Posted on 11/14/2007 7:44:30 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion
Is there any such animal as "conservative-based news?" IMHO there is not. At least, not that goes under the banner of "news."
In the Founding Era, newspapers were different from what we are used to today. Technologically, their inputs were more expensive and their output was very slow and meager. And they were all addressing small, local markets. They were mostly weeklies, and some had no deadline at all - the printer just went to press when he was good and ready. And they did not have telegraphed news.
IOW, the newspapers of the founding era were pretty much like the local freebie advertising weeklies we see today - which don't do national/international newswire stories because the presumption is that the customer has seen all that on TV, heard it on the radio, or seen it on the Internet just as quickly as the local printer saw it.
The linchpin of the difference between the modern journalist and the newspaper printer of the eighteenth century is that the modern journalist has the AP newswire - that is, his stock in trade is what he "magically" knows with amazing 200-year old technology which you do not know until he tells you. But of course the "amazing" newswire cannot hold a candle to the Internet, so the niche of the Associated Press newswire is by now an anachronism.
The AP, founded in 1848 as The New York Associated Press, aggressively monopolized the use of the telegraph to transmit news. And that raised the serious question of whether such a concentration of propaganda power was not dangerous to the republic. . . . now where have I heard that issue before? Oh yes, I remember - it came up when radio transmission was licensed by the FCC. And what was the answer then? Oh yeah - "Don't worry about a thing - we don't have any axe to grind, we are all objective journalists here." Well, it turns out that that argument, such as it is, was precisely what was used to justify the monopolistic Associated Press news service.
The claim of objectivity actually is an assault on the very premise that the public is competent to govern its own affairs and, via the "fairness doctrine" and more recently via "campaign finance reform," on the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press of those not "in the know" by virtue of being privy to the newswire. The claim of objectivity is essentially indistinguishable, as far as I can see, from a claim of wisdom - and arguing from a claim of superior wisdom is the essence of sophistry ("soph" being Greek for "wisdom").
That being the case, we-the-people have the right and the duty to assign the burden of proof for anyone's claim of objectivity squarely on the shoulders of the claimant. That is, we should not be embarrassed by their begging the question but should demand that they prove their case. Even were their claim true, of course, that is an impossible case to prove - essentially an attempt to prove a negative - but that does not suffice as an argument to prove that it is true. It even leaves open the possibility that proof that it is untrue could exist.
Yet how can we know if a fresh report, hot off the wire, is or is not objective? We actually cannot - but there is no necessary reason why that should be the criterion which we choose for judging claimed objectivity. We can wait. We can judge the stories which once were "hot off the wire" in the light of history. We can apply the biblical standard for testing authority:
"When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. Deuteronomy 18:22, New American Standard Bible (©1995)
By the standard of the light of history, whole books can be written on the fact that journalism is not objective. See, for example, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right by Ann Coulter. Also see, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor , KC Johnson. Another classic case of journalism run amok is the fraudulent "Killian Memos" promoted by Dan Rather and CBS News and never outted as a blatant fraud by the rest of "objective" journalism, a mountain of damning evidence notwithstanding.
And that last point illustrates how Big Journalism - Associated Press journalism - manipulates the public discourse. The system is quite simple - if some fact is not congenial to the worldview of the journalist, Big Journalism systematically stonewalls that fact and/or raises the standard of proof for that fact to the unattainable level of metaphysical certainty. As long as Big Journalism is able to control the standard of proof, the fatuous conceit that Big Journalism is objective will be unassailable. The fact that it has no basis in fact is irrelevant.
The question is, "Is there any significant venue in which Big Journalism does not control the standard of proof?" There are two possible avenues. First, the Internet has been eroding the business model of the Associated Press. The logical conclusion of which is that Big Journalism no longer has any real niche of information unavailable to the rest of us. The Wizard of Oz is being exposed as a mere mortal behind a curtain. Besides FR and the rest of the Internet, there is Rush and the rest of Talk Radio. And ultimately, the composition of SCOTUS remaining unchanged or improving, there is hope of success in not merely turning back further impositions such as McCain-Feingold and the revival of the Fairness Doctrine but of overturning McCain itself.
