Abolish the Wire Services

The AP wire service is old news.

. . . and in part that is precisely my point - having all major journalism outlets being “associated” - read, “in cahoots” - because of economy of scale in the transmission of news is a Nineteenth Century invention which was actually made illegal before the start of the Twentieth Century. It has survived this long only because, when challenged, it was too big to fail. With the advent of laser/fiber optic, microwave, and satellite communication technology late in the Twentieth Century, it became obsolete and is only getting more so in the Twenty First Century.
The unique feature of the AP - besides the fact that it attained critical mass in part by methods which were outlawed in 1890 - is the fact that it serves not customers but members. You don’t subscribe to the AP, you join it - and you join it not merely because you want to and have the money but also because they accept you into membership.
The members of the AP sign up for the AP Stylebook, which defines standard journalistic practice. The “pyramid layout” of a news story is standard - it requires that the most important information about a story be included up front, and less important information fills out the later part of the story. Which is unexceptionable, and sets up reader’s expectations so that the reader knows what to expect, where. But what is important? Suppose a Congressman is caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The question naturally arises, “Is it important for the reader to know the political affiliation of the congressman?” We all know how that question gets answered - by asking, “Is the miscreant as Republican?” If so, that is important information to put in the lede - if not, then it is of little or no significance.
But in addition to simple style, the Stylebook can have overt political implications when, for example, it mandates the use of the term “undocumented immigrants” and forbids the use of the term “illegal aliens.”
What the situation cries out for is the complete delegitimization of the AP model because it is entirely inconsistent with heterogeneity of journalism. Which is to say, the Associated Press is entirely inconsistent with the very reason that “the freedom of . . . the press” is protected by the Constitution. This means that the AP cannot legitimately cry “freedom of the press” if subjected to legal assault under the Sherman AntiTrust Act of 1890. The AP must be abolished - and arguably, all its members should be put on probation because of their ingrained habit of conspiring against the public. Eliminating the AP “wire” will not by itself make such conspiracy impossible. But delegitimating such conspiracy would at least be a step.
Understand, as well, that delegitimating the AP would help SCOTUS to see that NY Times v. Sullivan was wrongly decided in 1964. The error lay in assuming that because the presses were independent of government, they were independent of each other. And that therefore public figures attacked by one newspaper would be defended by another. Independent presses was the objective of the First Amendment but - due in large measure to the AP - was not the actual result which existed in 1964, and certainly is not the actual result in evidence now. If a Judge Kavanaugh - or a Judge Roy Moore, or any other Republican - is attacked by a newspaper, the response of the rest of the press is far less likely to be to express suspicion of the charges than to pile on with abandon.

I think of it this way: the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect heterogeneity of published opinion. It assays to do so by prohibiting the government from homogenizing it. It does not prohibit the pre-Civil War novelty of the major presses voluntarily homogenizing themselves, though - and that is precisely what the Associated Press and its membership have done. It started out innocently enough (by the standards of the day), with the expeditious transmission of news over the burgeoning telegraph network which Samuel Morse’ famous demo of the telegraph initiated in 1844. But, there is a problem. The AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all major US newspapers and broadcasters. And what would be the natural result of that?
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
So the AP is the fundamental mechanism by which journalists in America “go along and get along” at the expense of the public interest. To suppose that any other result could be possible after a century and a half of continuous “meeting” - meeting not about diversion but precisely about the conduct of business - is utterly naive. And that is why we have “the media” - a misbegotten expression which simultaneously complains that all journalism is homogeneous, and uses the plural form “media.” Editorial pages can and do vary - but the body of the paper is homogenous bad news (and advertisements).
The First Amendment obviously does not prohibit private institutions from homogenizing the media, but it does not authorize that, either. It was not contemplated as a possibility in the Eighteenth Century, or - I would argue - it would have banned it. Because the objective was that the people be free to access the opinions of others, as a general good. Nevertheless, the First Amendment does not protect monopolistic behavior in the “trade” of journalism. And the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits monopoly behavior by anyone.

Mr. Trump should sue the whole MSM - that is, the Associated Press and its members, joint and several liability for libel. Calling for SCOTUS to recognize that

Although 1A explicitly requires that the government not homogenize journalism, the purpose of 1A was and is that journalism not be homogenized .By anyone.

