Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate

The framers of our Constitution gave carte blance protection to “speech” and “the press”. They did not grant that anyone was then in possession of complete and unalloyed truth, and it was impossible that they should be able to a priori institutionalize the truth of a future such human paragon even if she/he/it were to arrive.

At the time of the framing, the 1830s advent of mass marketing was in the distant future. Since that era, journalism has positioned itself as the embodiment of nonpartisan truth-telling, and used its enormous propaganda power to make the burden of proof of any “bias” essentially infinite. If somehow you nail them dead to rights in consistent tendentiousness, they will merely shrug and change the subject. And the press is protected by the First Amendment. That is where conservatives have always been stuck.

And make no mistake, conservatives are right to think that journalism is their opponent. Examples abound so that any conservative must scratch his/her head and ask “Why?” Why do those whose job it is to tell the truth tell it so tendentiously, and even lie? The answer is bound and gagged, and lying on your doorstep in plain sight. The money in the business of journalism is in entertainment, not truth. It is that imperative to entertain which produces the perspective of journalism.

And that journalism does indeed have a perspective is demonstrated every day in what it considers a good news story, and what is no news story at all. Part of that perspective is that news must be new--fresh today--as if the events of every new day were of equal importance with the events of all other days. So journalism is superficial. Journalism is negative as well, because the bad news is best suited to keep the audience from daring to ignore the news. Those two characteristics predominate in the perspective of journalism.

But how is that related to political bias? Since superficiality and negativity are anthema to conservatives there is inherent conflict between journalism and conservatism.. By contrast, and whatever pious intentions the journalist might have, political liberalism simply aligns itself with whatever journalism deems a “good story.” Journalists would have to work to create differences between journalism and liberalism, and simply lack any motive to do so. Indeed, the echo chamber of political “liberalism” aids the journalist--and since liberalism consistently exacerbates the issues it addresses, successful liberal politicians make plenty of bad news to report.

The First Amendment which protects the expression of opinion must also be understood to protect claims by people of infallibility--and to forbid claims of infallibility to be made by the government. What, after all, is the point of elections if the government is infallible? Clearly the free criticism of the government is at the heart of freedom of speech and press. Freedom, that is, of communication.

By formatting the bands and standardizing the bandwiths the government actually created broadcasting as we know it. The FCC regulates broadcasting--licensing a handful of priveledged people to broadcast at different frequency bands in particular locations. That is something not contemplated in the First Amendment, and which should never pass constitutional muster if applied to the literal press. Not only so, but the FCC requires application for renewal on the basis that a licensee broadcaster is “operating in the public interest as a public trustee.” That is a breathtaking departure from the First Amendment.

No one questions the political power of broadcasting; the broadcasters themselves obviously sell that viewpoint when they are taking money for political advertising. What does it mean, therefore, when the government (FCC) creates a political venue which transcends the literal press? And what does it mean when the government excludes you and me--and almost everyone else--from that venue in favor of a few priviledged licensees? And what does it mean when the government maintains the right to pull the license of anyone it does allow to participate in that venue? It means a government far outside its First Amendment limits. When it comes to broadcasting and the FCC, clearly the First Amendment has nothing to do with the case.

The problem of journalism’s control of the venue of argument would be ameliorated if we could get them into court. In front of SCOTUS they would not be permitted to use their mighty megaphones. And to get to court all it takes is the filing of a civil suit. A lawsuit must be filed against broadcast journalism, naming not only the broadcast licensees, but the FCC.

We saw the tendency of broadcast journalism in the past election, when the delay in calling any given State for Bush was out of all proportion to the delay in calling a state for Gore, the margin of victory being similar--and, most notoriously, the state of Florida was wrongly called for Gore in time to suppress legal voting in the Central Time Zone portion of the state, to the detriment of Bush and very nearly turning the election. That was electioneering over the regulated airwaves on election day, quite on a par with the impact that illegal electioneering inside a polling place would have. It was an enormous tort.

And it is on that basis that someone should sue the socks off the FCC and all of broadcast journalism.

Journalism has a simbiotic relation with liberal Democrat politicians, journalists and liberal politicians are interchangable parts. Print journalism is only part of the press (which also includes books and magazines and, it should be argued, the internet), and broadcast journalism is no part of the press at all. Liberals never take issue with the perspective of journalism, so liberal politicians and journalists are interchangable parts. The FCC compromises my ability to compete in the marketplace of ideas by giving preferential access addresses to broadcasters, thus advantaging its licensees over me. And broadcast journalism, with the imprimatur of the government, casts a long shadow over elections. Its role in our political life is illegitimate.