In any court case touching on the objectivity of journalism, the issue of the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill hearing and the objectivity of Justice Thomas could be raised. But to raise that question against Justice Thomas would be to turn the issue on its head. The question is not, or certainly not so much, whether Thomas can be objective seeing that he does not read the newspapers as it is whether any of the other justices can be objective seeing that the do read the newspapers. If SCOTUS can hear the issue fairly, there is no question that the First Amendment not only does not assure that journalism generally and Big Journalism as we know it specifically is objective. The First Amendment forbids the government to require journalism to be objective.
Another question which naturally arises is, "What is the alternative to the status quo of journalism?" The status quo is, as I have pointed out, that journalism is:
- motivated by a common interest - the interest of promoting talk, and their position at the peak of the propaganda power pyramid. That means that journalism naturally tends to denigrate action and promote criticism. When Theodore Roosevelt noted that "it is not the critic who counts," he could have been looking straight at the press gallery.
- unified. It is Big Journalism; its members are linked via the Associated Press and by their common agenda noted above. Questions could rightly be raised about conspiracy in restraint of trade.
- Prone to sophistry. The question is not, "Why should they" engage in sophistry; the question is why anyone would assume that they would not engage in it.
There is a classical reaction to the position the Sophist. "You claim to be wise, and presume to denigrate anyone whose supposedly inferior wisdom you can ridicule. But you cannot prove your own wisdom, and your claim is therefore arrogant. I do not claim to be wise, but I admit that there is such a thing as wisdom and truth, and I am open to facts and logic because I love wisdom." The Greek word for someone who loves wisdom is philo (brotherly love) soph (wisdom, again) - "philosopher."
Who then is the sophist, and who the philosopher? Anyone who uses an advantage of power to control the debate and keep certain facts off the table (in the style of the "objective" journalist) is a sophist. Anyone who eschews ad hominem attacks and other propagandistic techniques, and who is open to the facts and logic pointed out from any quarter, is a philosopher. Your average FReeper, lacking any ability to control the debate, must perforce be a philosopher.
Of course the moderators of FR, and Jim Robinson, are in a position to be able to control the debate on FR, and actually they do. But their control extends only to FR in particular, and not the Internet generally - let alone to any of the so-called "mainstream media." And FR succeeds as a forum because in fact the moderators are not interested in manipulating the discussion but in appealing to what is in America conventionally called a "conservative" audience. Likewise Rush Limbaugh and the rest are in a position to be able to be what Rush calls "a benevolent dictator" of what is said on their shows. And likewise, those shows succeed or fail as they exercise that power in such a way as to appeal to a wide audience, or fail to.
Rush calls his format "the long form," by which he obviously means that the format does not depend on hit and run tactics. "The News" by contrast is a very stylized, stilted view. You are basically given the word, whether you like it or not. Nothing is on the table for discussion. Rush on the other hand takes calls, and debates with callers. His listeners would hear it if he were being manipulative with his callers, and he succeeds because his listeners do not hear that. A talk show host who allows a wide range of views to be expressed, and who focuses that discussion on current affairs, is addressing the "market for conservative-based news."
Excellent point, though I think the motivation is much deeper (and more sinister) than fitting in at cocktail parties and country clubs. It’s much more about, as you said, “subsidizing a ‘progressive’ news outlet.” The ownership of most of the Dinosaur Media is liberal, bordering on socialist. Their unending willingness to lose money is about their legacy, their desire to shape society in their own image. It’s the same thing that motivated someone like Soros to say he would spend his entire wealth to defeat George Bush.
