Posted on 02/11/2008 7:27:34 PM PST by jazusamo
Even before Mitt Romney bowed out — with class, by the way — supporters of John McCain, and Republican party pooh-bahs in general, were chastising those conservatives in the media who had criticized Senator McCain.
Those who leveled their attacks at Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservatives who had criticized McCain's record completely misconceived the role of the media.
Journalists do not exist to get one party's candidates elected or otherwise serve one party's political interests. The public are the journalists' clientele.
It is the public that reads newspapers and magazines, that listens to radio or watches television. They are depending on journalists to tell them the truth as they see it and to offer their honest opinion as to what it means.
Journalists cannot serve two masters. To the extent that they take on the task of suppressing information or biting their tongue for the sake of some political agenda, they are betraying the trust of the public and corrupting their own profession.
It is bad enough that politicians betray their followers as a matter of expediency. It is real chutzpah when they demand that journalists betray the public trust as a matter of principle, for the benefit of politicians.
Some journalists — too many, in fact — do jump on the bandwagon of particular candidates or particular political agendas, and end up filtering and spinning the news as a result.
Those who are on the "global warming" bandwagon, for example, endlessly repeat that the polar ice cap in the arctic is shrinking — while filtering out the fact that the polar ice cap in the antarctic is growing.
Some people in the media who went ballistic because President Bush fired a dozen U.S. attorneys had nothing to say when President Bill Clinton fired...
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
>> We now know in retrospect that The Times’ use of its great influence ...
>>
>> [The Times] downplayed the dangers of Hitler, thus contributing to Britain’s belated awakening ... — factors which emboldened Hitler to launch the Second World War.
To suppress vital information associated with Nazi aggression was supremely arrogant, foolish, and to the detriment of millions of people. Still today, the story is the same.
Is it just me, or does the picture of Thomas Sowell on the Jewish World Review look like an old photo that was a bit underexposed possibly due to the white suit coat? Interesting that some of you say Mr. Sowell is not a politician and yet here he is in a Jewish publication bringing up evil Nazi Hitler 60 years after the fact. I’m certain his next article for Jews will be about how pork is unhealthy and tastes bad anyway. Talk about pandering! I think he’s got more politician in him than you realize. I love his writing, but you have to know that bagging on Hitler in front of a Jewish audience is showing he can beat the stuffing out of the straw-man as well as any politician might. And yes, I realize the article is mostly bashing biased journalism and only brings up Hitler to prove a point, but, you must admit Mr. Sowell can pander like a politician when he feels the urge.
I know the dollars from my little purchases of books by Ann Coulter won’t be missed by her but I have bought my last one.
She still makes sense to me, tells it like it is and is honest about it, I still love her and might even follow her way.
He writes that article for syndication to many outlets, JWR is just one of them. It’s far from exclusive. For instance, here’s this article at TownHall.com:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/02/12/the_media_and_politics
That’s not pandering, that’s using a knowledge of history.
Why so touchy about the Germans and Hitler and Jews, ME-262?
That's okay.So she's buying 35 copies of "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)" for an extra credit book report (strictly optional).
You can post hundreds of Thomas Sowell articles without getting a whimper of disagreement from me. But on this issue Mighty Casey has struck out.It is a quibble based on the definition of the word "journalist." Professor Sowell is using the term as journalists themselves define it. A journalist defines journalism as being objective. But that is not reality, that is a mere advertising slogan. Just as calling Democrats like Barak Obama "liberal" or "progressive" is an advertising slogan having no relation to the fact that such politicians do not favor liberty and they do oppose progress (other than in the narrow, tyrannical sense that they want the government rather than the people to progress). Journalists award positive labels - advertising slogans - to themselves and to those who support journalists' self-image.
The First Amendment famously rejects government "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Everyone takes for granted that "the press" obviously existed in the Founding Era. And everyone is familiar with the usage of the term "the press" as a synonym for "journalism." We are familiar with the journalists' organization, the National Press Club. But the reality is that journalism as we know it is a modern invention. Before the invention of the telegraph and the 1848 founding of the Associated Press, the press was not a single entity as we are familiar with it; "the press" was individual, opinionated printers expressing themselves. Hamilton sponsored a paper which opposed Jefferson's policies - and Jefferson returned the favor. Nobody with access to more than one newspaper could possibly have been under the illusion that all newspapers were "objective," and in substance all alike.
The telegraph and the Associated Press - an aggressive monopoly on the telegraphic distribution of news - changed the newspaper business by giving newspapers a source of news not available to the public at large except as it was delivered to them by the newspapers. No longer did the printer get his news from the same source - travelers - as the general public did. And no longer was it sensible to have a leisurely weekly publishing schedule - or in some cases, no deadline at all. Now newspaper publishers were selling a perishable commodity, and speed getting to press was an issue.
