The Right to Know

If there is anything that has disgusted me over the past few years, it has been the way the media is merely an extension of the Democrat Party. It’s like living in the USSR.

Indeed; understanding that phenomenon has been my major interest for quite a long time.
My conclusions are:

Nobody can safely take their own, or anyone else's, objectivity for granted. Indeed, taking one's own objectivity for granted is precisely what subjectivity is, and that's the opposite of objectivity.
The only way to attempt objectivity is to eschew any claim of objectivity and to explicitly disclose any interest one may have in any case they discuss. This journalists never do; they are far too busy promoting themselves to ever do that.
Yet journalists do have identifiable interests apart from the public interest:
- promoting themselves,
- raising alarums over the results of everyone else's decisions/actions - everyone who does not flatter journalists, that is, and
- reciprocating the flattery of those who flatter journalists. This explains the relationship between journalists and those whom journalism labels "moderate" or "liberal" or "progressive".
It follows that journalists, all protestations of dispassion notwithstanding, are not even trying to be objective.
Journalism as a profession was not ideologically homogeneous in the founding era but it is ideologically homogeneous today - and has been for well over a century. The reason for the change is hiding in plain sight - News service journalism. The Associated Press (founded in 1848 as The New York Associated Press) is monopolistic, and it functions as a Borg which gives the journalist what he wants - an endless stream of news which the public hasn't heard yet, and the suppression of any competition over objectivity. All at the cost, not only of money, but the surrender of the independence to be able to question the objectivity of any other journalist.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2696817/posts?page=2

This proves that smarta$$ is not a journalist but a liberal propagandist, which means he is simply a very subtle, useful tool of left-wing propagandists, an "advance party" if you will.

I like your post.
But I have a quibble about language. You say, "smarta$$ is not a journalist," but then you say, "[he is] a liberal propagandist, which means he is simply a very subtle, useful tool of left-wing propagandists, an "advance party" if you will. "

My point is simply that the wire services in general and the Associated Press in particular united journalism around the self-interest of journalism itself. Journalism is just talk, and

the self interest of journalism is that its talk is taken to be more important than the action taken by others to provide food, clothing, shelter, security, energy, and so forth.
This explains why journalism is able to maintain the fatuous conceit of its own objectivity, despite the obvious realtity that journalism is at most part of the truth, and "Half the truth is often a great lie." You can print "both sides of the story" without necessarily getting at the truth of the matter, and that happens all the time. Because the perspective of the journalist defines what he thinks the two sides of the story are. Which may be irrelevant to what is actually going on. And the very fact that the journalist claims to be objective (or, what is the same thing, suffers others to claim it for him) proves that the journalist is not even trying to be objective.
Ironically, it is possible to attempt to be objective only by being open about any reasons why you might not be objective. And claiming to be objective is the very opposite of scrupulously examining your own motives and being open about how they (inevitably) influence your perspective. Therefore,

no "objective journalist" is even trying to actually be objective.
It would be wonderful if we could count on objective information for the mere price of a newspaper. Alas, it is impossible. There can be no substitute for exercising your own judgement. "Anyone who tells you anything else is selling something."
The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .
It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam Smith

Because the wire services unified journalism, journalism speaks with a single voice (I discount the editorial pages as being a peripheral issue, which function primarily to "position" the rest of the newspaper as being objective). Since journalism speaks with a single voice, there are natural propaganda advantages to agreeing with that unified journalistic voice. So if you don't have any principles other than your own self interest, the path of least resistance is to become a politician who promotes whatever the journalistic voice finds convenient. You can then count on that journalistic voice to give you favorable labels and give your opposition consistently unfavorable PR.

So when you say someone is a propagandist rather than a journalist, you give undue credit to journalism as a profession. Journalism is propaganda.
Journalism and Objectivity
Is Cain Able? (refreshingly honest about not knowing but..)
HeyMiller ^ | Monday June 6, 2011 | John Miller

The GOP is the victim (willing or unwilling) of collobrative efforts by the dems and the media far too often.

