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The filmmakers use real footage of Couric and then cut in Julianne Moore's fake Palin. Other reviews note that Steve Schmidt's actual Palin-trashing, "Game Change" book-promoting interview on "60 Minutes" is the exclamation point at the end of the film. HBO is merging their leftist "docudrama" with real liberal-bias "news" clips to leave one unmissable point: Never vote for Sarah Palin. Ever. For anything.

HBO wants to paint the Democrats as the valiant heroes and paint the Republicans as the paranoid crazy women. Nobody needs to wait until March to wonder whether HBO is ridiculous when it puts out a statement calling this movie “a balanced portrayal of the McCain/Palin campaign."
Asserting that Mr. Obama is a better president than Gov. Palin would be is, however incorrect by my lights, merely free speech. However, there is a line which HBO is oblivious to and has blithely crossed - a line between opinion, on the one hand, and reckless disregard of the truth with intent to cause harm to someone, on the other. One thing to say, even to dramatize, the opinion that John McCain “knew” that Palin was paying “too much” attention to Rush Limbaugh. But when they mix real footage with dramatization, and even more when they advertise their hit job as "a balanced portrayal of the McCain/Palin campaign,” IMHO they have set themselves up for a lawsuit. If Governor Palin isn’t running for political office this year, she could do a great deal of good by suing HBO and the Associated Press and its membership for their very socks.
Why the Associated Press? Because HBO would rely on the hit jobs of the AP and its membership in order to claim that they had reason to believe that it was OK to make the claims that they did. And because (back in 1945) the AP was found by SCOTUS to be a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust law. The AP is the central culprit, because it provides cover for the rest of the publicity machine. The AP and its membership also subjects all our politicians to its flattery (“liberals,” “moderates,” “progressives”) and derision (“right wing,” “conservative). It was the AP and its membership which pushed through the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold “law.” And it is the AP and its membership which profits (in increased effectiveness of its flattery and derision) by it.

HBO's Palin Pollution
Townhall.com | February 24, 2012 | Brent Bozell

PS I don't drop this card often, but I have three degrees including a graduate level degree in Engineering with a focus on quantum mechanics and one NOT in science. And my IQ can't be measured on a standard test. So I am not some ignorant redneck. You, however, are a true example of ignorant stupidity.

Your trouble is that, for all your diligence and your intelligence, you aren’t a member of the clique. Your knowledge counts for nothing in the centralized propaganda discussion, because that is controlled by the "idiot left dolt” and his friends who have the printing presses and the broadcast studios.
Which all trace back to the development of the telegraph and the concomitant growth of America’s brain cancer, the Associated Press. The AP (and any competitive wire services, my analysis does not depend on the fact that the AP was aggressively monopolistic and was found to be in violation of the the Sherman Antitrust Act back in 1945) has the inevitable effect of homogenizing journalism down a common denominator. If you want to be a reporter, you want people to read what you write. The AP makes it possible for people across the country to read what that reporter writes provided it fits the template of the least common denominator of journalism.
And the “least common denominator” in question is the need of all journalists to attract attention so they can sell advertising. So journalism declares itself (note the singular, which is appropriate because all major journalism is joined at the hip via the AP “wire”) to be objective, so as to maximize the credulity of the unthinking. If you think for a moment, of course, you realize that subjectivity, the opposite of objectivity, lies precisely in failing to recognize the extent to which your own upbringing, culture, education, and experience and interest enable you to perceive certain things and prevent you from readily apprehending other, possibly more important, things.
Objectivity is not the natural default position for anyone, and the only way you can even attempt to be objective is to be upfront about any and all known reasons why you might not be objective. Thus, declaring yourself to be objective (or being a member of an organization that declares its members to be objective) is the precise opposite of actually trying to be objective.
There being, as I take it, no such thing as “unwise objectivity,” I cannot undertake to parse the difference between “objectivity” as journalists claim it, and “wisdom,” as the ancient Greek Sophists claimed it. We take from the Sophists the term sophistry, as a term of opprobrium. Journalists and their “objectivity” deserve no better.

What Democrats say Republicans believe as undeniable "How to talk To Republicans”
NJ.com ^ | May 12, 2012 | Jason Stanford