Therefore 1a does not insulate any institution which homogenizes journalism from any otherwise applicable law. Whether comprised of journalists or anyone else.

The Associated Press “wire” is a virtual meeting of all members of the AP - in being for over a century and a half - and in accordance with Adam Smith’s prediction
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Wealth of Nations (1776)
the resulting opportunity for the members of the AP to conspire against the public has proved an irresistible temptation. The AP and its members politically “go along and get along,” systematically slandering society and the free choices of Americans, and anyone who appreciates and politically defends freedom of choice. Although the government did not create or control the AP, the AP and its membership long ago coalesced into a de facto political party promoting government expansion.

The 1964 NY Times v. Sullivan decision makes it equally difficult for politicians in favor of government expansion and politicians opposed to government expansion to sue for libel. But this is fair in precisely the same sense as a law against sleeping under bridges applies equally to rich or poor. Because Democrats never need to sue for libel, and Republicans frequently do - but Sullivan inhibits their doing so. Sullivan is predicated on the idea that if one newspaper attacks a politician, another newspaper will defend him/her. In reality, as many books attest, if one newspaper attacks a Republican, the others pile on with abandon - trusting that Sulivan protects them from libel law. Sullivan must be negated as a precedent, and Mr. Trump’s libel suit must go forward.
The Associated Press has the virtue of conserving telegraphy bandwidth in the dissemination of the news - and the vice of homogenizing journalism. Telegraphy bandwidth is now dirt cheap, and ideological diversity in journalism - the very purpose of 1A - is thin on the ground. The AP must be disbanded.

re: the hope that under President Trump the Republican Party might be truly the party of the middle class.

My hobby horse is “the media,” and the whys, wherefores, and vulnerabilities of it.
IMHO “the media” is actually

The Associated Press

The membership of the Associated Press, and

The FCC.
According to Adam Smith,
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Wealth of Nations (1776)
. . . and the AP “wire” is - in modern parlance - a virtual meeting of the AP and its membership. That “meeting” has been ongoing since before the Civil War - well over 1½ centuries. It would be a miracle if, in all that time, no conspiracy against the public had been hatched and become so ingrained in the culture of the AP and of each of its member newspapers &c. that it is second nature - just “what is.”
I put it to you that the inherent tendency of all journalists is to criticize society by pointing out everything that goes wrong, real and sometimes imaginary. And that Thomas Paine was correct in pointing out that the only rationale for public support of government - despite the fact that government is dangerous and expensive - is the recognition of the imperfections of society which government exists to control. That is, journalism inherently tends to promote - propagandize if you will - for more government to control all the evil which journalism ferrets out (or perhaps imagines) in free society. So if you take "people of the same trade” of journalism and place them in an infinitely long meeting among themselves, the “conspiracy against the public” which is likely to arise is one which promotes their ability to propagandize for big government and against free and independent people in society.
And the central plank of the way that is done is the elimination of ideological competition among journalists. All journalists go along and get along with all other journalists who do not conspicuously deviate from the party line. Those who go along are “objective,” anyone who does not, is “not objective, not a journalist.” Just another way of saying, “our perspective is right, and disagreement with us is beneath contempt."
The First Amendment forbids the government from abridging “the freedom of speech, or of the press.” But if you expand the problem, from a modern perspective you would forbid not only the government but any private organization from homogenizing the perspectives which the people can hear or read. The people are not mushrooms, and have a right to not be "kept in the dark and fed HS.” Well, 1A is specifically limited to controlling the government. Fine, but that does not mean that 1A protects private actors from laws such as the Sherman AntiTrust Act which can protect the public from being kept in the dark by private organizations.
The bottom line is that “the media” should have its socks sued off for systematically posturing as “the umpire” while systematically behaving as if it were part of the Democrat Party. The Associated Press was founded on the virtue of economy of scale in the transmission of news over expensive telegraph bandwidth. But it has the signal vice of functioning as the enabler of a conspiracy against the public and its right to access to wide viewpoint heterogeneity. The fact that it consists entirely of journalists is no defense against that charge and, with the advent of modern communications technology, the “virtue” of conservation of telegraphy bandwidth has become trivial. The AP should be sued into oblivion.
The 1964 NY Times v. Sullivan SCOTUS decision makes it difficult for Democrats and Republicans to sue for libel. It was predicated on the assumption that if one newspaper attacked a public figure, another newspaper would defend him. In reality, if one newspaper attacks a Republican, all other newspapers pile on with abandon. Whereas if one newspaper attacks a Democrat - well, that doesn’t happen. The upshot is that NY Times v. Sullivan is a evenhanded between Democrats and Republicans as a law against sleeping under bridges is evenhanded between rich and poor people. Sullivan must be overturned, so that journalists (e.g., members of the AP) who are accustomed to acting as if libel laws were a rumor will have to get serious about fact checking. Which won’t happen until someone tests Sullivan by suing as if it didn’t exist.
The FCC enters the picture primarily as enablers of broadcast journalism which postures as “objective” while actually functioning as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. It must be sued and forced to agree to strictly avoid putting the imprimatur of the government on Democrat propaganda.
What has that to do with "the hope that under President Trump the Republican Party might be truly the party of the middle class? Everything, in the sense that all those suits which I propose need a plaintiff - and the only plaintiff that would really make sense would be a Trump Republican Party.

