Conservatives have somewhat solved the confusion by using the term “Classical” liberal.the inversion of the meaning of the word [liberal] patently was intended to cause confusion
True, but that cannot be the total solution. In fact, there cannot be a total solution, as long as the socialists are in a position to continuously jerk us around with new meanings and new, deceptive words like "swiftboating."Which is why I have been so interested in the question of how to delegitimate the subversive conceit that journalism is objective . . . and why I was so excited when I recognized what should have been the obvious fact that journalism was transformed - nay, almost invented - by the Associated Press. The claim of journalistic objectivity apparently only traces to the advent of the AP, because prior to that time newspapers didn't systematically trade news reports, and didn't really have news sources that the rest of the public could not in principle have access to. So it was only the advent of the Associated Press that put the "news" in "newspaper."
The AP is a mechanism which effectively homogenized the newspapers by transforming all of them from opinion journals which also carried news into newspapers which also carry opinion. And the nonlocal news which they carry, their primary stock in trade, comes from a single source - and all newspapers have a financial stake in the idea that those reports are reliable. So, not in the interest of the public nor in the interest of truth but in the interest of the newspapers and of the AP, all journalists made the questioning the objectivity of any journalist a taboo subject. The public violation of which taboo is punished by expulsion from the fraternity of "objective journalists."
The business of the AP and all of its constituent newspapers is to seduce the public into thinking that the latest report, available only from the AP, is of crucial importance. On rare occasion - such as on 9/11/01 - that actually was arguably true. But in general, it is a gross exaggeration of the value of such reports. And it has the deleterious effect of distracting the public from things which are true and important to reports which are of lesser reliability and generally of lesser significance. And the "liberal" politician aligns himself with the propaganda wind which that bias of journalism creates.
One of the pillars of Osama's campaign is that a McCain presidency would be Bush's 3rd term. McCain has responded that an Obama presidency would be Carter's 2nd term. While McCain's response is clever and truthful, it will be largely ineffective since no one under 40 has any appreciation of how utterly wretched the Carter administration was.
. . . and Big Journalism certainly isn't about to tell them!Well journalism might say that it is not their business to "report" on 30-year-old "news" - but that simply illustrates that journalism is a bias.
It is not merely that journalism is biased in some way, compared to some putative golden age in living memory - emphasis on the new is a bias.
What was called a "newspaper" in the founding era would not be accorded that name today, because the "newspapers" of the founding era were openly partisan - and had no source of news which the general public could not in principle learn from the same sources as the printer. The telegraph and the Associated Press essentially created journalism as we know it - a genre of publication which sells information which - before the Internet, at least - was not accessible to anyone in a given newspaper's area nearly so soon by any other means than reading the paper.
Since journalism is a bias, no distinction between journalism and frank opinion - such as is embedded in McCain-Feingold - makes any constitutional sense. The free press is free to be partisan, or it is not free at all.