Let us . . . ask first of all, whether any history can be written objectively. Is it possible for a historian to write a historical account without a bias of any kind? No. Every historian is limited by his philosophical and cultural assumptions. Every historian comes to his task with certain guiding principles that he thinks are true or valuable or helpful. These guiding principles cause him to interpret the history he records. He cannot help but make value judgements on the actions he records. Furthermore, those value judgements are in effect in every aspect of the historian’s work. How does he choose which period of history to work on? How does he choose which events are momentous? How does he choose how to prioritize the events he records? How does he select the important personages and events from the past? As soon as he selects something to write about or study he is giving it prominence and therefore expressing his bias. The only way history can be “objective” is if it is a list of events in chronological order. The historian who is so naive as to imagine that he is not biased is even more compromised because his bias is invisible to him and therefore all the more influential.
Given the fact that the study of history must be biased, it is much better therefore if the pretense of objectivity is dropped. Much clearer if we know ahead of time that a historical study is written from a particular point of view. We can then make allowances for the bias and read other works from other perspectives to achieve balance. If I know that a particular historian is a Marxist or a feminist or a post-modern atheist I will understand their bias on history and the more they are open about it, while still trying to be as objective as possible, the better will the exercise be.
Discussing the tendency toward bias is an excellent way to attempt objectivity. Indeed, I would argue that it is the only way to attempt objectivity, and that taking one’s own objectivity for granted is the very definition of its opposite, subjectivity.

If one reads the quoted text and substitutes the term “journalist” for “historian,” one sees that journalism as we have known it all our lives is utterly corrupt. For the wire services have no choice but to claim objectivity for themselves and for the faceless reporters in distant scenes of sensational events. Continuously maintaining a culture of presumed objectivity for a century and a half, from the middle of the Nineteenth Century foundation of the AP on, has one inevitable result - homogenization of perspective among journalists. Just as inevitably, that homogenized perspective of journalism is self-serving.
Who can control their own tongue? And who can do so, when they “buy ink by the carload” - and everyone else who does the same is careful not to point out your bias, because they share it? The inevitable result is that wire service journalism tends to slander anyone who does not go along and get along with it. And that wire service journalism tends to inflate the reputation of anyone who does toady up to wire service journalism. The observable result is that people who set talk and criticism above action - second guessers - are praised as “objective” if they work as journalists, and as “progressive” or “liberal” if they are politicians. Americans, who believe in liberty and progress, are attracted to ideas labeled “progressive” or “liberal” - and are put off by labels such as “conservative” or “right wing."
Are the Gospels Historical?
Standing on my Head blog | 07/15/2012 | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Kinda reminds me, though, of the times when threads are pulled on various conservative sites.

Every publication is edited for a target audience. When you post on FR, it is Jim Robinson who is exercising his freedom of the press, and he and his moderators do the editing by pulling comments or whole threads as they deem appropriate to their target audience. It’s not necessary for you to submit to that “censorship,” of course - you can just make your own web site. And try to draw an audience to it . . .

exactly the same thing can apply to the entire media, old and new.

. . . with the very minor difference that in the case of the “old media” - that is, pseudo objective journalism, in whatever medium - there is a monopoly (the AP) involved. Actually, in the case of broadcast journalism, there is the matter of outright government licensing of the press involved as well.
It is true that there is some “competition” in the delivery of news to journalism outlets by other wire services, but the critical point is that in principle wire services homogenize journalism, no matter how many wire services there may be.
Before the advent of the telegraph and the AP, newspapers were mostly weeklies, and got their news largely the same way the general public did - from other newspapers, and by word of mouth. Consequently newspapers were very much about their individual printers’ viewpoints - in the mold of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. Newspapers were notoriously partisan, and didn’t agree on much of anything.

Then came the telegraph, and the Associated Press. If you wanted to operate a telegraph, you needed two things:

money, and
a right of way to string your line.
Once you had your financing, the next thing you did was to offer free command, control, and communication services to a railroad - and the railroad would give you rights to string your cable next to the track. But how do you get the money? The AP will give you a lucrative contract to send AP news over your line. That contract gives you your baseline of funding which enables you to get up and running. If you can sell private messaging too, you will even make money. But as far as competitive news services, forget it - you have contracted to send AP news exclusively.
That’s the way the AP monopolized wire service. On the other end, the AP was the only game in town if you wanted to have a major newspaper. You paid the big bucks, and in exchange you had a cornucopia of news stories gushing out of the wire. People would consider themselves ignorant if they had not seen your newspaper today. But, what were those reports? Who even wrote them? The editor of your newspaper doesn’t even know these guys, let alone employ them. How can your readers trust that stuff?
Ah, my friend, that is the easy part. You have to tell your readers that all reporters are objective. And if anyone questions you, you just say that the AP is a group of newspapers, and everyone knows that newspapers don’t agree about anything. So the AP is objective - and if anyone tells you different, why, they themselves are not journalists, not objective.
Of course everyone who thinks about it knows that the only way to even try to be objective is to be open and honest about all the reasons you can think of that you might not be objective. And that when you are saying you actually are objective you are avoiding that first step in actually trying to be objective. If you know yourself to be objective, you cannot give “both sides of the story” without patronizing the side with which you do not agree. After all, you are objective, and they are not, right?
But that’s OK - hey, you are a grownup; you know the score. You know the people are like sheep, they’ll believe anything you tell them. Just sign here, and you are part of the objective crowd. If you stay out of it - hey, everyone will know that you aren’t objective. We’ll see to that. And remember, stick with the program - I’m objective, you are objective, everyone on the inside is objective - and nobody who thinks any different is anybody at all. You go along and get along - or else you are out of business. Just sign here - and don’t forget to pay your dues.
Whatever barriers you perceive to entry into the field of web opinionating pale into insignificance compared with the barriers to entry into print journalism - say nothing of the barriers to entry into broadcasting. Hey, we all think our own opinions are important. But “a man’s gotta know his limitations.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911163/posts?page=27

The media covers for them. The media is 50% of the problem.

