I am however puzzled by the word objective vis-a-vis the MSM. Isn't that oxymoronic?
True, the MSM should be objective. Some say that that is not an obligation to explain the Truth but to make the Truth available.
It's a good point that in lieu of what the MSM should be they get by as long as they stick together to promote themselves and denigrate anyone who would compete with them without joining their consensus.
That's why the new media are "patches" to the MSM application to correct the bugs and counter the viruses.
More fundamentally, the OS is the Constitution and Society at large is the "hardware" it runs on. "The MSM" - I prefer to call it "Objective JournalismTM" and emphasize its singular number since it is not internally inconsistent, and if you have read one of its organs, you've read them all - is just one way that it receives in information.I am however puzzled by the word objective vis-a-vis the MSM. Isn't that oxymoronic?
It would be, if taken literally - but my TM is intended to denote the fact that journalism uses the term "objective" as a sort of brand or label, like "arm and hammer" was a brand of baking soda. It's a label which represents no reality at all.True, the MSM should be objective. Some say that that is not an obligation to explain the Truth but to make the Truth available.
I do not even accept the premise that journalism should be objective. The First Amendment runs exactly to the contrary; it prevents the government from complaining that a journalism is not objective - whether or not the complaint might be well founded.The reality is that objectivity of the sort that journalism boasts of isn't actually much of a virtue. It sounds wonderful, but when push comes to shove they only claim that they "objectively" follow the rules of journalism when they make their stories. But that begs the question of what those rules are, and what those rules are designed to do.
And the answer to that is that the rules are "If it bleeds, it leads," "Man Bites Dog" is a better headline than "Dog Bites Man," and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper." And those rules have nothing to do with political objectivity and everything to do with attracting and holding an audience. Promoting those rules to the level of definition of the public interest, when they are about the very different issue of interesting the public, is a bit rich.