Journalism and Objectivity

Vanity | 11/16/2009 | Vanity

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"What they do is their business," Dobbs said yesterday. "I tried to accommodate them as best I could, but I've said for many years now that neutrality is not part of my being." [CNN boss Jonathan] Klein long believed Dobbs was at odds with CNN's desire to position itself as an opinion-free, middle-of-the-road alternative to its cable news rivals -- conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC.

Dobbs got $8M to quit
Ny Post ^ | Nov. 16, 2009 | MICHAEL SHAIN

A man once, upon learning that I'm conservative, said "You probably think that journalism isn't objective." I was shocked to find myself making a weak, defensive argument, and have thought long and hard about how I "shoulda coulda woulda" responded. My conclusion is that I should have said

• "Can we agree that I am probably subjective?"

• "Can we agree that even you might be subjective?"

• "What is subjectivity anyway? Is it anything other than a belief in one's own objectivity?"

• "Do the members of the Associated Press claim objectivity for themselves and each other?"

IMHO it would be hard to answer "No" to any of those questions - and hard to avoid the conclusion that they inexorably point to. An actual attempt at objectivity would always begin with an open consideration of the possible reasons why the writer might not be objective. And that is never seen in journalism.

The most fundamental desire of journalism is to attract an attentive audience, and to be able to exploit that ability for fun and profit. The linchpin of the influence of AP journalism being perishable news - news that will soon no longer be new - journalism inexorably presses upon the public the idea that the news is important. The more important you think the news is, the less attention you will pay to things which change less, or not at all. That is why AP journalism is inherently anti conservative. Journalism also is maximally important when there is a crisis requiring public notice and action. But of course a putative crisis "requiring" government action implies that the powers-that-be have not already taken whatever action is needed, which is why the public should attend to the journalist and influence the politician accordingly. Again that makes the journalist anti conservative.

Another way of stating the above paragraph is to note that journalism's rules include "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper," and "If it bleeds, it leads." The former rule simply says that only what the public doesn't know yet matters, and the latter says that the bad news is most important. Journalism's rules also enjoin the editor that "Man Bites Dog" is news, and "Dog Bites Man" is not news. Which means that business-as-usual is not news, and if anything is reported in the newspaper it is probably not typical of what normally characterizes society.

Most people never, in their entire lives, commit a murder or even know anyone who did commit a murder - but you will find plentiful stories about murders, and demands for the disarming of the general public, but rarely mention of how statistically rare murder actually is or how frequently the law-abiding use or, more commonly merely threaten to use, weapons to prevent crime. Likewise if our troops suffer casualties and deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan that is news - even though the overwhelming majority of our troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan without a scratch, and also with scant if any notice by journalism. All that comports with the rules of journalism - but the rules of journalism comport with the interest of journalism. The rules of journalism purport to be about the public interest, but actually are only about interesting the public. And the two things are not only different, they are often in contradiction. So we see that journalism inherently has an embedded anti conservative agenda.

Journalism goes through the motions of "getting both sides of the story" - but as long as

Half the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin Franklin

there can be no guarantee that the reporter can even see all sides of the story.

The price of any serious attempt at objectivity is to have the humility to scrutinize one's own motives. In that respect, "objective journalism" doesn't even seriously try to be objective.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Ping to my #95. I’d be delighted to have your criticism . . .

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The “news” is merely propaganda

From the founding of the Republic, any given newspaper has reflected the politics of its printer. That was understood by the authors of the Constitution, and by those who ratified the First Amendment.

What changed is that now all the printers are politically simpatico. What caused the change, and when? IMHO (after more thought over a longer period of time than I like to admit) it is the fruit of the wire services, especially the AP. The telegraph was demo’ed by Samuel Morse in 1844 - and by 1848 the predecessor to the AP was forming.

By 1875 people were raising the alarm about the propaganda power of the AP. The AP responded that its members contributed most of its content, and its members were famous for not agreeing about much of anything (which, at the time and traditionally, was true) - so the AP itself was objective.