The media is 100% of the problem.
Evil is not a problem - you find it, you destroy it. It's inherently weak - that's why it hides.

LYING about evil, however - now THAT'S a problem!

Yes. And another part of the problem is the mislabeling of “the media.” The problem isn’t the medium used, whether print or broadcast - the problem is the nature of journalism as we know it. The nature, that is, of the wire service.
In the founding era, newspapers were mostly weeklies, and some newspapers had no deadline at all, and just went to press when the printer was good and ready. They had no communication technology which was not accessible to the public at large, and by the time the newspaper came out on Wednesday (say) you might very well already know any news which reached the printer shortly after press time the previous Tuesday night. From the same sources the printer had. Consequently, newspapers were as much about the printer’s take on the news as they were about the news itself. IOW, newspaper printers were more like today’s talk radio hosts than like today’s “objective” journalists.
But with the wire services (and a single one, the AP, has always dominated by its own monopolistic design), journalism became homogenized. All major outlets have the same information feed, and the reporters working for the individual members of the AP aspire to have their stories picked up by other outlets nationwide. They conform their formats and their slant on their stories to the Associated Press template. And since the individual editors don’t even know, much less supervise, reporters who contribute stories to their papers via the newswire, the whole operation of wire service journalism hinges on the shared assumptions of its membership.
It is a cult.
Like all cults, it conflates its own interest with the public good. The cult of “objective” wire service journalism places the promotion of the interests intrinsic to journalism - the desire for attention, prosperity, and influence - above the interests of individual people and against the cumulative interests of people generally.
The cult of wire service journalism requires that the public assume that its priests are objective, so its membership promotes that absurd proposition incessantly. To claim objectivity - even to belong to a group which claims objectivity for you - is to foreclose the very possibility of seriously attempting to be objective. Because belief in your own objectivity is the defining characteristic of its opposite, subjectivity. No one can do the real work of attempting objectivity - no one can openly lay out the reasons why he or she might not be objective - and simultaneously claim that they actually are objective.
The cult of “objective” journalism places bad news - places criticism, condemnation, and complaint - on a plane far above getting your hands dirty by actually trying to do something. "The man who is actually in the arena” gets no respect from the cult of criticism, condemnation, and complaint.
The cult of “objective” journalism places novelty far above accuracy. Consequently “There’s nothing more worthless than yesterday’s Newspaper.” The cult of superficial attention-grabbing defines a big story as always “Man Bites Dog,” not “Dog Bites Man.”
The cult of “objective” journalism flatters anyone who promotes journalism’s ego, and heaps derision on anyone who openly considers other principles and constituencies to be more important than the cult of journalism. “Objective” journalism flatters its acolytes by calling them “liberal” or “progressive” - and derides its skeptics with terms like “conservative” and “right wing extremists.” And, during the Soviet era, “Cold Warriors.”
There is no objectivity in “objective” journalism. “Objective journalism” is a propaganda cult. One which successfully cons a very great number of Americans. Most of us have fallen for the con, at least some of the time . . .
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
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2914293/posts

"Paul Ryan represent[s] Obama's most horrifying nightmare: math."
Wire service journalism, with its hegemony over the public understanding, is the worst nightmare of the framers of the Constitution. Wire service journalism gives the illusion of omniscience to its practitioners, and gulls the public into supposing that it is not necessary to trouble to do the hard work of actually thinking for themselves. If you can buy “objectivity” for the price of a newspaper, why bother?