The First Amendment, far from guaranteeing that journalism will be the truth, protects your right to speak and print your fallible opinion. Appeal to the First Amendment is appeal to the right to be, by the government or anyone else’s lights, wrong. A claim of objectivity has nothing to do with the case; we all think our own opinions are right.

When the Constitution was written communication from one end of the country to the othe could take weeks. Our republic is designed to work admirably if most of the electorate is not up to date on every cause celebre. Leave aside traffic and weather, and broadcast journalism essentially never tells you anything that you need to know on a real-time basis.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies political rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania, said the debate was filled with hyperbole and exaggeration typical of candidates trying to unseat an incumbent president.
"If you were trying to get facts from this debate, you are going to get confused," she said. "You have the party out of power exaggerating the negative impact of the administration and ignoring the positive impact."

Which founding father said of a provision in the Constitution that

This may be a reflection on human nature. But what is government if not the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Conservatives as well as liberals are seduced into paying attention when a headline asks, "Is Your Drinking Water Unsafe?" People who self-select to be journalists are good at, and enthusiastic about, accentuating the negative about American society and any leadership of it which does not "reflect on human nature." Because, unfortunately, that is what produces commercial success in journalism.

The "Great Debate" format is designed by journalists specifically to produce "gotchas"--molehills out of which they will later produce mountains. That is an essentially anticonservative project--and only the anticonservative molehills are turned into mountains by journalism.

The basic conservative project during any election campaign must be to delegitimate claims of objectivity coming from the (marginally loyal) opposition--especially journalists. TV debates are bad because they put undue stress on the personality--not to say, the appearance--of the person who will in future be the head of state and of govenment in America. And the "moderation" of the "debates" by anticonservative partisans affecting to be neutral is particularly egregious.

Candidates leaving out facts in debate
AP | 12/10/03 | NEDRA PICKLER

(This responds to a more complete discussion of the "debate" issue on this thread).

The planted axiom of unwillingness to accept any label other than "objective" or "nonpartisan" is a presumption of superiority over "left and right."

A conservative--think, Rush Limbaugh or any other radio call-in talk show host--is self-critical enough to accept that his/her perspective is not the only legitimate way of seeing things, and therefore his/her perspective can legitimately have a name. Conservatives are willing to debate the issues on the full range of facts and logic, asking only a fair burden of proof for both sides.

Liberals OTOH consistently evade that debate, preferring to second-guess from a position of affected superiority using bullying tactics. They evade accurate labels.

In America "socialism" didn't sell so socialists coopted the word "liberalism", a word which was popular in America because it more accurately represented our position rather than their own. And, read this carefully, the root word "social" is much more appropriately descriptive of marketplace interaction than of elite "planning" boards micromanaging the economy from afar. So the very word "social"ism was a devious coinage; the true nature of "socialism" is better described as "governmentism." IOW, "tyranny."
"Liberals" consistently argue with tendentious labels, and there is no more tendentious label to assume than "objective," with "nonpartisan" being a close second. Once successfully assume that mantle and you have, essentially, won the debate.

There is a dictum which I believe National Review calls "Sullivan's Law." It says that

"Any organization which is not explicitly conservative becomes liberal over time."

Which I take to be equivalent to saying that just as liberals tendentiously assume dishonest labels, liberals consistently coopt any organization which may initially have some legitimate claim to nonpartisanship.

The League of Women Voters
and my fairwell letter to my local chapter..

Congressional control of election speech is outrageous. But government control of political discourse was an accomplished fact before most of us were born. That genie has been out of the bottle since the government claimed the authority to restrict radio transmissions from you and me but to grant "broadcast" licenses to a relative handful of favored individuals.

That makes the holders of those licenses super "speakers" who have the right to be hearable by all sheeple. At least, those licensees are "superspeakers" as long as the FCC doesn't revoke their licenses. Just as Sean Hannity was saying on the radio yesterday, no broadcaster will support a test case of violating this new "campaign finance" law by accepting a proscribed political ad, because the broadcast licensee has too much to lose and is too easily punished.

On face value, these "superspeakers" merely add to the national discourse. But from the point of view of the publisher, the attention of the public is the scarce resource--and by all accounts regulated broadcasting has sucked much of that oxygen out of the air of the (unregulated) print publications.