It's now well known that Communist agents imbedded in high-ranking positions included White House confidant Lauchlin Currie, State Department official Alger Hiss and Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White. Evans quotes FBI files identifying atom bomb scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer as a secret Communist as early as 1942.I do think journalism went through a period of about 100 years (1860-1960) where the majority of reporters and editors tried to be "objective" and adopted codes of conduct to try to ensure objectivity (always get more than one witness; get the other side of the story; no unsourced stories; etc.) In other words, I do think for a while most reporters attempted to be "fair and balanced" and "objective." Whether they succeeded is a different question.Taking on the anti-communist mission locked McCarthy in mortal combat against powerful forces: two U.S. presidents, the vast federal bureaucracy, malicious adversaries in Congress, left-wing lobby groups and the left-wing media who made him their daily target.
One of the problems is that if you ALWAYS get the "other side of the story," it does introduce the notion that there always IS another "side of the story." What was the other side of the story to the Holocaust? Should we "get Hitler's take?" In other words, it legitimizes falsity.
The Market for Conservative-Based News
One thing to suggest that there was a good-faith attempt at objectivity by the Associated Press and the papers associated with it at the start of the institution of the AP. Quite another to believe that "the news" ever was actually objective. IMHO the novelty of the AP newswire and its ability to inform the width and breadth of the nation instantly created journalism as we know it. And journalism as we know it is inherently demagogic, so that it is naturally easy and gutless to align yourself with journalism's negative, superficial perspective. And thus, it requires courage and unusual acuity to be able to stake out a non-demagogic political position in opposition to the AP and Big Journalism.At some point the parties divided on that basis. Politicians who aligned themselves with demagogic so-called "objective" journalism are designated by journalists as "liberals" - and those who refuse to do so are designated by journalists as (evil) "conservatives." "Maverick John McCain" attempts a straddle whereby he retains the "conservative" label while pandering to the demagogic tendencies of "objective" journalism by, among other heresies, demagoging the pharmaceutical companies as "the enemy."
The Market for Conservative-Based News
One thing to suggest that there was a good-faith attempt at objectivity by the Associated Press and the papers associated with it at the start of the institution of the AP. Quite another to believe that "the news" ever was actually objective. IMHO the novelty of the AP newswire and its ability to inform the width and breadth of the nation instantly created journalism as we know it. And journalism as we know it is inherently demagogic, so that it is naturally easy and gutless to align yourself with journalism's negative, superficial perspective. And thus, it requires courage and unusual acuity to be able to stake out a non-demagogic political position in opposition to the AP and Big Journalism.At some point the parties divided on that basis. Politicians who aligned themselves with demagogic so-called "objective" journalism are designated by journalists as "liberals" - and those who refuse to do so are designated by journalists as (evil) "conservatives." "Maverick John McCain" attempts a straddle whereby he retains the "conservative" label while pandering to the demagogic tendencies of "objective" journalism by, among other heresies, demagoging the pharmaceutical companies as "the enemy."
It's now well known that Communist agents imbedded in high-ranking positions included White House confidant Lauchlin Currie, State Department official Alger Hiss and Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White. Evans quotes FBI files identifying atom bomb scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer as a secret Communist as early as 1942.I do think journalism went through a period of about 100 years (1860-1960) where the majority of reporters and editors tried to be "objective" and adopted codes of conduct to try to ensure objectivity (always get more than one witness; get the other side of the story; no unsourced stories; etc.) In other words, I do think for a while most reporters attempted to be "fair and balanced" and "objective." Whether they succeeded is a different question.Taking on the anti-communist mission locked McCarthy in mortal combat against powerful forces: two U.S. presidents, the vast federal bureaucracy, malicious adversaries in Congress, left-wing lobby groups and the left-wing media who made him their daily target.
One of the problems is that if you ALWAYS get the "other side of the story," it does introduce the notion that there always IS another "side of the story." What was the other side of the story to the Holocaust? Should we "get Hitler's take?" In other words, it legitimizes falsity.