People who stop to ponder what claims of objectivity actually mean might notice the similarity to the claims of superior wisdom made by the Sophists of ancient Greece - Sophists became notorious for their slippery argumentation, and the root of the English word “sophistry.”
Belief in the inherent objectivity of journalists is founded on precisely no logic, but only on the assumption that there is ideological competition among newspapers. Unfortunately that was killed in the Nineteenth Century the wire services in general and the AP in particular. There are of course various editorial page positions among the various newspapers - but the planted axiom of the claim of the inherent objectivity of reporters is that “the news” is a matter solely of fact and not at all a matter of perspective. But since no one expects newspapers to document everything that happens, and since “Half the truth is often a great lie,” perspective is an ineluctable component of the printing or omission of any report of any event.
The newspapers - whatever the political perspective of the editorial page editor might be - have to promote the conceit of the objectivity of journalism, because the paper pays serious money for the AP membership and access to “the wire,” and it needs the public to believe the reports it gets from the AP. Notwithstanding the fact that the management of the newspaper printing those reports doesn’t even know, much less supervise, the journalists composing those reports. In effect, “the wire” is a continuous, 24/7 virtual “meeting” of the Associated Press and all of its membership. And as Adam Smith put it,
"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices."
The natural effect of the AP is to make the interests of journalism - its desire for influence chief among them - the coin of the realm of public discussion of the issues. If AP journalism doesn’t talk about something, how can it possibly be a public issue? Journalists specialize in criticizing and second guessing the people and institutions upon whom the public depends. This is easy, because executives make decisions and take risks, and risks sometimes turn out to be mistakes. But the self-conceit of journalists is that their criticism is more important than the goods and services delivered by those they criticize.
All politicians are subject to flattery by the AP if they promote the self-conceit of journalists, and to derision if they do not. Starting with the application of positive labels such as “liberal” and “progressive” or negative labels such as “conservative” or “right wing” (and make no mistake, “conservative” is meant as a negative label just as surely as an advertiser means to promote his product by calling it “New!”).
Obama’s most horrifying nightmare is not math, it is the possibility that a majority of the voting public will actually think.
Paul Ryan and the Triumph of Math
American Thinker ^ | August 12, 2012 | Clarice Feldman

It is far too much to be a coincidence that the Politico and NBC have ties, sometimes in the same bed, to Democrat and leftwing activists and then hop out of bed on the same page as the Democrats’ talking points.

There is no need to point out such linkages to convince a philosopher of the fact that such linkages are possible in principle. After all, if Mary Matlin and James Carville can be married, why can’t a Democrat and an “objective” reporter? But are they likely in practice? Yes, because

”the media” (a plural noun) “is” (a singular verb) is a misnomer. The true meaning intended is journalism is, because
- journalism is nonfiction, and sells itself as objective and true, and
- ”journalism” is singular rather than plural because the “various” journalism outlets are joined at the hip via the Associated Press newswire.
The unity of journalism produces a “propaganda wind” in favor of journalism’s own interests, namely, the desire (and need) to exploit the AP newswire to promote journalism as a source of wisdom (which journalists call “objectivity” in their case). Because “the wire” does not transmit wisdom but mere ephemeral facts (and or misstatements), journalism emphasizes novelty rather than enduring values. Because journalism needs the attention of the public to sell ads and to promote its influence, journalism emphasizes dramatic negative reports over gradual positive ones such as construction.
The existence of a political party which aligns itself with journalism's propaganda wind at its back is only to be expected - it takes courage and principle to oppose it. It is only to be expected that journalism will flatter politicians who align themselves with journalism by awarding those politicians with positive labels such as “progressive,” “moderate,” or “liberal” - and deride their opponents with negative labels such as “conservative” and “right wing” (Note that “conservatives” are the ones who favor such progress for the people as fracking and less limited drilling, and “progressives” are the ones who oppose it).
is the media coordinating on race baiting?

George Stephanopolous of ABC News used to be a strategist for Bill Clinton and even after becoming Chief Washington Correspondent still engaged in regular conversations with Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, and Paul Begala from the Clinton days. (Ironic, isn’t it, that John Harris wrote that story)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2012/10/10/vp-debate-moderator-martha-raddatz-friends-obama-wedding#ixzz28taWWfqY
Journalism has a perspective. Journalism’s interest lies in promoting itself at the expense of the people who work to a bottom line - those upon whom we depend, not for mere talk, but for food, clothing, shelter, security, fuel, etc. Those people are "the man who is actually in the arena,” and journalists are merely critics. So why do journalists cozy up to “liberal” politicians? The question answers itself - socialism is nothing other than the political expression of the sentiments which journalists are inherently motivated to promote.
Whoever signs up to be a “liberal” is cozying up to journalism. And is rewarded with positive labels such as “moderate,” “centrist,” “progressive,” or “liberal.” All of which belong in scare quotes, because what a journalist calls “liberal” has nothing to do with promoting liberty, what the journalist calls “progressive” has nothing to do with progress (at least, not progress of, by, and for the people, as the Constitution contemplates) and so on. All those labels are mere euphemisms for socialist. The only positive label journalists do not assign to socialists is “objective.” That label they reserve to themselves. But it is a distinction without a difference, as the above description of George Stephanopolous amply illustrates. It is only a question of what hat a particular socialist happens to wear. And of course “objective” belongs in scare quotes, because in the nature of things no one can know that he or she is actually objective.
A diligent effort to attempt to be objective is of course laudable - but then, any actual effort to attempt objectivity must begin with openness about one’s own motives and interests. And discussion of journalists’ motives - to interest the public and to promote themselves - is politically incorrect, and taboo. It follows that a journalism which calls itself “objective” is anything but objective about itself. There is no reason in logic why I should accept journalism’s self-hype about “objectivity.”
The alert reader may object that I have spoken of journalism in the singular, and take no account of diversity of journalism outlets, and of the (very few) newspapers with conservative (in American political context, a negative label) editorial pages. My answer to that is 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. 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. - Wealth of nations, Book I, Ch 10
And all major news outlets belong to wire services, principally the Associated Press. The newswire represents a virtual “meeting” of all major journalism outlets - one which has been running continuously since the Civil War era. I do not pretend that all newspapers express the exact same attitude on their editorial pages - but on the front page and the body of the paper, they do. And they call their uniform and politically correct slant “objective."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2942683/posts

