance - respect for our First Amendment rights. And my first conclusion was therefore that although media fiction such as Hollywood definitely promotes socialism, there is no principled way to oppose the rights of people to create leftist fiction specifically.But that still leaves nonfiction. And IMHO even there, people can write nonfiction books and still be wrong, without our having any principled argument against their right to do so. But it was the strawberries, thats where I had them </Cain Mutiny> LoL!
As I was saying, but it is in the field of federally licensed broadcast nonfiction - broadcast journalism - that there is the strongest case that leftist activism should be actionable. And I wrote a vanity about that
Why Broadcast Journalism isback in 01 and kept commenting to it for years as I worked to clarify the point. And it still seems to me that action should be brought against the broadcast networks and the FCC simply on the basis that the FCC promotes broadcast journalism as a public good, and yet journalism is systematically tendentious. FULL STOP.
Unnecessary and IllegitimateBut there are two other points to make on the topic of journalism. First, that journalisms character changed in the Nineteenth Century. Whereas in the Founding Era, journalism consisted of mostly weekly publications whose central feature was the opinion of the printer, and the printers opinions were all over the political map, by the start of the 20th Century newspapers were a lot more like what we are used to now. After an absurdly long time the answer came to me - it want so much high speed printing presses that changed things, it was the telegraph. The telegraph and the Associated Press. The AP in particular, but any wire service would and does tend to homogenize reporting and claim that the homogeneity is a proof of objectivity. A wire service has to do that in order to justify printing information that came from a reporter that the editor of your newspaper doesnt even know, hasnt even met.
The other point is about objectivity itself. IMHO the dictionary definition is unsatisfactory. My preferred definition of objectivity is, the opposite of subjectivity. And what is subjectivity? It is nothing but the natural tendency of a person to believe that what is convenient for himself is true. Thus, it is laudable and even necessary to attempt to be objective, but is not possible for a person to know that he is objective. The attempt at objectivity must involve an openness to discuss the known motives of the person making the attempt. Of course, declaring ones interest has the ironic superficial effect of making it seem like the person is subjective. Equally, claiming to be objective is the exact opposite of actually trying to be objective.
And joining an organization which claims objectivity for its members is no different than directly claiming objectivity for yourself. Thus, we know that the members of the Associated Press arent even trying to be objective. All window dressing and fact checking and both sides of the story telling notwithstanding, if you dont understand an opposing viewpoint, you cannot give it an objective airing. If you arent taking the difficulty of objectivity seriously, you dont actually believe that there actually are two sides to the story.
Journalism and Objectivity