Exactly.The only conceivable way to put any pressure at all on them, however, is to first simply be able to say their name. Its not the media, its Associated Press journalism. The AP, and the journalism outlets which are members of the AP. Newspapers used to be a fractiously independent bunch, famous for not agreeing about much of anything. But as Adam Smith put it in The Wealth of Nations,
"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices.The inevitable result of connecting all the members of the AP continually via the AP newswire is far more than a single event of meet[ing] together . . . for merriment and diversion. The virtual meeting which has gone on continuously via the wire since the Civil War era had subverted the independence of the journalism outlets long before you or I were even born. I obviously do not mean that every newspaper has exactly the same editorial stance as every other. But I do mean that such differences as may exist on editorial pages have next to nothing to do with the ideological cast of the part of the newspaper which is likely to be read by a low information voter."In the absence of ideological competition, journalism devolved into the function, not of explaining the world, but to its lowest common denominator function of entertainment. And it does so in a dystopian way. We all know the story of the boy who cried Wolf! Well, that is what the journalist does, whether or not an actual wolf is in sight.
In college I was required to read and comment on the story,
The tale is about a community which has a lottery every year, and everyone looks forward to it with excitement. But as the tale proceeds, we realize that something is amiss. The winner of the lottery is announced, and everyone is happy except the winner. The winner protests that the lottery wasnt conducted fairly. Whats wrong with this picture? And it turns out that the prize in this lottery is to be stoned to death by all the losers of the lottery!
- The Lottery
- Shirley Jackson
As a young man reading that story, it left me cold; I didnt see the point. Half a century later, I realize that it is a perfect metaphor for the behavior of journalism in America. The public anticipates being entertained by journalism, unmindful of the fact that the people whose reputations are shredded daily are, like as not, not guilty. Or at least, not guilty as charged. The Duke Lacrosse case is a fine illustration of the point. About nine months after the start of it, someone in authority finally stated what had been obvious, reading between the lines of the reporting, within a week of the start of the kerfuffle. The guys were guilty of acting like members of a college fraternity, nothing more. Dragging their names through the mud, and putting their futures in real and serious jeopardy, was all entertainment.
But but similar things go on in journalism all the time. The character assassination of Mitt Romney was a scheduled event. It followed like clockwork the years of calumny against George Bush, and of his father before him. Why would they do that to the Republican, and not to the Democrat? Professional courtesy. The Democrats are in the same business as the journalists, and go along with journalists in their smears of people who make good targets. The Republicans do not. Only a Democrat would, for example, heap scorn on business owners, putting scare quotes around the term owners. Democrats elect to be in symbiosis with journalism, and journalism does not elect to separate itself from Democrats in any way other than reserving only one positive label to themselves, and all other positive labels to cooperating Democrats. Journalists intend progressive and moderate and centrist - yes, and liberal - as positive labels for people who go along with journalisms lottery, and they reserve to themselves the positive label objective. A George Stephanopolis can switch from being liberal to being objective merely by donning a hat with a PRESS tag on it - and a Walter Cronkite can become a flaming liberal" commentator simply by taking that same hat off. The PRESS hat is the only distinction between a progressive and an objective journalist.
Right now, the Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular are undergoing the same sort of ordeal by slander. But of course it is flesh and blood people, relying on the Constitution, who are placed in the position of having their reputations wantonly besmirched. By my estimate there are more than 6000 guns, and approximately 2000 gun owners, for every gun murder which occurs in America in a given year. From those numbers it is obvious that. in general, guns are neither made nor sold nor bought for the purpose of murder. If you ask gun owners, they think that their weapon ownership is a right and in some sense a duty. Whether, by anyone elses lights, they are correct or not is beside the point that that is a prudential rather than a moral question. But journalism/socialism majors in applying indignant moral answers to merely prudential questions.
BYW, more than a few of those gun owners are present or retired police officers, and even a journalist on the highest of high horses would have difficulty arguing against that. Millions of others are former military, and their behavior should scarcely be difficult to comprehend. Essentially all of the rest are also honest people who correctly - as the 2000 gun owners for every one gun murder statistic makes clear - perceive themselves and their weapons as being no threat of murder, either.
But that is to be bogged down in the present instance. The larger point which I have made is that at any given time, AP journalism is doing the same sort of smear on someone, or some group, as an essential element in its business model.
So what can be done to return some integrity to journalism?
It would be helpful to know how many murders are prevented each year by these gun owners - like the recent example of the mother who pumped 5 out of 6 shots of her revolver into an assailant - protecting herself and 3 children I believe.