Anyone have a link to a good, short article that explains why communism is bad? I’d like to give it to come college students who have spent most of their education being brainwashed by idiot leftists.

Obviously people who have been "brainwashed” cannot be convinced by a short article. FA Hayek wrote his classic refutation of socialism/communism during WWII, and it was a sensation in America (Hayek wrote in Britain) when The Road to Serfdom
(Link to the Readers' Digest Condensed Version in PDF!) was published while Hayek was sailing to America for what had been expected to be a routine author’s tour promoting his book - but which played to overflow audiences everywhere.
Serfdom is filled with topical references to people who were famous at the time but are now little remembered - but you could focus on the chapter entitled (IIRC) “Why the Worst Get on Top.” It treats a fundamental fallacy of Communism - the bland assumption that a dictatorial government will naturally be run by well-meaning people. The Black Book of Communism - Crimes, Terror, Repression is a validation of Hayek’s thesis on this point.
The Wikipedia link above also mentions the similarity of Communism and Naziism; Serfdom hammers the similarities, and discusses the nuances of difference, heavily. Writing before the death camps were public knowledge, Hayek predicted, on the basis of the public knowledge of the Gulag (as Solzenitsen later styled it), that revolting systematic crimes by the Nazis would be come to light.

Of course propaganda is central to communism and other forms of socialism, including our own “democracy” in which shocking portions of the public at large can be systematically diverted from significant facts about the government, and can be convinced of fantastic improbabilities like the idea that Mitt Romney is a criminal. My own theory on the “brainwashed” problem is that our journalism is propagandistic because it can be, no other explanation is necessary. Why wouldn’t it be, if it had opportunity? And my theory on the reason journalism has the opportunity is because journalism is unified. Journalism it is unified because
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, Book I, Ch 10
And of all people, journalists “meet together,” at least virtually, more than anyone. The Associated Press newswire is nothing but a continuous, 24/7 virtual meeting which determines what is, and what is not, news.
IMHO propaganda always has to begin with sophistry. The term “sophistry” comes from the Greek word “Sophist” denoting a party which claimed superior wisdom. Such a claim leads to very short, very unsatisfying arguments: I am wise, you are not. Therefore I am right, and you are wrong.” Claiming wisdom came into very bad odor on that account. The school which rose up in competition with the Sophists was the Philosophers. Philosophers eschewed a claim of wisdom, but claimed only to love wisdom - thus, to be open to arguments based on facts and logic. AP members claim “objectivity” for all AP members - and IMHO “objectivity,” as they use the term, is merely code for the Sophists’ claim of “wisdom.” Another way of saying that is to assert that it is inherently impossible to know that you are objective, and that anyone who claims actual objectivity - instead of having the humility to limit oneself to claiming to try to be objective - is guilty of arrogance. And a claim of trying to be objective must be backed up by explicit admission of the known reasons why you might not be objective. Sincere admission of the possibility of failure in the quest for objectivity, of course, is logically incompatible with membership in an organization - Associated Press, exhibit A - which you know will claim that you actually are objective.
Why is journalism’s propaganda leftist? My theory is that the internal logic of any institution which does nothing except criticize, condemn, and complain is and can only be socialism. Socialism is simply the theory that the complainers should be in charge. Whereas capitalism takes for granted that people should have authority only to the extent that they get things done of, by, and for the people.
The word “progress” appears once in the Constitution - as a good to be promoted, and in the context of creativity of the people, not politicians. One of the ironies of “progressives” is that they oppose progress. Drill for oil? It is “progressives” who will oppose it, and “conservatives” who will support it. Which only tells you that our political labels are Newspeak. As does the fact that the meaning of the term “liberal” was (according to Safire’s New Political Dictionary) inverted in the 1920s - but only in America. Note that Serfdom was written in Britain, by someone who learned English in America before the 1920s. He uses the term “liberal” heavily in the book, and in its non-inverted sense. It is a confusion factor which he acknowledges with sorrow in a later edition.