One thing to suggest that there was a good-faith attempt at objectivity by the Associated Press and the papers associated with it at the start of the institution of the AP. Quite another to believe that "the news" ever was actually objective. IMHO the novelty of the AP newswire and its ability to inform the width and breadth of the nation instantly created journalism as we know it. And journalism as we know it is inherently demagogic, so that it is naturally easy and gutless to align yourself with journalism's negative, superficial perspective. And thus, it requires courage and unusual acuity to be able to stake out a non-demagogic political position in opposition to the AP and Big Journalism.At some point the parties divided on that basis. Politicians who aligned themselves with demagogic so-called "objective" journalism are designated by journalists as "liberals" - and those who refuse to do so are designated by journalists as (evil) "conservatives." "Maverick John McCain" attempts a straddle whereby he retains the "conservative" label while pandering to the demagogic tendencies of "objective" journalism by, among other heresies, demagoging the pharmaceutical companies as "the enemy." History Shows Joe McCarthy's Reputation is Undeserved
Town Hall ^ | 1-28-08 | Phyllis Schafly
Lacking the telegraph and the Associated Press, originally newspapers were loaded with partisanship and made no pretense to objectivity. Thus, the newspapers which Hamilton sponsored to wage partisan battles with Jefferson and which Jefferson sponsored to wage partisan battles with Hamilton were, in their time, entirely unexceptionable. Another way of putting that is that the newspapers of the founding era did not necessarily claim, much less attain, independence from political parties - and might be considered nacent political parties in their own right. Just as Rush Limbaugh could be considered.With the advent of the telegraph and the aggressively monopolistic AP, that began to change. Suddenly the newspaper printer - who formerly had gotten his "news" stale via travelers who talked to everyone, not just to publishers - had in "the wire" a source of fresh reports from far and wide not accessible to public at large except as the newspapers printed it. But since the AP was a monopoly, it was necessary that it be publicly viewed as an objective operation - and the newspapers which previously had worn their politics on their sleeves - and mastheads - adopted an "objective" face to present to the public - and did so by ostentatiously creating an editorial page in which to confine their partisan opinions. Thereby "positioning" the rest of the paper as being objective.
This had the political effect of promoting news. News was "objective," and editorials were a matter of opinion. Just as in radio "The News" is "objective," and Rush Limbaugh is "a matter of opinion." But even with good intentions, it is impossible for mortal men to be objective all the time, and they can deceive themselves and think they are objective when in fact they are not. Indeed the very conceit that "the news" is important (even if the news is objectively reported) is an artifact of the fact that they are selling "the news." OTOH the parson will tell you the "good news" - the English translation of the Greek word "gospel" - which is 2000 years old, and will assert in all seriousness that it is the only thing which it is actually important that you know and accept as true.
So it is clear that promotion of news is anticonservative, and tends to promote the journalist at the expense of the prestige not only of the parson but of everyone whom the journalist finds it possible to second guess in his reporting. So the conservative has every reason to question the objectivity of the journalist, who is denigrating the conservative in the ordinary course of business. But is the conservative right, or is the journalist? My answer to that is that at most we do not know, at least in real time, whether the journalist's reports are objective or not. The conservative cannot necessarily prove that the journalist's report is biased, and the journalist does not have any way of proving the negative that it is not biased. But although the conservative may not be able to prove bias in real time, that is not the end of the story. After all, the conservative can wait. Time will show. So instead of allowing the journalist to keep the focus on current events, the conservative can refer to historical facts. And the historical record is replete with example after example of journalism being anything but objective. It is hardly rare for such examples to be clear in a matter of months, weeks, or even days or hours.
Certainly the reality that Dan Rather's best remembered 60 Minutes program was a fraudulent partisan hit piece became clear (Rather's Ruin and the Rise of the Pajamahadeen) to many conservatives in hours. And in days it was clear that not only CBS itself but the rest of "objective" journalism was in the tank for the idea that journalism was right even when it was wrong. CBS formed an "objective" outside panel for the purpose of "investigating" and "learning" that Rather/Mapes's partisan hit on Bush, patently coordinated with the DNC and intended as the "October Surprise" of 2004, "was not politically motivated." Its report, the capstone of the affair from the POV of journalism, was credulously reported by "objective journalism" at large, or not reported at all.