The media have hurt many, many people in society, and both rationalize and justify their irresponsible and dangerous behaviors by invoking the first amendment - all the while trampling on the rights of others, ruining lives, and supporting suppression of the first amendment rights of those they disagree with.

They have propagated hatred against many, but now cry foul as they are criticized in society. No one is advocating for violence against journalists. Many are, however, advocating for a ‘redo’ of the media, with a focus on truth and neutrality. They have applauded the ‘reform’ of so many things and professions in society, but now balk when it has become irrefutably clear that it is way past time for reform of their vehicle for stature and relevancy. - neverevergiveup

Establishment journalists, like judges (I’m looking at Justice Roberts, but also at the SCOTUS “injunction” in Bush v. Gore against using the fact that SCOTUS found that the Supreme Court of Florida had been cooking the books for Gore as precedent for the proposition that sometimes courts are not objective), affect to believe their professional colleagues to be objective, no matter what.
The First Amendment does not aim to create a journalism establishment; to the contrary it aims to keep members of the press independent. 1A explicitly, of course, makes journalists independent of government - but then, the authors of 1A had no example of the sort of non-governmental monopoly journalism which arose in the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

does not establish a ceiling over the rights of the people. Rather, as

Amendment 9:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

makes plain, it is to be understood only as a floor under our rights.
Since the people had independent newspaper printers at the time of the ratification of 1A, and 1A intended to keep that situation, I argue that the people had (and we still have) a right to independent newspaper printers (and speakers) - and that a law against monopoly which was valid to break up Standard Oil is valid to break up a journalism monopoly. And that the First Amendment is not a defense against a suit under the Sherman AntiTrust Act against monopoly journalism.
What is the monopoly which transformed journalism in the second half of the Nineteenth Century? The Associated Press. Why? Because the AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all major journalism in America. And because
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
It is naive in the extreme to assume that, in over a century and a half, journalists have never found any incentive to practice on the credulity of the public. They have - and they do so precisely by posturing as objective when in fact they are knowingly negative. Anyone who thinks “negativity is objectivity” is a cynic.

The business model of commercial, general-audience journalism is to attract and keep attention - for fun and profit - by systematically reporting, and systematically emphasizing, bad news. That fact is encapsulated in the newsroom saying, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Another way of putting it is to say that journalism reports plans of improvement - but with no great emphasis - but it reports unexpected problems fulfilling those plans with relish and enthusiasm.
The effect of that is that while the big picture may be that society is building a great city, journalism's depiction will be of a place where houses are burning down. In short, journalism is systematically negative about society and its (individual) leaders.
But the flip side of that is that
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Journalism’s default is to propagandize against American society and, ipso facto, to propagandize for unlimited government. And altho in the founding era, and Gilded Age, newspaper printers were fractiously independent and famously didn’t agree about much of anything, technological innovation planted the seeds of change to that in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. That innovation was the telegraph (demonstrated by Morse in 1844) and the wire service (1848 for the AP). The AP, incidentally, doesn’t serve “customers,” it serves members - printers who join the AP. If, that is, they are accepted into membership.
The real novelty of the AP, hiding behind the fact that it enables newspapers to report news from far-flung places “instantaneously” (in historical terms), is the fact that The AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all its members . The effect has been what Adam Smith would have predicted:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
It thus requires profound naiveté to assume that “people of the same trade” of journalism have, after their virtual meeting has been in continuous effect for over a century and a half, found no occasion to engage in any “conspiracy against the public.” In point of fact, they have an obvious motive staring us all in the face:

The motive of journalists, as journalists, is their desire to be paid attention to and to be believed.
And that means that journalists have the motive to go along and get along, ideologically - to claim objectivity for members of their community in good standing, and to read any dissenter among them out of the group. And since as noted above journalism is negative towards society and positive towards government, the default posture of journalists is to promote government and denigrate society. Including “so confound[ing] society [a blessing] with government [an evil], as to leave little or no distinction between them." That makes them perfect propagandists for socialism. And the Democrat Party effectively exists to go along and get along with journalism.
Thus, any charge against a Republican will be piled on by all journalists, and by Democrat politicians as well. "The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .” A subtlety of that formulation is, per Antonin Scalia, the definite article “the” preceding “freedom. Justice Scalia explained that freedom of speech already existed in the [newly united] states and so did limitations such as laws against slander and libel. Had the First Amendment merely said “freedom” rather than “the freedom,” it could have been read to legalize slander and libel - but that was not the intention of the amendment.
And that fact implies that

Amendment 9:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

can be properly understood as protecting our right to redress if we are libeled or slandered. And the whole problem I am addressing is the fact that we are not being protected from libel. We face a propaganda machine which turns the concern addressed by the First Amendment on its head - not that the government unifies journalism against us as the AntiFederalists feared, but that due to technological innovation journalism has unified itself to control the government - and, not so incidentally, to libel us.
The First Amendment intended to preclude the unification of journalism against liberty, and thus against diversity of thought. And therefore it is not legitimately a defense of the unification of journalism against liberty, and thus against diversity of thought. The Sherman AntiTrust Act of 1890 is valid against the unification of journalistic enterprises no less so than against Standard Oil, or any other “conspiracy in restraint of trade.” A lawsuit must be filed under Sherman, demanding triple damages, and alleging torts of such magnitude that the Associated Press (and any other wire service) is financially ruined. Historically the wire services were “too big to fail.” Their great advantage lay in its economizing on expensive telegraphy bandwidth in the dissemination of the news. But since formerly expensive bandwidth is now dirt cheap, their advantage to the public has been technologically nullified and now they are little more than a conspiracy against the public. They have to go.
As to the members of the AP, they must be forcefully put on notice that the laws of libel are in full force. That means that SCOTUS must overrule the NY Times v. Sullivan decision which makes it very difficult for politicians to sue for libel - a decision which applies to Democrats and Republicans alike, in precisely the same way that, famously, a law against sleeping under bridges applies to rich and poor alike. Because Democrats don’t get libeled, and Republicans are libeled as a matter of course. Because the First Amendment intended to preserve the founding era milieu in which “printers famously didn’t agree about much of anything,” SCOTUS in 1964 made its Sullivan ruling on the basis that it had preserved it. That is a fallacy.
Finally, all regulatory agencies of the government must withdraw from any implication that journalism’s claims of objectivity have the imprimatur of the government in any way. In the first instance, the FCC must eliminate any such implication, which affects the way broadcast licenses are justified. The Federal Election Commission - well, the FEC is unconstitutional, root and branch. “Campaign Finance Reform” laws such as McCain-Feingold are incoherent if seen through the lens of free and independent presses having no governmental imprimatur as well as no governmental interference. Such laws essentially elevate certain people - whom the government officially sanctions as journalists - to a status where their money spent promoting their political ideas is clean, and yours is dirty. The plain intent of the Constitution in ruling out titles of nobility and ruling out priesthoods in government-sponsored religions is that your money is as good as that of the owner of the NY Times.

When the media is fake, and it shares pre-planned talking points with one political party, the nature of the reporting related to eerily-similar invasions will depend entirely upon which party controls the White House.