~~The GOP~~ America is the victim of the propaganda campaign, ongoing since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary, to the effect that journalism is objective. Journalism has never been objective and, ironically, is least able to approach objectivity when it is most able to project the image of objectivity.
Note, when I say "journalism" there is a planted axiom in the construct - the idea that journalism is monolithic. That is, journalism has many facades but a single voice. The unity of journalism is the membership of the wire services, especially the Associated Press. The Associated Press was held by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act back in 1945. And no wonder; the wire services homogenize journalism by claiming that journalists are objective in order to maximize the value of the wire service feed to its membership - and if all journalists are objective, they must share the perspective which journalism as a whole projects.
The rules of journalism - "Man Bites Dog, not Dog Bites Man," "If it bleeds, it leads," and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper, (i.e., make your deadline)" are all rules, not of objectivity but of entertainment value. They are rules for making your newspaper profitable. IOW, the rules of journalism promote the self-interest of journalism. And the very last word which would actually describe someone who confuses their own selfish interest with objectivity is, well, "objective."
So we have a highly tendentious and self-interested journalism, falsely but effectively projecting an image of objectivity and public spiritedness. What would you expect politicians to do in that environment? You would certainly expect that a lot of politicians would go along to get along with that prevailing propaganda wind. And you would expect that journalism would award positive labels to such politicians - and would apply negative labels to their opponents:

Moderation being a classical virtue, you might not be surprised to learn, for example, that journalism-favored politicians might be called "moderate" or "centrist" - and disfavored politicians might be called "out of the mainstream," "right wing," "extreme," or even "right wing extremist."

"Liberty" being the watchword of the American founding generation, you might expect that journalist-favored politicians might be called "liberal" - and disfavored politicians would not be so designated.

The possibility of progress being a defining characteristic of the Enlightenment (and the Constitution being a quintessential Enlightenment project), you might expect journalism-favored politicians to be called "progressive" - and disfavored politicians to be called "conservative."
. . . and you would be entirely correct.
The problem is not journalists selling out to socialists - the problem is that, in the wire service milieu, self-selected journalists are socialists.
The Associated Press was instituted in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, early in the era of electronic communication, and its natural function was to economize on telegraphy bandwidth by sharing the same feed over many newspapers. In the Internet era, that mission is obsolete. I should not wonder if Free Republic alone had more bandwidth capability now than the AP did in 1945. So what was "too big to fail" in 1945 should be vulnerable to serious antitrust challenge in 2011.

The behavior of journalism is explained by Adam Smith - partly in Wealth of Nations, and partly in Theory of Moral Sentiments. The applicable quote from the latter is
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.
The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect.
That is the default assumption and perspective of the journalist, about the public at large. The public, journalists believe in their gut, is a bunch of boobs to be impressed and led by their betters. Namely, them:
But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Journalists employ rank sophistry to position themselves as our betters; they engage in Monday morning quarterbacking on a grand scale to insinuate that anyone other than the specialists in a field could do a better job than the specialists in that field, if only they were as well-intentioned as the journalist is. Nobody would trust their own liver to the ministrations of a journalist in the operating room, but the journalist seeks to promote his own reputation above that of the surgeon by claiming that doctors do unnecessary operations to pad their own wallets. And if that sounds like something a “liberal” politician such as Obama might say - well, in Karl Marx’s formulation, that is no accident, comrades.
Journalists use claims of their own (or, what is the same thing, each others’) objectivity to precisely the same purpose and intent that the ancient Sophists used their claims of superior wisdom. If the Sophist is wise, or if the journalist is objective, the person who is not a Sophist or a journalist would seem to have no standing to question them. And appearances are what journalists are all about. In reality it is unwise for anyone to assume his own wisdom, and it is not objective of anyone to assume her own objectivity.
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. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)
It is said that “This problem, when solved, will be simple.” And so it is with the question as to why modern journalists never engage in ideological competition, as journalists of earlier times notoriously did. The answer is the telegraph - the telegraph and the wire services, notably the AP. For the AP is nothing other than a virtual meeting of all the major journalism outlets in America.
Adam Smith is correct - a meeting of “competitive” journalists which has been in continuous operation since before the Civil War, and which is not about “merriment or diversion” but precisely about business, could not have failed to produce “a conspiracy against the public.” A conspiracy which is not content merely to systematically omit mention of certain salient facts, but which will actually lie in furtherance of its own interest and against the public interest.