The unregulated Internet may perhaps suck some oxygen away from unregulated print media. But in contrast with high-entry-threshold broadcasting, the Internet makes addresses available to everyone with little if any discrimination. First come, first served. The main problem of publishing on the internet is the inevitable one of burning through the competiton and attracting eyeballs to your site under conditions of nearly perfect competition. In addition, those eyeballs see the site not via a $70 TV and rabbit ears but via PC, phone line/cable, and ISP. All viewers and publishers on the Internet face that financial hurdle, but beyond that the cost of publishing on the 'net (and to a potentially global audience) is remarkably small.

The Internet is freedom of speech, press, and assembly grown up, whereas broadcast is the centralizing PR borg of mass-market newspapers metastasized. The thing which the First Amendment told us not to accept was government judgement of what was objective--and by the time most of us were born, the FCC retaining in principle the right to do that was an unquestioned fact of life.

Note that although the FCC does retain that right in principle, in practice the FCC defers to journalism to define objectivity. Thus, broadcast journalism can tamper with the 2000 election by announcing the "result" of FL while the issue was in doubt, then follow up the next day by launching an assault on the one analyst most responsible for getting FL right, after the polls were closed but before Mr. Gore's minions had had a chance to launch a propaganda canpaign against the rules which ultimately prevented the overturning of the result at the ballot. After all of which the FCC makes not a whimper. Thomas Jefferson once said, "If I had to choose between government and no newspapers on the one hand, and newspapers and no government on the other, I should unhesitatingly choose the latter." Through the miracles of modern PR science, we are perilously close to a government of journalism.

The First Amendment crisis we face is over the definition of objectivity, a word which journalism has been coopting for a century. And over the definition of journalism. In First Amendment principle, journalism can say pretty much what it wants, including the claim that it is objective. Ironically, an appeal to the First Amendment is a claim of the right to print or speak notwithstanding a government claim (whether spurious or well-founded) that the speaker/printer was not objective.

The other irony of the "objectivity" issue is the fact that It is the commentator who accepts the fact that others may legitimately disagree, who therefore accepts a label such as "conservative" as a self-critique, who is least subjective. And anyone who believes in their own objectivity is--however strongly supported by the agreement of the powerful--hopelessly subjective. Self-described "objective journalism" is such an obvious fraud as to be risible.

But can "journalism" really be spoken of as a single entity? IMHO, certainly--for the simple reason that commercial self-interest has culled out any significant tendency for major journalistic enterprises to compete on perspective. Yes I know about the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, but the body of all major journalism outlets is ruled by the same principles, defining what is a lead and what is not news. The simple fact is that it is impossible to tell "the whole truth," and if you restrict your attention to what is "new" you take off your radar screen some things which are far more important than what remains on it.

For example the ben Laden problem was knowable long before 911, and no claim of "old news" justifies any other headline taking precendence over it once that was known. Except of course for the commercial interest of the journalistic outlet, which needed to entertain potential readers with new and interesting material every day. It is the emphasis on entertaining the audience, IMHO, which is the "bias" in journalism. It is a bias against conservatism.

At one and the same time, journalism is an unstoppable steamroller, and individual journalists are powerless to control it. That is because journalism is institutionalized go-along-and get-along behavior--and deviation from that behavior means retroactive banishment from acknowledged status as a journalist.

But why does journalism line up with political liberalism? That is the wrong question; it must be turned around. For to ask the question of why so many politicians align themselves with the predelictions of journalism is to answer it. And this phenomenon gives journalists plausible (to themselves) deniability; journalists can't help it if some politicians are right (i.e., left) and others are wrong (i.e., right). In their minds, Ted Kennedy joined them.

And in a chicken-and-egg situation like that, who knows? And indeed, why should anyone care? Except that the Supreme Court of the United States seems to suppose that it matters.

http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-news/1038450/posts

The egregious mischief of "campaign finance reform" lies, IMHO, in its extension of the preexisting government policy toward public communication--that is, the fatuous notion that when the Constitution mentions "the press" it refers specifically to the genre of nonfiction entertainment which is produced and sold on short deadline--the publishing genre known as journalism. I style that notion fatuous--Supreme Court decisions to the contrary notwithstanding--because although the idea is relentlessly promoted by patently self-interested journalists I await the first suggestion of a realistic demonstration of why that was the intent of the Framers or why it ought to be so in logic or in any stripe of religious tradition.

