”If it bleeds, it leads.” All journalists know full well that they are systematically on the lookout for bad news and negativity about society. Death: Reality vs. Reported illustrates the point very nicely.In 2016 the three biggest causes of death in America were Heart Disease, Cancer, and “Road, Falls, and Accidents." At 30.2%, 29.5%, and 7.6% respectively, the three accounted for two thirds of all deaths in 2016. But deaths in those categories do not reflect particularly poorly on society, do not arouse demands for government action on any sort of emergency basis - and got less than 1/5 of the news coverage of deaths in America in 2016.
OTOH, in 2016 the three leading cause of stories about death - judged by prominence in The New York Times and The Guardian - were Terrorism, Homicide, and Suicide. Terrorism. At more than 33%, more than 22% and more than 10.6% respectively, deaths in those categories get almost 2/3 of the coverage of deaths in 2016, even though they represent less than 3% (<0.01%, 0.9%, and 1.8%, respectively) of all actual deaths in 2016.
The obvious reason is that such deaths do reflect on the society in which they occur and, not coincidentally, they can be used to suggest the need for emergency government action. And that the perspective of journalism is that society’s failings are important - and that journalists are the ones to identify those failings and to guide the necessary government correctives.
A century ago, “liberalism” was the word for the perspective now called “conservative.” Since those who had motive and opportunity (that would be journalists, for those of you keeping score) essentially inverted the meaning of the word (in the 1920s), “liberal” has, de facto but, implausibly, denyedly, meant nothing other than “in accord with the perspective of journalism.” Political “liberals” simply go along and get along with journalism’s egoistic self-regard.
“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.”—Alexander Hamilton“Liberal” rhetoric is anti-society, pro-government activism. Neither more nor less.
This whole scam of unprovable scandalous charges against Bret Kavanaugh is an artifact of the fact that judges do not sue for libel. The 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision says, in so many words, that judges cannot sue for libel. That decision by the Warren Court was unanimous - IMHO, unanimously wrong.Although the plaintiff Sullivan was a Democrat, that is deceptive because he was a Southern Democrat - a breed of the sort which fought the Republicans in the Civil War, but also in bad odor with Democrat liberals in 1964.
In the 1920s the journalism cartel essentially inverted the meaning of the term “liberal” from “agreeing with Jim Robinson” to its implausibly denied (by journalists) modern connotation: “agreeing with, and going along and getting along perfectly with, the perspective of journalism.” And there are not now any Democrat politicians other than “liberals.”
The upshot is that Democrats don’t get libeled - but conservatives do. Thus, the Sullivan rule that it’s easier for a camel to go thru the eye of a needle than for a politician to get a hearing for his libel complaint doesn’t affect Democrats at all - and is ruinous to the reputations of conservative politicians and their adherents.
In Sullivan, SCOTUS claimed that the First Amendment gave the press freedom from legal constraint on libeling politicians, but that is untrue. The plain fact is that the Bill of Rights - see the plain text of the Ninth Amendment - was strictly conservative in that it gave no one any new right. Think: how would the composers of the Bill of Rights have gone about gaining consensus for the creation of new rights??? They patently did not try - their objective rather was to provide assurance to the AntiFederalists that the Constitution did not change anyone’s rights in any way not explicit in the text of the Constitution.
As Scalia noted, the meaning of the phrase “the freedom . . . of the press” is different from the simple “freedom . . . of the press” would have been. “The” freedom of the press was the freedom which existed before the Constitution was ratified. Freedom, that is, within the constraints of traditional laws against libel and pornography. Thus the right of a plaintiff to sue for libel - unenumerated but plainly implied in 1A - is not changed but protected by the Bill of Rights. The Warren Court claim that the First Amendment reduced the right of a politician or judge to sue for libel is therefore unfounded. To reach their desired conclusion SCOTUS would have to have shown that restriction of politicians’ rights to sue for libel preexisted the Constitution and the First Amendment.
Absent the visionary dissent by freshman Justice Antonin Scalia, the 1988 Morrison v. Olson decision would also have been unanimous. But although it has never been overturned, Morrison is considered to have been delegitimated by history, and worthless as precedent. Why should anyone suppose it impossible that the Warren Court, lacking as it did an Antonin Scalia, could have been unanimously wrong???