Again, all of which just proves exactly how clear-eyed President Trump really is when he tags the fake news media as the Enemies of the People.

Antonin Scalia pointed out that the First Amendment does not protect “freedom of the Press” in an absolute sense - the actual formulation is, “the freedom . . . of the press.” The difference Justice Scalia explained, is that “the freedom . . . of the press” refers specifically to the freedom and the limitations applicable there to (read, the laws of libel) the press enjoyed when the First Amendment was written. This, IMHO, implies constitutional recognition of the right of the people not to be libeled. A right not explicit in the Bill of Rights but a clear example of a right which existed before the ratification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and which, under the doctrine of the Ninth Amendment, is not extinguished by either.
And if you think about it, the right not to be libeled is precisely what needs to be vindicated in court. This requires a lawsuit against the guilty parties, by the offended party(s). Demanding restitution on a scale sufficient to end the abuses. The guilty parties are, IMHO, centrally the Associated Press and its members individually. Because they have conspired - over the AP “wire,” and otherwise - to mount a massive propaganda campaign against those they have chosen as their enemies. Those “enemies” are, essentially, the Republican Party, and anyone else who defends society against unlimited government.
The First Amendment is not a defense against lawsuit or prosecution under the Sherman AntiTrust Act of 1890. Because the objective of 1A is not simply to protect journalists from the government but to protect the public from journalism which is unified and able and willing to promote the government over the liberties of the people. Strictly protecting journalism from government would free journalism from punishment under the laws of libel. The wire services in general and the AP in particular now have the unification of journalism as their primary effect. Their nominal justification came with the advent of expensive telegraphy bandwidth which they economized on - and went with the advent of dirt cheap telegraphy bandwidth which is not worth conserving. The wire services are therefore simply an abomination under Sherman. Punitive damages should put them out of business.
As for the individual journalism outlets, they must be disciplined to revert back from mere “outlets” to actual producers of editorial content - and prevented from continuing their predation on opponents of unlimited government by the overturning of the misbegotten 1964 NY Times v. Sullivan decision. Sullivan makes it very difficult for politicians to sue for libel, on grounds that if one newspaper attacks a politician, another newspaper will defend him. On grounds, that is, that the First Amendment accomplishes its objective of keeping journalism a business of fractiously independent printers. But, primarily IMHO because of the wire services, it presently does not accomplish that objective. And until and unless that situation is reversed, Sullivan is as evenhanded between Democrats and Republicans as a law against sleeping under bridges is applicable to rich and poor alike. Democrats don’t get libeled; Republicans routinely do.
SCOTUS has work to do with the regulatory agencies as well. The FCC must be required to handle licensing of broadcasters in a way that keeps the imprimatur of the government off of journalism and its claims of objectivity. And the FEC - predicated as it is on the conceit that the money of the owner of the New York Times is politically “clean,” and your money and mine is politically “dirty” - is unconstitutional and must be abolished.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3703872/posts?page=35#35