The Duke Lacrosse "rape" cause celebre' was an instance where it was fairly clear fairly quickly that prosecutor MIchael Nifong was bending every rule - to put it plainly, lying outright - to gain reelection to his post, at the expense of the reputations of everyone associated with the Duke Lacrosse Team in general and at the expense of the freedom of a few of its members. None of whom, obviously, were guilty as charged. Within a year, the young men were all actually called "innocent" - not merely unconvictable in court, but innocent of the charges - by the North Carolina Attorney General's office. Yet as Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case extensively documents, major "objective" journalism institutions were convicting innocent young athletes in the press for most of the time up to the point where the NC AG took over the case.
In the larger sweep of history, careful post mortems of such cause celebre's such as the Alger Hiss perjury and the Army-McCarthy hearings reveal that journalists have consistently been biased against conservatives. Against conservatives, and in favor of their own importance. The mirror image of journalism's arrogant contempt for conservatives (and people who work to a bottom line and make decisions which commit them to actions in time to be effective and thus before enough information and analysis is available to fully predict the outcome of those decisions, and therefore are easily second guessed) is affinity for others who find it convenient to second guess and criticize. Union leaders, plaintiff attorneys, teachers and professors (who after all do nothing which can be second guessed, and whose job entails criticizing students extensively), and politicians who do not have a commitment to defending the interests of executives and the middle class fall into this group. Surprisingly enough </sarcasm> journalists assign favorable labels to members of this group - labels such as "liberal" and "progressive" which, in point of fact, are far more descriptive of the actual characteristics of proponents of freedom and of material progress than they are of their political opponents, including journalists.
Another way to address the "objectivity" of journalism is simply to observe that, being a self-professed virtue, it is inherently a doubtful if not oxymoronic claim. To take your own objectivity for granted is the very defining characteristic of subjectivity. And if any journalist should deny claiming his own objectivity, it is enough to point out that he does not challenge the objectivity of any other journalist, and no other journalist questions his objectivity. And the effect is exactly as if each journalist claimed objectivity for himself. If you would be objective, you must examine and attempt to discount your own motives as a first step toward dispassionately analyzing or reporting on a matter. As Antonin Scalia put it, you have to doubly scrutinize your analysis if you like the result too much. The very pace of journalism and its deadlines will make it clear that journalists are poorly situated to be doing that.
But what of the nature of conservative commentary? If I dismiss so-called "liberalism" and so-called "progressivism" as mere self-serving labels applied by journalists to their friends, do I thereby reverse the labeling and simply claim that conservatives are wise? That would not be sensible, and it is not necessary. Rather, conservative commentators and politicians must be judged according as they adhere to the rules of logic and are fair with the facts they adduce. The ancient Greeks had "sophists" who claimed to be wise - and who actually were insufferably self righteous and were the source of the word "sophistry" to describe their arguments. The answer to those who claim to be wise - or objective, which I take to be essentially the same thing - is actual wisdom, which does not presume to call itself such. The answer to the wise guy - the sophist - is to limits one's own claim not to having but to loving wisdom. The one who loves wisdom but does not claim to have a monopoly on it commits himself to being open to new facts, and open to the logic adduced by others. The Greek word for the one who loves wisdom is, "philosopher."
ping for later
So suddenly they decide, "Okay, people have caught onto us about Liberalism; now let's call ourselves progressive. We won't be progressive in the slightest. It's just a name. It's just an advertising slogan."