The fact that the Associated Press was a monopoly was not unnoticed in the early days, and the AP had to defend itself from charges that it was an illegitimate concentration of propaganda power. But the AP responded that since it consisted of newspapers of various political tendencies and temperaments, it was not monolithic. No, the AP assured us, the AP was "objective." We are supposed to pass over the fact that taking your own objectivity for granted is the very definition of subjectivity. And the fact that the AP was selling news. We are not to scrutinize the implications of that; we are to take it for granted that because timely information can in particular instances be vital that all news which the AP - and whatever newspaper you happen to look at - is important in principle.
In reality, of course, news is such a perishable commodity that its purveyors cannot generally wait on the development of the whole story, but will tantalize us with sketchy reports which may be largely or entirely misleading. In fact, the extent to which a story breaks expectations - that is, seems unlikely and therefore surprising - is an important criterion in story selection. That rule is expressed as, "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man'." But if a quick preliminary report of an event is surprising, that reflects the fact that it seems unlikely - and things that seem unlikely may actually not be true. The "Duke Lacrosse Rape" story is an excellent case in point. It was always unlikely on its face, since it implied the collusion of perhaps a score of young men who each had an incentive to turn state's evidence and rat out the others - and their solidarity was impeccable. But so far as "objective" journalists were concerned, it was too
goodbad not to be true, and journalists ran with the story as if there were some plausibility to it long after the only real question was whether Nifong and Mangum were going to get away with their scam unpunished (and in the case of Mangum, the answer was "Yes").On the face of it, journalism is not objective but selects its stories because they are fresh and because they are entertaining in their novelty. Adults should know that, and if we all did no one would suggest - as even Professor Sowell does here - that journalism should be, or ever was, the "objective" endeavor which it proclaims itself to be in its own (unackowledged) advertising.
The Market for Conservative-Based News
Ann Coulter is not a journalist, and has never represented herself as such.
BTTT
Nor did I say she has.
You are right, and for one of the few times, Prof. Sowell is wrong.
The opinion then made sense when I accepted that TS is basing his argument on the ideal of journalism. The way he presents it here is not as clear of expression from him as I am used to.
If I was still single, I'd allow her to date me!
I believe you’ve got it wrong about Dr. Sowell pandering, his columns have been posted on JWR for years!
I agree, cIc.
Great post, but it still seems to me Sowell is correct.
He is not arguing that journalists are in fact “objective” all the time... otherwise he wouldn’t have used Rush Limbaugh, who is open about his biases, as an example of a journalist. He is simply arguing that journalists should strive to represent the facts as they know them honestly and to the best of their ability. Were Rush to turn on a dime and represent McCain as being a conservative on, say, energy issues, Rush would be doing the opposite.
it still seems to me Sowell is correct.
He is not arguing that journalists are in fact “objective” all the time... otherwise he wouldn’t have used Rush Limbaugh, who is open about his biases, as an example of a journalist. He is simply arguing that journalists should strive to represent the facts as they know them honestly and to the best of their ability. Were Rush to turn on a dime and represent McCain as being a conservative on, say, energy issues, Rush would be doing the opposite.
I disagree.Certainly Sowell - a hero of mine, but atypically unfocussed on this issue - does not think that journalists who claim to be objective, actually are. But he bites for the proposition that they should be objective, and that IMHO is a fallacy. The fundamental of the problem, IMHO, is that to claim objectivity is to claim wisdom - is there such a thing as "unwise objectivity?" Thus, what we see in the "objective journalist" is a sophist, and nothing more ("soph" is the Greek root for "wisdom." The "philosophical" school of thought reacted to the sophists, who claimed wisdom and used the simple logic,
You can see that this line of argument is a recipe for heat, not light.
- You disagree with me.
- I am wise.
- You are not wise, you don't even claim to be wise.
- Therfore I am right and you are wrong.
"Philo" is the Greek root for "brotherly love" and "soph" is as noted the root for "wisdom." Thus the "philosopher" is someone who does not claim unique wisdom, but who loves wisdom - accepts that wisdom exists, and is open to facts and logic. The response of the philosopher to the sophist is to say, "All very well to proclaim your own virtue - but what about the facts of the case before us?"
Journalists have undoubted propaganda power, and they exploit it; they claim objectivity for themselves and they proclaim the virtue ("liberal" and "progressive") of those who agree with them and the vice ("conservative" or "right wing") of those who do not. That is, they behave as sophists.
Conservative commentators, being at the disadvantage in propaganda power, are in no position to behave that way. Being at a power disadvantage, they have little recourse except to restrict themselves to facts and logic. Conservative commentators are in that sense philosophers.
In calling conservative commentators "journalists," Sowell errs. There is an objective difference between the two.
Journalists do not exist to get one party's candidates elected or otherwise serve one party's political interests. The public are the journalists' clientele.
Rush and Sean aren't aiming to be "journalists" and a lot of the criticism of Rush and Sean was not because they failed to endorse McCain, but instead because they failed to endorse a conservative candidate when it might have made a difference.
But, the two of them (Rush and Sean) were in the closet with Rudy and didn't have time to discover the virtue of Thompson until it was too late to stop McCain.
Amen! Sowell taught me many things but his misplaced faith in a fantastic notion of "objective journalism" seems completely wrong.
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