What we are faced with is a propaganda war, and we are all too close to defenseless in it.
I speak, of course, of “the media.” IMHO there is a remedy, which can be implemented but should have been done “yesterday.” The Republican Party has been libeled systematically and viciously by American journalism, and it must sue for damages in the billions of dollars.
Theoretically anyone can sue for damages, but not just anyone has a specific claim of a specific tort which would really matter. It has to be the Republican Party. Of course, the pre-Trump Republican Party would never have tried such a thing. But as a centaur is a man with the body of a horse, and a mermaid is a maiden with the body of a fish, Donald Trump is a seemingly mythological creature. He is a Republican with the chutzpah of a Democrat. He needs to get this ball rolling.
Anyone can file a lawsuit, but the objection is that the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision makes it difficult for any politician, or even a judge, to sue for libel. This is true - and not only so, but that 1964 decision was unanimous, with concurring opinions wanting to make it even stronger. Not only is that the case but - I warrant - a panel of judges picked by Donald Trump today would decide the same case the same way tomorrow.
Why then do I suggest a lawsuit which would be “doomed to fail?” Because the case to be brought would neither allege the same facts nor plead for the same relief as the Sullivan case did. And it would attack “the media” under a different law - antitrust law.
You and I know that “the media” is a cabal which conspires against the public by ganging up on Republican politicians, and letting Democrats off ~~easy~~ ^completely.. But it can be shown that that is precisely what should be expected of journalism as it exists today. Not only can voluminous evidence of this fact - already compiled by existing organizations such as Brent Bozell Media Research Center - be adduced, but it is easy to show that journalists have ample motive and ample opportunity to conspire against the public in precisely that way.
As to motive, journalism operates under the rule for commercial success which states, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Journalism is systematically negative, such that society might easily build an entire city with little notice from journalism except for the occasions when buildings burn down. All journalists know, therefore, that journalism is negative. And yet journalists claim that journalism is objective. The claim that “negativity is objectivity,” however, can only be made by a cynic. Why then would journalists claim objectivity? Because they want to be influential (and commercially successful).
The trouble with being objective is that it is difficult to the point of impossibility, on the one hand, and against human nature, on the other. It is against human nature, because anyone who has an opinion thinks that opinion is right - or it wouldn’t be his/her opinion. The only way to try to be objective is to analyze that opinion from the point of view that where you stand is probably affected by where you sit. This is uncomfortable, and that makes it hard work. And that is not what journalists do. Given the opportunity, journalists collude to claim objectivity, and collude to destroy the reputation of anyone who questions their objectivity.
And journalists have the opportunity, in spades. It is the air they breathe. In the founding era, and into the late Nineteenth Century, newspapers were primarily about the opinions of their printers (much as the Rush Limbaugh show is about the opinions of Rush Limbaugh), and nobody would have seriously suggested that they were objective. And that is the sort of journalism the authors of the Constitution and First Amendment were familiar with.
The telegraph was demo’d by Samuel Morse in 1844, and the first wire service began in 1848. This quickly morphed into the Associated Press, and by the 1870s concern began to be expressed over its concentration of propaganda power. The AP’s response to the charge was to assert that it essentially consisted of its - and its member newspapers notoriously did not agree about much of anything. At the time, there was truth to that argument - and the value of the wire service in disseminating information quickly throughout the country while conserving expensive telegraphy bandwidth was unquestioned.
But the AP “wire” constituted a virtual meeting of a critical mass of American journalists. And as Adam Smith warned in Wealth of Nations (1776), “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Although the Associated Press Stylebook institutionalized some useful standardization (such as the “pyramid” organization of news stories which demands that the most important information appear early in any story), it can also have direct political implications (such as the insistence that illegal aliens not be called “illegal aliens”).
The “meeting” created by “the wire" gradually became the air that journalists breathe. And the motive to cooperate - the motive of going along and getting along ideologically, and being seen as “objective,” transformed American journalism from an assortment of ideologically idiosyncratic purveyors of opinion (and secondarily information) into the ideological monolith with which we are all to painfully acquainted. All major journalism institutions all insinuate cynicism towards society, which conservatism considers to be fundamentally OK and in need of little guidance from government. And concomitantly, they project naiveté towards government (of which conservatism is suspicious).
The Republican Party must therefore sue wire service journalism (especially the AP, emphatically including its member newspapers). All wire services have the same sort of homogenizing effect, and all journalists share the motivation of being considered objective - and share the fear of the wrath of the cartel if they challenge any other journalist’s objectivity. So the fact that there are multiple wire services does not change the dynamic which, arguably, the AP was best positioned to start but need not be the only support of the system in being. Journalism which is in a de facto cartel does not compete, and functions to promote its interests, and those of the Democrat Party.
The upshot is that the journalism cartel pushes for “campaign finance reform” to decrease the ability of outsiders to oppose its agenda, and in other ways promotes the conceit that, far from being ordinary citizens, journalists in good standing with the cartel are “the Fourth Estate,” with rights that you and I do not enjoy.
The New York Times v. Sullivan case presented entirely different facts. The losing plaintiff, a Southern Democrat, was an unsympathetic figure, and the Times didn’t even write the ad of which the plaintiff complained. And the ad did not even attack the plaintiff by name. There was no implication of conspiracy among journalists as a class.
Collusion among journalists to obviate ideological competition among them is provable factually, and it is explicable theoretically. Not just an individual newspaper here or there but the whole of journalism must be sued for libeling the whole of the Republican Party. Because that is what has been going on for half a century and more. The wire services are engines of “conspiracy against the public,” and - in the wake of the development of fiber optics, lasers, and microwaves and satellites - wire service journalism doesn’t save important money in the dissemination of the news. Wire services should be forced to transform, or disband.
New York Times v. Sullivan to the contrary notwithstanding, SCOTUS can do it. But the Republican Party has to bring the case.