The truth is that mass-market journalism is unprofitable unless it is competitive in the particular traditions of journalism. And that although those traditions emphatically include claiming to be objective, belief in your own objectivity is the essence of subjectivity. And that all the rest of the traditions of competitive, profitable journalism tend to produce a tendency in story selection and in fact emphasis within stories. And that politicians can and do align themselves with that tendency, making that tendency into a political issue.

And that that tendency is known as "liberalism." Any occasion in which a journalist attacks liberalism is a "friendly fire" incident.

made by the editors of that rag which dares to call itself a News Magazine.

We must understand that all of the entertainment media exists to aggrandize PR to itself--and the most potent entertainment medium for producing PR is journalism. The reason that Congress passed, the president signed, and the Supreme Court upheld "Campaign Finance Reform"--all of them knowing that it traduced the Constitution--is quite simply that flattering journalism is a PR "Get Out of Jail Free" card, and crossing journalism is a PR "Go Directly to Jail" card.
Nothing makes journalism seem important like claiming that the government is abusing the people; politicians who go along and get along with that claim just naturally get good PR--and get called "liberal"--or, if that be preferred, "moderate." Politiicans opposing the claims of journalism just naturally get bad PR--and get called "right wing"--if not worse.
Of course if the politicians who go along with journalism are in power, the "homeless problem" and "unemployment" suddenly disappear from the radar screen--or else are blamed on the residual effects of evil right-wingers. If the tenents of PR were as powerful as its acolytes in journalism assume, Republicans would never win elections; journalists consider Republican victories fundamentally illegitimate because journalism's position is supposed, in their world-view, to be dispositive.
Is the "The American Soldier" really Time magazine's Man of the Year?
lgf/mudville | year 2003 | time

It's time for America's most highly-regarded journalists such as NBC's Tim Russert, the Washington Post's David Broder, the Chicago Sun-Times' Robert Novak, and Brit Hume of Fox News Channel to put some very, very grown-up questions to the Democratic candidates: "Will you agree not to exploit for your own political advantage any terrorist attack in the United States between now and the November 2004 election by using that attack to criticize the President of the United States?" "Will you agree to stand in wholehearted solidarity and unity with our President in the event--God forbid!--of any such attack inside our borders?" "Will you send a message with your words right now that no new 9-11 terrorist attack on America will become a wedge splitting our democratic republic apart?" "Will you declare that any such attack will bring rival political leaders of our country, yourself included, together--and that therefore no act of terrorism will be able to tip the balance in our elections or let terrorists think they can pick our next President?" It's time for voters to put some grown-up questions to themselves.

Does the First Amendment require objectivity or does it allow subjectivity?
Does deadline pressure help journalists to be more objective than nonfiction book authors?
Do journalists compete for reputations for objectivity--or do they go along and get along with each other?
Do liberal politicians cooperate with journalists in mutual attacks on conservatism?
Do journalists attack anyone from the right?
Why would we ever expect journalists to ask grown-up questions of each other?

Anyone who takes grown-up questions and treats them seriously is a conservative, thus "not objective, not a journalist."

“Dead Americans” Insurance
FrontPage Mag | 12.23.03 | Lowell Ponte

the overall thinking of the Spanish Left comes from France. Now, France is fundamentally anti-American…from which (comes) our anti-Americanism, that at times borders on the pathological, an anti-Americanism which is also anti-Semitic. This explains why to a certain extent the Spanish Left is anti-Semitic. Obviously, people like myself have great difficulty with this state of affairs.
I believe that if the Left has failed as a great world ideology, it is because the Left did not succeed in breaking with the worst of its dogmatic thinking. The Left can be very progressive, but it can also be very dogmatic. Unfortunately, the Left became infatuated with such infamous dictators as Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin, and now it is in love with Arafat. The Left should be critical, and in the first place, self-critical.

Oh, the left is critical, all right--critical of everyone and every organization which actually does things instead of just talking about them. And since that is exactly what sells newspapers and inflates the self-image of reporters, it is no wonder that journalism corresponds to leftism.

But as to being self-critical, leftism is essentially incompatible with that. "Talk radio," for example, is essentially a form of journalism which does not claim to be "objective" and, in the sense that its practitioners accept that their perspective has a label, is self-critical. And that label is rarely "liberal."

