The Flickering Light of the News

Yet despite the absence of any objective knowledge about what had happened, pro- and anti-war news organizations, talk radio shows, columnists, pundits and blogists leapt into the void -- invincibly ignorant of what had happened -- and immediately began making powerful arguments in support of their pre-existing positions. In the middle of a vital presidential election season, millions of American voters got misinformed on perhaps the central issue of the election that is critical to our national safety (whether misinformed for or against the war, we don't know yet).

Hair-trigger-released propaganda untempered by even the existence of any objective facts that might be weighed in the balance is the epistemological culture in which presidential candidates, the media and voters are making their vital decisions.

"'Let the jury consider their verdict,' the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

"'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. 'The idea of having the sentence first!'

It's scary to think of CBS outsourcing their news gathering to CNN. Not that it would change up their view that much, but consolidation of news gathering sounds like a step in a very bad direction.

What is scary about that? The results will be pretty close to indistinguishable.

Exactly. The reality is that if you've seen one network news broadcast, you've seen them all. And if you've seen one newspaper, you've pretty much seen them all, too. The reason is quite simple - the Associated Press.
Before the advent of the telegraph and the Associated Press, newspapers didn't have news sources which the public at large did not have, at least in principle. Consequently newspapers were often weeklies, and some had no deadline at all and just went to press when the printer was good and ready. Without a source of news which was independent of the local scuttlebutt, newspapers were more openly political than anything we are used to except Radio talk shows and National Review. Political rivals Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton each sponsored a newspaper to compete politically with the other, and either of them would have laughed at the idea of "journalistic objectivity."
The telegraph and the AP transformed the newspaper business, and essentially created journalism as we know it. Since the AP was an aggressive monopoly, it had to defend itself against charges that it was a dangerous concentration of power. Its response was to note that its members included papers which didn't agree politically on anything - and that therefore the AP was objective.
The fallacy in that argument is that, even if it didn't change any paper's editorial page policy prescriptions, membership in the AP homogenized the newspapers in a very significant way. The AP made all member newspapers participants in the new business of selling news hot off the AP newswire from all over the country. And that required all newspapers to promote the conceit that all journalists everywhere were objective. An idea which in prior times every editor in the country would have laughed out of court. I propose a definition of "subjectivity" as belief in one's own objectivity.
The Market for Conservative-Based News

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.