I have often made the point that journalists call themselves "objective" even tho taking your own objectivity for granted is the very definition of subjectivity. And that journalists call nonjournalists who agree with journalists' own opinion of themselves and the overriding significance of their negative, superficial drivel by positive labels such as "liberal" (which they have pretty much run into the ground) and "progressive" (even though as the author of the piece points out, they actually have nothing to "progress" to). And that when journalists call us - who believe in liberty and therefore in the ability of individuals to make changes in the hope of progress - "conservative," they mean it as a pejorative.And I have called those usages of words "Newspeak" inversions of meaning. But Sayet's
"It's just an advertising slogan"is an excellent way of putting it. I expect to be using it. Like all good ideas, it seems obvious in retrospect.
You can post hundreds of Thomas Sowell articles without getting a whimper of disagreement from me. But on this issue Mighty Casey has struck out.It is a quibble based on the definition of the word "journalist." Professor Sowell is using the term as journalists themselves define it. A journalist defines journalism as being objective. But that is not reality, that is a mere advertising slogan. Just as calling Democrats like Barak Obama "liberal" or "progressive" is an advertising slogan having no relation to the fact that such politicians do not favor liberty and they do oppose progress (other than in the narrow, tyrannical sense that they want the government rather than the people to progress). Journalists award positive labels - advertising slogans - to themselves and to those who support journalists' self-image.
The First Amendment famously rejects government "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Everyone takes for granted that "the press" obviously existed in the Founding Era. And everyone is familiar with the usage of the term "the press" as a synonym for "journalism." We are familiar with the journalists' organization, the National Press Club. But the reality is that journalism as we know it is a modern invention. Before the invention of the telegraph and the 1848 founding of the Associated Press, the press was not a single entity as we are familiar with it; "the press" was individual, opinionated printers expressing themselves. Hamilton sponsored a paper which opposed Jefferson's policies - and Jefferson returned the favor. Nobody with access to more than one newspaper could possibly have been under the illusion that all newspapers were "objective," and in substance all alike.
The telegraph and the Associated Press - an aggressive monopoly on the telegraphic distribution of news - changed the newspaper business by giving newspapers a source of news not available to the public at large except as it was delivered to them by the newspapers. No longer did the printer get his news from the same source - travelers - as the general public did. And no longer was it sensible to have a leisurely weekly publishing schedule - or in some cases, no deadline at all. Now newspaper publishers were selling a perishable commodity, and speed getting to press was an issue.
The fact that the Associated Press was a monopoly was not unnoticed in the early days, and the AP had to defend itself from charges that it was an illegitimate concentration of propaganda power. But the AP responded that since it consisted of newspapers of various political tendencies and temperaments, it was not monolithic. No, the AP assured us, the AP was "objective." We are supposed to pass over the fact that taking your own objectivity for granted is the very definition of subjectivity. And the fact that the AP was selling news. We are not to scrutinize the implications of that; we are to take it for granted that because timely information can in particular instances be vital that all news which the AP - and whatever newspaper you happen to look at - is important in principle.
In reality, of course, news is such a perishable commodity that its purveyors cannot generally wait on the development of the whole story, but will tantalize us with sketchy reports which may be largely or entirely misleading. In fact, the extent to which a story breaks expectations - that is, seems unlikely and therefore surprising - is an important criterion in story selection. That rule is expressed as, "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man'." But if a quick preliminary report of an event is surprising, that reflects the fact that it seems unlikely - and things that seem unlikely may actually not be true. The "Duke Lacrosse Rape" story is an excellent case in point. It was always unlikely on its face, since it implied the collusion of perhaps a score of young men who each had an incentive to turn state's evidence and rat out the others - and their solidarity was impeccable. But so far as "objective" journalists were concerned, it was too
goodbad not to be true, and journalists ran with the story as if there were some plausibility to it long after the only real question was whether Nifong and Mangum were going to get away with their scam unpunished (and in the case of Mangum, the answer was "Yes").On the face of it, journalism is not objective but selects its stories because they are fresh and because they are entertaining in their novelty. Adults should know that, and if we all did no one would suggest - as even Professor Sowell does here - that journalism should be, or ever was, the "objective" endeavor which it proclaims itself to be in its own (unackowledged) advertising.