The Euro-Socialists' Judeophobia-
Spanish politician explains Europe's love affair with the PLO
proche-orient.com | frontpagemag.com | December 30, 2003 | Marc Tobiass

IMHO the fundamental gripe about McCain-Feingold is its ratification of journalism's con that "the press" is a perfect synonym for "journalism."
It makes journalism an Establishment for the purposes of political controversy in the days before an election. Whether on the front page or on the editorial page, anything goes for the journalist; "no law" means no law.
The crucial problem is that journalism is a guild whose defining principle is the eleventh commandment: thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow journalist. "Ill, in this case, meaning "not objective." Talk radio is a form of journalism--or would be, if not for its honesty and candor about perspective:

conservative talk radio hosts are universally candid about the fact that they are not "objective" but conservative.
conservative talk radio hosts are honest about the fact that members of the guild of "objective journalists" are "liberal" (in fact of course, journalists are superficial and negative because the public can't ignore an article headlined, "Is Your Drinking Water Unsafe?" The preference of journalists for negativity, and the superficiality inherent in journalism's deadlines, produces a propaganda wind down which a Ted Kennedy can sail without even having to sober up--and that propaganda wind is "liberalism").

The mass media outlets have their own "Eleventh Commandment,"
"Thou shalt not attribute bias to a fellow journalist."
Violate that commandment and you are not--retroactively, never have been--a journalist. Journalists are no less politically uniform than Christians in general are theologically uniform. And the particular perspective around which journalism natually coalesces is the one which promotes journalism itself--the perspective, that is, which assumes that second-guessing talk is morally equivalent to risk-taking action. A conceit which is falsified whenever socialism is tried in practice . . .

It is noteworthy that the Fascist dictator Mussolini came to prominence in Italy as a journalist, and that once in power Mussolini became the de facto editor of all Italian newspapers.
Back in the 1970s The Wall Street Journal once reprinted a Mussolin speech. And all socialist protestations about "rightwingers" to the contrary notwithstanding, there was nothing in it that a 1970s American lefitst would object to, but it would have made any American conservative's blood boil.

Thus while the conservative talk show host candidly rejects the idea of objectivity and associates his perspective with the label "conservative," the opponent of conservatism typically affects to be above leftism and conservatism--and, on "objective" programming, is not laughed off the set but is applauded. IOW, the conservative is self-critical, and the liberal is arrogant because he can afford to be--the propaganda wind is at his back.

Thank you for your primer course in Journalism for today's thinker, and I for one appreciate the time you took to share it with the readers here.

That the readers were so curious as well in responding with more ideas to digest made it seem I was back in a classroom surrounded by some excellent minds. A wonderfully refreshing experience and so positive/productive.

I began studying the issue of "bias in the media" during the Carter Administration. If you look at journalism at all critically over any period of time you cannot avoid the conclusion that journalism consistently projects a liberal perspective. And yet I was almost 40 years old by the time that fully sank in. Primarily, I think, that was because I was unwilling to don a tinfoil hat and assume that black helicopters are abducting all conservative reporters.
Absent a conspiracy which we would be able to detect by dogs not barking and by reading between the lines, it became a question of figuring out why conservatism was inimicable to success in the entertainment media in general and journalism in particular. The conclusion is that conservatism focuses on the things which change slowly or not at all--gradual incremental improvements which accumulate a patrimony of prosperity such that the secretary in the office at work has in many ways better material comfort than Queen Victoria did. That's startling when first mentioned--but since it won't be any different tomorrow than it was yesterday it is utterly useless to the reporter who has to interest the reader with something new.
From the POV of predicting what a publication can say day after day that will be interesting to the general public, my conclusion is that it is inherently cheap talk. Monday morning quarterbacking and criticism, condemnation and complaint. The very things which the Dale Carnegie course warns you to avoid like the plague. And which, if applied to economics and politics, amount to an attack on society from the left.
But I had difficulty developing my understanding of these things in no small part because I needed a challenge of articulating these ideas to an audience and getting feedback. FreeRepublic is an excellent place to conduct a rational discussion and to debate all (respectful) comers. And a place to tie various strands of information together by use of hyperlinks. This thread got off to an unnecessarily rocky start, IMHO, when a couple of people got into a bit of a flame war--but I guess that's life. Both posters made substantive contributions to the thread.
I scarcely suppose, imintrouble, that this thread has solved the problem it addresses. Solution of the problem would have to transform the public view of mass entertainment media in general and of journalism in particular, and that is a distant goal indeed. But for you and me at least, FR represents the entertainment medium of choice. Because one-way "communication" quickly becomes boring.

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