At the time the Bill of Rights was verified, journalists were not credentialed in any serious way. - FredZarguna

They aren’t now, either. They have “Codes of Ethics,” it’s true - but they claim to be objective. Now claiming to try to be objective is entirely unobjectionable, even laudable if it is sincere. But claiming actually to be objective is sophistry. Why? Because “sophistry” comes from the term “Sophist” - Greek for “wise man.” The Ancient Sophists used claims of their own superior wisdom to suppress debate. Debates are pretty unsatisfactory if they go, “I am wise and you are not. Therefore I am right and you are wrong.” The classical response to this line of “argument” was to claim to love wisdom but to eschew claiming actually to be wise. That’s the source of the term “philosopher” - philo = "lover of," sophy = “wisdom."
The philosopher did not claim wisdom, only to love wisdom - accepting the existence of truth, and seeking after it. That is, the philosopher’s position was, “Spare me the ad hominem attacks and the arrogance, and let’s get down to the facts and logic as they relate to the issue at hand.” And that is the appropriate response to the journalist’s claim of objectivity, which is intended to suppress your willingness and ability to stand up for the truth when the journalist is (whether by commission or by omission). lying.
De facto, a claim of objectivity is no different from a claim of wisdom. Either one constitutes sophistry.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3113271/posts?page=9#9

Great to see you in fine form, Swordmaker.

If you didn’t know anything else about AGW but the fact that advocates of the theory demand cessation of the use of coal in the US - but are mute about the frenetic rate of construction of coal-fired plants in China (and elsewhere in Asia) - you would know that it is a political ploy intended to damage liberalism.
By “liberalism” I of course mean what F.A. Hayek, writing in Britain during WWII, meant by the term. I.e., precisely the opposite of the fraudulent post-1930 American usage in which the term is a synonym for socialism.
Theodore Roosevelt was articulating liberalism, circa 1910, in his famous speech at the Sarbonne:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds
IMHO post-1930 “liberalism” is accurately defined by the perfect inversion of TR’s meaning:
It is the critic ; the man who points out how others could have done things better; who counts. The credit does not belong to the individual, who “didn’t do that,” and who falsely claims the credit implied in the status of ownership.
When put that way, it is should be obvious that the contempt which 1910 liberals (we) feel for “the MSM” derives from the fact that
It is journalists who “didn’t do that” - they have never even tried to, and can’t actually relate to anyone who ever actually even did try to, do anything. But what defines their nature - and what they therefore obsessively do - is criticize.
Having located the reason for the fact that journalism = socialism, we turn to the reason why the effect of the socialistic tendency inherent in journalism is and must be as homogenous and powerful as it is:
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. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Hence we are reliably informed not only that the mere fact that journalists, as “people of the same trade," read each other’s output is a serious and fundamental problem for us, but that every organization of journalists must exacerbate that problem. All of which compounds the (as shown above, inherent) tendency of journalists to promote socialism. To promote, that is, an ideology whose inherent nature is a conspiracy against the (pre-1920 liberal) order which the Constitution defines as the public interest.
There are organizations, and then there are organizations. There is a “National Press Club,” and there is “The Committee to Protect Journalists,” and no doubt there are numerous other journalism organizations with high-sounding titles. But the true root of all organization of modern journalism is the wire service. Any and every wire service, without exception. But the granddaddy of them all is the Associated Press.

News Over the Wires:
The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897
by Menahem Blondheim
describes the aggressively monopolistic rise of the AP. And I have seen it credibly mentioned on the Internet that in 1945 the AP was found guilty of violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by SCOTUS. But it wouldn’t matter if none of that were true - it is the mere fact that it is an organization of journalists - an intimate association capable of instantaneously communicating with all of major journalism, and of giving direction to them all in a “stylebook” as to how things are to be expressed, what expressions are taboo, and what makes a good story - which makes it a mortal threat to the order (everywhere but America, and in America as well before 1920, called liberalism) which is the public interest.
In 1945 when the AP was held in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, it was “too big to fail” due to the value then inherent in the conservation of transmission bandwidth, which was the legitimate mission of any wire service, in the communication of the news. But this is 2014, deep into the Internet era. This era is defined by technologies which practically eliminate the cost of the bandwidth which the transmission of the news requires - with or without the AP et. al.
It is one thing to speak, in frustration, of the homogeneous negativity of “the MSM,” and it is quite another to have the wit to finger “The Associated Press and its membership” as a single entity which is responsible for the industrial production of libel against any target it can “fix and freeze” as representative of the (pre-1920 liberal) order which is constitutionally mandated and which history has confirmed to be the public interest. IMHO the next person, or any recent person (e.g., George Zimmerman) or group (e.g., the Duke Lacrosse Team defendants) should launch a massive suit against "the Associated Press et. al” - alleging antitrust violation and RICO treble damages in the pattern of corrupt libel of themselves and of the constitutional order as a whole. And calling for damages sufficient to ruin the AP.
The Internet can disseminate the news, thank you very much. Claims of objectivity - not commendable efforts toward objectivity, but claims actually to be objective - are actually admissions of lack of objectivity about one’s own self. Such claims rebut themselves.