Note that this copy of the original has the correct current (as of this date) link to the condensed version of Serfdom. The (now broken) link I originally used came from this old FR thread I had authored years ago announcing my delighted discovery of the PDF of that famous version of the classic.

The uncondensed version has seen multiple printings, including a 50th anniversary edition and multiple translations. Yet more people read that Readers Digest version, which came out near the end of WWII, than have read the original. Of course the Readers Digest magazine has been around a long time, and has AFAIK had a condensed book in every edition, all of the other books were the last thing in the magazine. Serfdom was the only condensed book which the editors ever featured by starting the magazine with it.

I think he’s right, but one of the real difficulties is that one party now profits of this mindset and does not want blacks to change and get ahead.

Bad enough, it were only the official Democrat Party. The lynchpin, we all know, is “bias in the media.” The unofficial Demo Party. We must set “the media” back. I have a concept for doing it, but it would obviously take some heavy lifting to make any headway with it. We have to understand that:

Granted that fictional TV and Movie entertainment is slanted strongly to the left, on First Amendment principle we should direct no legal effort against it.

We have to do only with nonfiction “media,” and even then, books and documentaries are not the real problem. The real problem, bluntly, is journalism. “Objective” journalism which is anything but objective.

Before the middle of the Nineteenth Century, journalism was very different. Newspapers had postal subsidies to facilitate the interchange of news among themselves, but otherwise they were relatively insular, weekly or even sporadic, and in short were more about the slant of the printer than about current events - IOW, more like talk radio than like The New York Times. Then, “journalism” was not a unified entity. Now it is.

The reason for the unification of journalism is staring us in the face - it is the telegraph. The telegraph, and its natural offspring, the wire service. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Associated Press. Editors routinely print major stories now without ever having met, much less vetted and hired, the stories’ writers. In order to vouch for those reports, the editor has no choice but to sell the line that “all journalists are objective.” So much for ideological diversity in reporting.

The homogenization of journalism reduces the perspective of all journalism down to its elemental nature - people who want to be influential through mere talk, without having and meeting the responsibilities entailed in actually doing important things. If you want to make your way by criticizing those who perform to a bottom line without taking responsibility for making and implementing decisions on a timely basis, you are a leftist. And that is what journalism is. But journalism insists that it is objective, just as it insists that those politicians who go along and get along with journalism are virtuous “liberals” or “moderates” or “progressives.” Any positive label, IOW, except “objective.”

The claim of journalistic objectivity is actually an oxymoron, since no one can know that he is himself objective - and since therefore a claim of one’s own objectivity is arrogant and cannot be objective. Anyone who is actually trying to be objective must be open about possible reasons why he might not be objective - which expressing a belief in own’s own objectivity obviously moots. And this objection pertains equally to belonging to an organization, such as the AP, which you know claims objectivity for you.
In light of these facts, the AP is vulnerable to being held in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the FCC and its licensees are vulnerable to being sued for licensing broadcasters on the basis that pseudo-objective journalism is “in the public interest."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2961325/posts?page=9

There is a third issue without which the first two mentioned here could not have happened:the lack of a free press.

We actually have a free press. That’s actually the problem. What we need are free and independent presses. And that, we do not have.
Journalism consisted of many independent presses in the founding era, and up to the Civil War. By 1900, that was pretty much a thing of the past. The only question I for a long time had was why. I thought it might be the high speed press, but that really didn’t explain it. But one technology does: the telegraph. The telegraph, and the Associated Press.
The Associated Press was founded in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, and it did what suited its business model - it sold access, called membership, to its newswire to printers who needed to be able to compete on the basis of providing current information from distant places (including Washington, D.C.). And the member newspapers supplied their local copy to the rest of the net. Reporters, already eager to be published, were doubly eager to be published nationwide. It was win-win for the newspapers and the AP. For the news business, nirvana had arrived.
But the AP membership cost money, and to justify the expense the editor had to be able to sell a lot of that newly-available copy to readers. Problem was, how does an editor justify to readers that the news from the wire is reliable? The editor doesn’t know, hasn’t even met, and certainly never vetted and hired, the reporter who wrote that article about what happened in Cleveland. So how can that editor promote the reliability of that copy? The AP had the answer - sell the idea that all journalists are objective. Of course if you engage in some philosophy and logic, you might find the skunk in that woodpile - the fact that although anyone can try to be objective, no one can know that they are objective.
In order to seriously attempt to be objective, you must be open about the reasons why you might not be objective. In the case of journalists, that would include the fact that their need for attention is a motive to exaggerate the significance of any report they make, and the fact that they report on things which happened very recently is a motive to denigrate the significance of things which do not change quickly. Which leads to a temptation to exaggerate the importance of mere novelty. But of course, even as admitting that you are subject to all those temptations makes you more objective, it makes you appear to be less objective. And since journalists are in the PR game, the choice between substance and appearance is no choice at all. Appearance is what matters to people in the PR business, and appearance is what journalists go for.
Claiming objectivity - or even merely belonging to an organization which claims objectivity for its members - is entirely inconsistent with openness about any motives which might interfere with objectivity, and therefore is inconsistent with a serious attempt at objectivity. Thus we see that journalists working for members of the Associated Press are not even trying to be objective. They may claim to “give both sides of the story” - but if they believe that they actually are objective, they do not seriously believe that there actually might be another side to the story than the one that they identify with. So their description of the other side is practically certain to be a straw man.

