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To: Candor7; CasearianDaoist; headsonpikes; beyond the sea; E.G.C.; Military family member; ...
These guys are still dangerous because they are allowed to compete directly against our elected official on policy and security decisions, having the ear of the masses to fill full of lies and half truths. They create and uniformed, emotional public who cannot fully participate in our democratic republic.

Solution: Liscense all journalists just like lawyers and Doctors, and when they lie? Disbar them as reporters. Make the individuals responsible for their own conduct. Put professional standards in place and compose a canon of ethics for reporters and journalists.

What does it tell you that that is exactly counter to the First Amendment, and that the framers of the Constitution considered the Bill of Rights to be implied in the body of the Constitution? Even if we repealed the First Amendment what you propose would still be unconstitutional!

No, the solution I propose is even more radical than abrogating the Constitution: I propose that we actually enforce it. The First Amendment doesn't define "the press," so we should simply understand it to mean printing. Not only newspapers, but magazines and books, are not censored. No only so, but personal speech is uncensored. Free Republic and the rest of the internet fit right between speech and the press, and logically are legitimately uncensored.

But broadcast journalism is peculiar; radio transmission of audio and video ("radio and TV") is a mere technical development like the internet but "broadcasting" is more than radio transmission. "Broadcasting" is government enforcement of a "right" to receive the signals of some particular licensees via government censorship of signals which we-the-people may wish to transmit.

I propose to censor broadcast journalism. It is impossible to regulate it; it is not merely the things they say which aren't so - eg, the fraudulent "Bush TANG memos" from CBS - it is the things which they do not report which manifest the bias of journalism. For example it is news when the economy is good if and only if there is a Democratic president, and it is news when the economy is bad only if there is a Republican president to blame it on.

The criterion by which broadcast journalism should be censored is the claim or positioning of the show as being objective. Ironically it is legitimate, IMHO, to openly broadcast liberal politics. But broadcasters cannot be trusted to be objective; reason and experience forclose that option. That is ironic, of course, in that the original raison d' etre of licensed broadcasting is to do exactly what we know from experience that it will never do.

Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate


73 posted on 12/04/2005 8:10:36 PM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

This has nothing to do with the 1st ammendment. It has to do with professional conduct in reporting the news. Fabrication of news is by definition unprofessional, its not news , its fiction.

Editorial commentary is not news. The simple fabrication of fact is the problem, claimim=ng sources that are fictitious, and unverified facts as if true is unprofessional. No other professionals are allowed to lie professionally and avoid censure: DOctors, Lawyers, Real Estate Agents Police officer, Court Clerks, the list is long.

That standard of conduct should also apply to journalists. Staes by law have the jurisdiction for professional liscencing, usually through the Secratary of States Office. I would love to see it happen.


74 posted on 12/04/2005 8:32:38 PM PST by Candor7 (Into Liberal Flatulence Goes the Hope of the West)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
it is the things which they do not report which manifest the bias of journalism ----

***

Right!

80 posted on 12/05/2005 1:07:47 AM PST by beyond the sea (Murtha: Redeployment - What .......Surrender? // “Victory is not a strategy”)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Media bias bump.


84 posted on 12/05/2005 3:03:00 AM PST by E.G.C.
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