Maybe Gowdy or someone with oversight of the federal election laws can look into whether the operating budget of the major news organizations can be considered a contribution to the Democrat party. With coordination like we currently have, all the news is a PR release for the Democrats.

It’s simple . . . from the founding era up to the Civil War era, newspapers were about the opinions of their printers, as much or more than about the news. What changed in the Civil War era? The advent of the telegraph and the Associated Press. And any other wire service you can name, the AP is just the biggest and most monopolistic of the bunch. The legitimate mission of the wire service is to economically share news over expensive telegraph bandwidth. But the wire service concomitantly functions as a continuous virtual meeting of the newspapers which belong to it - and therein lies the rub:
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
In plain sight, the wire services - basically, the AP - functions as “a conspiracy against the public” by journalists. A conspiracy to promote journalists above the public by creating the impression that journalists are superior beings who are objective. But what is the journalist? journalists are critics rather than doers. The wire service journalist is an ordinary citizen telling you what went wrong when people other than journalists (and their acolytes) were in charge. Back in 1910, before the meaning of the word “liberalism” was inverted (in the 1920s, according to Safire’s New Political Dictionary), Theodore Rooseveltfamously asserted that
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . . who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . .
In saying that, Roosevelt was articulating liberalism., as the word was then understood (and as it continued to be understood outside the US). The “liberalism” we are used to is the precise opposite of that; according to “liberalism,” the critic is the only one who counts, because nothing actually matters except PR. The perfect inversion of “the credit belongs to the man in the arena” is,
“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”
Political correctness, AKA “liberalism,” is the natural thought process of the journalist. Everything has to be wrong to the extent that it is controlled or executed by people who work to a bottom line in an effort to win credit by deeds rather than words. The long and the short of the matter is that freedom of the press is subverted by wire services. Because “the press” is homogenized into a single entity, and the newspapers are no longer about the divergent opinions of the printers but about wire service copy. In this milieu you don’t become a printer unless you are simpatico with wire service journalism. So we have the irony that “our free press” is not a defender of the First Amendment. In fact, “our free press” was the driving force behind “campaign finance reform” because it weakens the ability of others to compete with “our” unified “free” press in promoting or opposing candidates.
Back when Senator Bill Bradley was promoting “Campaign Finance Reform” on the grounds that “the poor man’s soap box” couldn’t compete with “the rich man’s wallet,” the Internet was in its infancy. But in reality, it is wire service journalism which is “the rich man’s wallet” - and it has been since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary. And it is the Internet which is now “the poor man’s soap box.” And even the ads by truly rich people like the Koch brothers can’t compete on level ground with wire service journalism backed up by FCC broadcasting licenses.
It is a joke to take campaign finance regulation seriously as constitutionally legitimate. Campaign finance regulation is inimical to freedom of speech and of the press.

There is no such thing as a low risk, high reward strategy for a politician - except to be a “liberal." The reason for that is simple; there is a notional distinction only, and no difference, between a “liberal” and an “objective” journalist. Journalism is criticism; journalists never are responsible for getting anything done, all they do is report what went wrong when others had authority. Consequently journalists are the natural political enemies of the people who actually try to do things.
And journalists are the natural allies of anyone else whose forte is criticism. Therefore journalists assign to their fellow critics positive labels such as “moderate,” “progressive,” or “liberal” - labels which are actually descriptive of those whom they malign as “conservative”).
All major journalism outlets have behaved in this manner ever since the advent of the Associated Press in the mid-to-late Nineteenth Century. The wire services in general, and the AP in particular, transformed Nineteenth Century journalism from a cacophony of independent political voices into a politically homogenous left-wing institution. Which it has been, since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary.
All “Campaign Finance Reform” laws are based on the fatuous premise that journalism is objective. The Federal Election Commission is unconstitutional. Not only so, but since journalism is highly tendentious, and since there is no ideological diversity in wire service journalism, the promotion of journalism in broadcasting “in the public interest” is also unconstitutional.

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