Replies

Your reply is a reminder to me (and hopefully others) as to why FR is THE best place for news and comment; it's in part why I decloaked after a decade+ of lurking. Thank you.

Broadly, there are three impediments to MAGA continuing past 2020 (i.e., reasons why Trump could lose the election):

1. Unchecked Dem Fraud
2. Media propaganda bearing fruit
3. Deplorable inaction

Let's leave #1 & #3 alone for this thread. I think we can agree that they need to be tackled (my personal view is #3 is a greater threat than #1 and we can control #3 but, again, let's leave that alone for now).

If you're saying that there is media "collusion" in peddling Ocasio-Cortez articles, I would not be surprised if that's happening. Indeed, as I said earlier, the Cheese In the Maze strategy is the diversionary Tweet strategy that Trump used so effectively in 2017 (less so in 2018). I believe some Dem operative read LS' article and may be using the freshman congresswoman from Queens to try out that strategy on Deplorables. Sadly, I think it's working.

On your point regarding AP being broken up under Sherman, I should state up front that I am not a fan of Sherman from a Constitutional perspective. Why? Because Sherman derives its power from - wait for it! - the Commerce Clause. If the Founders really disliked such firms/enterprises, they'd have broken up the British East India operation in the US. They didn't, and thus I consider it a stretch to support Sherman on the basis of original intent, and CERTAINLY I have trouble supporting Sherman with regard to being propped up by the CC.

The AP is in a death spiral. Its revenue has fallen more than $100 million in the past five years, from $622MM in 2012 to $510 million in 2017. This is despite local papers axing their reporters and relying more on the AP to do their job. I have got to imagine a good bit of this decline comes from, as you write:

The reduction of cost of rapid transmission of information which changed first from infinite (before telegraphy) to “very expensive” - creating the value of the wire services in conserving bandwidth - has now proceeded to the stage of very cheap. And that means that wire services are no longer “too big to fail.”

....and I would add "no longer as relevant as they were." Alternative media, Twitter, and the like have effectively destroyed the need for a wire service as a news "file sharing" service.

True, conservatives and Deplorables always knew the press was no good. Indeed, Jefferson is well-known for his disdain for the press:

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224

"As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas Bidwell, 1806. ME 11:118

"Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1819. ME 15:179

That said, Trump has done more than almost any other individual to shine light on the absence of "objectivity" in "objective" places like CNN, NBC, and CBS. The numbers bear this out:

I truly believe that this nation has turned a corner on believing in journalists, reporters, and "the media." Of course, there will ALWAYS be believers, and some men you can't reach. But as flat earthers show, there will always be some baseline level of followers in any fantasy.

In this light, I think it's a waste of time and resources to "go after" the AP or network news (which is also watching its viewership numbers fall) on anti-trust grounds. I believe it'd be more prudent and yield higher dividends if instead we spend our time evangelizing our friends and family to get them to jump on the Trump Train.

Thank you for a very thoughtful reply. I have been on the “bias in the media” case since the Carter Administration. Initially I subscribed to the “Accuracy in Media” (AIM) Report - but after a year or so I was convinced of the existence of “bias in the media,” and example after example of it became a “twice-told tale.”
Ever since then my interest has been in why “the media” is “biased,” as the essential prerequisite to any possibility of addressing the problem. My conclusion is that altho “the media” includes fictional programming, there is no possibility of censoring fiction, and so the focus must be directed at topical nonfiction - i.e., journalism. And if journalism could be forced to be neutral as it pretends to be, other cultural areas would follow - at least to an extent.
OTOH it became clear to me that journalism as 1A intended to preserve it was not objective, and did not pretend to be so. And that claiming to be objective - like claiming to be wise - is actually a vice. So the question became, “When and what caused the change from the openly partisan - but for that very reason openly disputable, and in that sense fair - journalism of the founding era and the early Nineteenth Century to the equally partisan but one-sided, and made the more partisan by putative “objectivity” modern journalism.
You know that I now ascribe the change to the wire service in general and the AP in particular; I’m embarrassed to tell you how many ~~years~~ ^decades I pondered that question without ever thinking about the telegraph and the wire service. I agree that Establishment journalism is in decline, for the reasons you cite and because journalism has been doing its best to jump the shark. But it is still the commanding heights of propaganda in America. And that matters tremendously. Sad to say, but it does. Rod Rosenstein, Bob Mueller, and the top of the FBI - say nothing of Hillary Clinton as a viable politician - could not withstand the tenth part of the PR pressure to which President Trump has been subjected. Not even close. In that sense, politics as we know it is a joke. And it is a joke because journalists themselves could not withstand a moment of the kind of scrutiny they routinely impose on Republicans.
When you “quibble” about Sherman, I have two reactions:

"The best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it.” If Sherman is bad law, and if you try Establishment Journalism under it, Establishment Journalism will destroy that law.

The objective of the First Amendment is not to create a class of people known as “the press” who are above criticism and apart in that sense from the people like a nobility or a priesthood. The objective of the First Amendment is to assure that the people can read who/what they wanna. And Establishment Journalism has prejudiced not only the public but the government:

Government schools teach the objectivity of journalism.

The FEC has no legitimate mission if you accept the fact that journalism is not objective. The FCC has no business at all putting the imprimatur of the government on the broadcasting Establishment Journalism as objective fact.

And the 1964 NY Times v. Sullivan SCOTUS (9-0) decision turns the First Amendment against itself if it shields the “conspiracy against the public” which is Establishment journalism from the laws of libel when Republicans are libeled incessantly, and Democrats are never libeled. What remedy do you propose?