Journalists claim not to be “liberal” - but given the fact that journalists are critics rather than actors performing to a bottom line, they are inherently simpatico with socialist politicians who also are mere critics. Critics who, if given power, cannot function as effective executives and so obtain terrible results - but who are great at excuses and demands to be judged only on their self-proclaimed “good intentions." So journalists assign positive labels such as “progressive" to socialists, and negative labels such as “conservative” to their opponents. Socialists have no principle above getting good PR for themselves, and journalists have no principle against giving good PR to people who go along and get along with journalists. So they exist in symbiosis, de facto if not de jury as a single organism.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2962783/posts?page=37#37

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. - H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of journalism is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be further warned of danger) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Amazing how those things coincide, isn’t it!!
The interesting thing, though, is to observe that it is only socialist politics, and not so-called “conservative, right wing” politics which is promoted by journalism institutionally and which has a revolving door relationship with journalism. There is no example of a “conservative” political activist ever having obtained a job as an “objective” journalist. George Stephanopolous is a working journalist in good standing, but he has not changed a bit from when he was a Clinton political hack.
So when Mencken spoke of “the whole aim of practical politics” being to alarm the public with imaginary hobgoblins, he was either being cynical, or he meant that politics aligned with the interests of so-called “objective” journalism was and is the only kind of politics which is practical. And after this last election, who can dispute the latter interpretation?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2962914/posts?page=31#31

"Repugnant and cowardly?"

Why that’s a perfect description of our Kenyan in chief, now isn’t it?

It’s also, by no coincidence, a perfect description of the “Wolf!” crying industry that is wire service journalism, known under the alias “mainstream media.” Just as “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” to a reporter every sheep looks like a wolf. In fact, calling journalism "the ‘Wolf!" crying industry” understates the case, because of journalism’s “‘Man Bites Dog,’ not ‘Dog Bites Man’” rule, which expresses journalism's preference for the unusual/atypical.
Under that principle, journalism would rather decry a “wolf” which is apparently actually a sheep than to report the presence of a an actual menace. A phenomenon which is on full display in the persecution of George Zimmerman, as it was in the case of the transparent Duke Lacrosse “rape” hoax. Even as, today, the “evil” we are told to hate are the hundreds of millions of insurance policies against violence known as privately owned guns.

And then we wonder why journalists are “in the pocket of” Democrats - for them both, every tragic aspect of the human condition is a “problem” to be “solved” by a Gordian knot cutting “solution” portending worse misery than the original complaint. Democrats have no principle other than going along and getting along journalists. "Surprise, surprise,” journalists promote Democrats and give them positive labels - they started calling Democrats “liberal” in the 1920s, when “liberal” was what all traditional Americans understood themselves to be - and what socialists will never be. Before that, socialists were called “progressive,” because progress of, by, and for the American people is the pride of the success of “the American experiment.” Journalists also call socialists “moderate” or “centrist,” too - and moderation is classical virtue.
It’s why “liberalism” is, as Rush puts it, “a gutless choice.” Repugnant and cowardly.

no one in the GOP will stand up to MSM slander.

That’s why I suggest a civil action, not depending on a Karl Rove to give a President Bush a spine and get him to use the Justice Dept. And I don’t suggest that the Republican Party do it, either - they never will. The plaintiff needs to be the class of people who wish the Republicans were their defenders because we know that the Democrats and the journalists with whom the Democrats exist in symbiosis, are systematically abusing us.
So, say I, we go to court alleging that:

”journalism” functions as a single entity, because of the unifying effect of the continuous contact among journalism institutions which is the purpose of the AP. Those institutions, and the reporters and editors who work for them, conspire against the public precisely as Adam Smith could have predicted.

This conspiracy against the public manifests itself in the promotion of propaganda to the effect that journalists can, indeed must, be trusted implicitly as the “first draft of history," and

This conspiracy against the public manifests itself in the promotion of propaganda to the effect that they, and “liberals” who go along and get along with them, are the only ones who can be trusted at all. This manifests itself in the systematic slander of people we count on to get things like production and distribution of goods and services done, and indeed of anyone who does not go along to get along with that conspiracy - or who simply are convenient targets to pick on. Examples, being legion, include but are far from limited to the AGW hoax, and other alarmism including the Alar “poisoned apple” scare, just about every artificial sweetener scare, overhyped oil spill scares, the fraudulent "Texas Air National Guard memos,” the smear of the SBVT, the “government outting of Valerie Plame” hoax, the promotion of the Nifonging of the Duke Lacrosse team, the smearing of Joe the Plumber, witch hunting through Sarah Palin’s emails, etc, etc. Including everything in Ann Coulter’s Slander and a great deal of Thomas Sowell’s writing.