That argument held some water at the time, but - as we all know - it is far from true today, and hasn’t been true for a very long time. In his 1776 masterpiece Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith asserted 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.” The AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all its member newspapers, and it doesn’t end at all. And is not about “merriment and diversion,” but precisely about business.

Anyone who considers that situation - and does not wish to be seen as utterly naive - would have to ask, “If journalists conspired against the public, what would be their objective and how would it manifest itself?” And Adam Smith has an answer to that, too: "The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires." - Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) Put that way, it is IMHO hard to question the fact that people go into journalism for precisely that reason.

And what would be better calculated to promote the influence of journalists than agreement among journalists

1. not to question each others’ objectivity, and

2. to (rhetorically) stone to death the career of anyone who, claiming to be a journalist, violates rule 1?

And is it not true that that constitutes practicing on the credulity of the public, and thus a conspiracy against it? The 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan SCOTUS decision famously made it extremely difficult for Democrat or Republican politicians to sue for libel or slander. If you read the decision, you learn that not only was it unanimous, and not only were the concurring decisions critical only that it didn’t go far enough, but you yourself will want to cheer the decision, given the facts before the Court at the time. The problem is not the First Amendment, is and not SCOTUS’s vindication of it in Sullivan. The problem is that wire service journalism is an Establishment. And, in point of fact, an anti-conservative Establishment.

There is not supposed to be an Establishment in America. There is only the people. Some few of the people are at any time in government - temporarily (other than a few judges), but otherwise there are people who presently own newspapers, and people who do not yet own newspapers. The First Amendment does not establish journalists as a separate category; it guarantees that anyone who will spend the money for it can buy a printing press. Journalism is neither a title of nobility nor an Established priesthood, both of which the Constitution forbids. It is not legitimately “the Fourth Estate” because there aren’t supposed to be any “Estates” here.

But nevertheless, wire service journalism does function as an Establishment. And the question that raises is, “What legal recourse might lie against it?”

• Obviously the First Amendment does not empower the government to act against journalists. Out of the question as a rationale.

• Just because 1A does not itself empower the government to control journalism, that does not necessarily mean that the people may not vindicate any rights against journalists. In fact, if you express the objective of 1A in terms of the rights of the people, 1A is understood to protect the right of the people to read (and listen to) opinions of their own choosing (the right to print being meaningless without the right of others to read).

• The crunch, then, is the extent to which journalism as an Establishment controls the ability of the people to read or listen to opinions. Journalism as Establishment tends to control the government. Does it use the government to promote its own status as the Establishment? IMHO the answer to that is yes.
  • All “campaign finance reform” legislation is based on the conceit that journalism is above politics. McCain-Feingold was upheld in McConnell v. FEC by a 5-4 SCOTUS majority, thanks to Sandra Day O’Connor (and over the objection of Anthony Kennedy). All CFR legislation is IMHO anathema to the principle that people can spend however much of their own money they wanna to promote their own ideas. CFR restricts that right to only the anointed Establishment journalism (and to self-funding politicians such as Mr. Trump). As the Wall Street Journal pointed out at the time, support for McCain-Feingold didn’t come from the public - it came from "the media.”

  • The FCC puts the government’s imprimatur on Establishment journalism, insinuating that the public should listen to it. And occasionally Democrats raise the issue of banning talk radio on one pretext or another.

  • Jim Acosta can claim that he has a WH press pass of right, and the journalism Establishment supports that claim, and so far the administration is not disposed to fight it legally.

  • My gut tells me that something is hiding in plain sight, too obvious to take note of.

• 1A doesn’t protect journalists if they commit murder; it should not protect journalists from prosecution (or civil suit) under the Sherman AntiTrust Act. The change in the cost of high-speed, long-distance information transfer from infinity (impossibility) to “very expensive” created the wire services. By now that cost has gone from “very expensive” to “dirt cheap.” The wire services are no longer “too big to fail” on that account.

I noted above that journalism is anti-conservative. The reason is that journalism is negative and, in claiming its own objectivity knowing that it is negative, it is cynical. Only a cynic thinks “negativity is objectivity.” And cynicism is the opposite of faith, and thus of conservatism.