If you posted your comment as-is, it would look like ...
To: rktman; Lloyd Marcus
Uh, demoncrats——morality? Does not compute!
Exactly LLoyd’s point.
Democrats know fake news media will help them feed the American people any bogus narrative they desire. This emboldens Democrats to lie with impunity, be hypocritical, and lecture us about morality. The truth is that the Democrats’ agenda is the height of immorality, evil from the pits of hell.
It’s a full-on propaganda war against American traditions and American society. The only response I see having a hope of reining it in would be for the Republican Party—the Trump Republican Party;mdash;to sue “the media” (read, “the AP and its members individually and collectively, and all other wire services, and the FEC and the FCC”) for antitrust violation in the prosecution of a conspiracy against the public, and the Republican Party in particular.
Journalists have been conspiring against Republicans for so long that they have no recognition of the limitations of their right to do so. But the right to sue for libel preexisted the First Amendment, and is not abolished by it (1A speaks of the freedom of the press, not unqualified absolute freedom of the press).

Journalists rely on the 1964 NY Times v. Sullivan decision as near-absolute protection from libel suits by Republican politicians, but Sullivan - tho a unanimous decision - did not consider antitrust concerns at all, and did not consider the abuse of psychoanalysis to “recover” (actually manufacture) memories which are then used to libel Republicans.

The most prominent recent case was of course the Kavenaugh hearing, which was not it a court and not subject to SCOTUS. But the same thing was involved in the destruction of Roy Moore’s reputation. The use of “recovered” memory to justify a hit piece should be understood as prima facie evidence that the charge is false. Because the memory was not accessible without psychoanalysis, and the rules of legal proceedings are foreign to the process of psychoanalysis, what comes out of psychoanalysis - although it is a memory in the sense that it is indistinguishable by the patient from other memories - is fatally tainted by the procedure used to evoke it. And the process is hidden behind a veil of HIPPA.

It is often claimed that journalism is “the first draft of history.” So much the worse, if so, for history. Because rules such as “If it bleeds, it leads,” “‘Man Bites Dog,’ not ‘Dog Bites Man’,” “Always meet your deadline,” and “There’s nothing more worthless than yesterday’s newspaper” filter historical perspective out of the news. Journalism is emphatically not historical perspective. For that reason, the perspective of journalism is inherently at odds with that of conservatism. The 1964 Sullivan decision predates most of the controversies which have arisen over “bias in the media.” People weren’t saying that journalism was a monopoly, or that journalism was hostile to conservatism - but they are now, and they are right.

Sullivan can’t be overturned, but it can and must be marginalized in light of what it did not consider at all. And what has hit more than one sitting SCOTUS Justice squarely on the nose. Courts are supposed to be conservative. They exist to preserve the rights of the people, not to create law. The right to sue for libel, having preexisted the Constitution and not having been suppressed explicitly by the Constitution, is recognized in the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution and must be available to Republicans. The fact that Democrats never get libeled, and thus don’t need the right to sue over libel and are happy to oppose that right, does not properly extinguish that right.