The AP and all other wire services have the same unifying effect on journalism, and what little competition they have among themselves does not mitigate the fact that ideological competition among them is essentially completely suppressed. The members of those services individually cooperate through the mechanism of the wire services, and each, tacitly or openly, claim that all are objective.

The FCC promotes broadcast journalism, placing its imprimatur on the so-called objectivity of that journalism conspiracy, and assisting journalism’s promotion of paranoia among the public by the implication that the public should be paying attention to journalism’s reports every waking hour. And accepting at face value claims that journalism is objective, when it is merely unified in promoting its own interest at the expense of the public - and in particular the plaintiffs’ - good.

Plaintiffs demand restitution for damages in the amount of the cost of enough advertising to counterbalance the dolorous impact of the aforementioned fraud on reputations, great and small, over the history back to any applicable Statute of Limitations. And plaintiffs demand triple damages under RICO because of the extent, duration, and damage to the public and to the reputation of the Republic caused by this vast conspiracy. In the era of satellite, microwave, and laser/fiber optic communication, the justification of the wire services’ “association” of nominally independent presses - the conservation of communications bandwidth - is an anachronistic issue. And the claim of objectivity, being functionally equivalent to a claim of wisdom, is and always was sophistry and must be expunged from all communication which has the imprimatur of the government. Open advocacy is legitimate, but fraudulent self-promotion must be something which is disinfected with maximum daylight. The government must not in any active or passive way suggest or insinuate otherwise.

That is why AP journalism is inherently anti conservative.

My perspective: left/right orientation is strongly correlated with population density where someone grew up. The countryside produces humble self-reliant people, the city produces vain/envious government-reliant people. Demographics do not matter, the city creates leftists out of any demographic.

In the countryside it can normally take a government police car, fire truck, ambulance a hour to show up, so people live largely on their own and fend for themselves, while response times in the city can be minutes. In the country if someone buys a brand new tractor or builds a big new barn, it's mostly out of sight and out of mind of their neighbors, while in a city if someone buys a new SUV or builds a McMansion the neighbors go bonkers with envy seeing it every day

In the old days newspapers were balanced because America's population density was less. You can read very old New York Times articles at their archive and they are amazingly balanced. Today they are over the top leftist. What changed? The city grew until all newspaper workers within commute distance grew up in high population density. They couldn't hire a balanced newsroom if they wanted to.

Today most news is produced by city slickers, so the news has a heavy leftist bias. The internet though is a game changer. Cities no longer serve as the information hubs they once were. News can be gathered and distributed from anywhere now, and more cheaply so away from high density population centers. Conservatives need to build news businesses outside of the cities and out compete the vain urbanites.

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.

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.

If ANY part of the Federal government gets involved, that's a direct violation of the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment.

The fundamental issue is not freedom of speech - nobody, yet, is talking about censoring Rush’s speech, only his ability to broadcast it. And most people - even conservatives on SCOTUS - don’t have a handle on the difference, calling money “speech.” But the real deal is that

While it costs nothing to flap your gums, nobody who isn’t allowed to spend money on paper, ink, and printing presses has freedom of the press.

Of course, broadcast/cable/satellite transmission is not a literal printing press - but the Constitution explicitly authorizes Congress to create the Patent Office " To promote the progress of science and useful arts.”
Since broadcast/cable/satellite communication is clearly an enhanced capability of doing what the printing press does, it is unconstitutional to regulate the expenditure of money to communicate opinions - whether religious, political, or other.

The First Amendment is not only an explicit bar to some government regulation, but is suggestive of the rights of freedom of communication in media perhaps not imagined when the First Amendment was proposed. The Ninth Amendment invalidates the idea that the First Amendment limits the rights of the people in any way whatsoever.

But apart from the First Amendment strictures against censorship, there lies its stricture against an establishment of religion, and thus of a government-sanctioned official priesthood. In coordination with the Constitution’s strictures against titles of nobility, those strictures rule out constitutionally sanctioned special communication rights for special people. This is the actual crux of our censorship issues.

There is not much tendency for the government to censor Establishment wire service journalism, for the simple reason that journalism and the Democratic Party are in cahoots and will scratch each others’ back on any occasion. Rather, the tendency is precisely the opposite - Democrat and Journalist promotion of censorship of the right of the people at large, apart from the journalism monopoly, to freedom to publicize their opinions without being members of the Associated Press.