Alinsky’s rules work with the backing of propaganda.
The 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision was unanimous, with two positive and no negative concurrences. Sullivan is a literal interpretation of the black letter of the First Amendment, which says that the government cannot take control of all the presses and thereby promote its interests at the expense of the right of the people to read/listen to opinions/facts contrary to the preferences of government officials. As such, it is perfectly unexceptionable; you couldn’t possibly present SCOTUS with the same facts today, and get a different conclusion.
And yet the effect of Sullivan is pernicious. Why? Because facts not before SCOTUS in 1964 - facts easily demonstrable today - have meant that journalism unanimously favors Alinskyism and opposes constitutionalism. And that journalism - I speak here of national, wire-service-derived, journalism - disproportionately pushes society, and the government, away from constitutional limited government. There are clear reasons for this development. Journalism is unanimous, because journalists are in cahoots to enforce ideological conformity.
Journalists - all people - want to be influential, and journalists therefore have every reason to want to be seen as fonts of wisdom. And yet since the time of Plato, philosophers have known that claiming to be wise is arrogant, and a form of propaganda (links, to breif etymological dictionary definitions, are recommended reading). Rather than claiming wisdom, therefore, journalists have joined together in a sort of mutual admiration society, whose rule is that no ideological diversity exists in journalism. If anyone challenges the objectivity of any journalist in good standing in the group, that person’s reputation will be brought under that society’s unanimous condemnation - and you know what they say about getting into an argument with people "who buy ink by the carload.”
By that mechanism, journalism claims objectivity for itself, and suppresses internal dissent. Which theoretically would be wonderful, if in fact journalism were objective - but journalists know for a fact that they are negative. Journalists are trained to emphasize negative, atypical stories - and lots of them. “If it bleeds, it leads.” “‘Man Bites Dog,’ not ‘Dog Bites Man’.” "Always make your deadline. There’s nothing more worthless than yesterday’s newspaper.” Thus, the claim that journalism is objective is effectively a claim that “negativity is objectivity.” But the claim that “negativity is objectivity” is the very definition of cynicism.
Cynicism is an antonym for “faith,” and is hostility towards conservatism. Although modern “liberals” - actually, socialists - like to use the term “society” when they mean government, government exists only to minimize perceived failings of society. “Society” is more nearly an antonym than a synonym for “government” (see the first paragraph of Common Sense). Journalism is negative, not towards government, but towards society. In fact journalism’s cynicism towards society corresponds to actual naiveté towards government.
The irony of the Constitution is that although it creates a government, it creates limits to that very government. Thus conservatism consists not only in supporting that government, but also in defending the rights of individuals and states against encroachment by that very government. Naiveté towards that government is thus corrosive to the balance which the Constitution strikes. Journalism as we know it is corrosive of liberty . . . and that is a fact not presented to SCOTUS in the Sullivan case.
But obviously, a legal rationale is necessary for SCOTUS to change the presumption created by Sullivan. That rationale exists in the “conspiracy against the public” which is constituted by the "mutual admiration society” aspect of journalism as I have described it. As exemplified in the Associated Press and its membership, wire service journalism constitutes a continuous virtual meeting of journalists spanning a century and a half, and
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith
The case must be made that the wire services are a standing violation of the antitrust laws. The Associated Press formed almost instantly after the demonstration of the telegraph, and wire services were a natural fit with the sudden availability - at a high cost - of instantaneous transmission of news over distance. Accordingly, even when the AP was found to be in violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act in 1945, the AP was considered “too big to fail.” The difference now is that “expensive” telegraphy bandwidth is now dirt cheap - two bucks and conserving telegraphy bandwidth buys you a cup of coffee.
SCOTUS must find that members of the AP are not independent of the AP, of each other, and ultimately not independent of any other journalist participating in any other wire service. Thus, a report from one wire service journalist is not presumptively independent confirmation of a report from any other. And repeating some other journalist’s libel is not a defense. And journalism is not presumptively independent of the Democrat Party, either. In fact, journalism produces a propaganda wind, and it is only natural that a political party should align itself with journalism’s ideological tendency. Therefore no agency of the government (e.g., the FCC and especially the FEC) can function on the assumption of journalistic objectivity.
Because journalism is not independent of the Democrat Party, the effect of Sullivan - the effect of suppressing the ability of politicians to sue for libel - is far from apolitical in effect. Just as a law against sleeping under bridges - altho applicable to rich and poor alike - actually affects only the poor, the ability or inability to sue for libel affects only Republicans. Democrats don’t get libeled. There was no suggestion of this fact, AFAIK, in the case brought by Sullivan against the NY Times in 1964. It was not nearly as well established at that time as it is now, and Mr. Sullivan was a (Southern) Democrat.
The Republican Party should bring action in federal court to assert the above facts and implications.

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