The media and politics (Thomas Sowell)
Jewish World Review ^ | February 12, 2008 | Thomas Sowell
FWIW page 8 of Amazon's excerpt of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business offers some interesting food for thought.This idea - that there is a content called "the news of the day" - was entirely created by the telegraph (and since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is, quite precisely, a media event.Although the author goes on to lament the decline of the Age of Typography allow me to introduce the notion of a neo-Age of Typography for mass media orphans as evidenced by forums such as Free Republic.
See, that is actually more of a problem, philosophically, than the journalist would have anyone suspect. Would you say that that was "the Proper Role of Journalism" in the Founding Era, before the advent of the telegraph and the Associated Press, and before the high speed printing press?Not so. Back then (when the First Amendment was written and adopted!), newspapers were typically weekly, and some didn't even have a deadline at all- the printer made a press run whenever he was good and ready! Back then, the printer didn't have the AP "wire," and he therefore had no reliable source of data on outside events distinct from what was available to the owner of the local general store or saloon. IOW, "newspapers" were actually not so big on actual news as we now know it.
And back then, Hamilton and Jefferson each sponsored a newspaper to attack the politics of other. And people didn't blink at that, because newspapers had neither motive nor opportunity to claim objectivity. Let me be clear - of course any given paper could have, and might have, claimed to be objective. And of course, if they could have pulled it off, it would have been a coup. But without the AP, newspapers were actually competitors, in a way that they no longer are. If you have actual ideological competition, pretentious claims get deflated pretty quick - and claims of "journalistic objectivity" are just that, and nothing more.
The key to all claims of "journalistic objectivity" lies in the fact that although we have many newspapers and many broadcasters, they do not compete for the respect of the public but rather they all collude to promote "journalism" in general - merely competing on how fresh their reports are. Now, if there is a tornado headed your way, you want to be told in time to get your family into a shelter, not after it has killed them and maimed you. But most news reports are not actionable. Most news stories are not actually significant - and of those that are, most of them could have been improved with a little more time to get the fact straight before they went to press, with no loss of actual utility to the reader. Which is more to be respected, the endless clatter of "news" stories promoting the Nifong/Mangum "Duke Lacrosse Rape" fraud, or the book Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, which punctures the prior year's reporting on the case?
Similarly, To Set the Record Straight tells you more about the struggle to inform the voting public about Senator Kerry's "record of valor in Vietnam" than you will learn from any number of sympathetic reports of the plaints of Kerry and his sympathizers about "Swiftboating." One chapter of which, Rather's Ruin and the Rise of the Pajamahadeen, documents the exposure, started on FR, of the Mapes/Rather "Killian Memo" hoax. After the infamous 60 Minutes report imploded, CBS formed an "independent investigation" for the purpose of concluding that this climax of Mapes' five-year vendetta against Bush "was not politically motivated." And - the key point - none of CBS's so-called competitors belabored CBS on its patent dishonesty. ABC did mention the fact that the CBS report was wrong, but that is hardly to be compared with, say, The New York Times's treatment of Abu Graib. If Coke found out that Pepsi had motor oil in it, don't you think that Coke's marketing would somehow make the point that Coke was better in that regard?
The claim that journalism even could be - let alone that it actually is - objective is a symptom of the fact that journalism is a monopoly. Actual competition among the "competitors" in the news business would implode any and all such claims. The very fact that you take no exception at all to my use of the singular number in my grammar is instructive. If the individual faces of journalism did not stem from a single root, would you not expect me to say "jouranalisms are?"
What is the Proper Role of Journalism in a Free Society
2008-02-13 | Mike Ackers
The media-industrial complex is not the "free press" of the Founding Fathers. It is an unelected and unaccountable shadow government, created by a gradual hijacking of the genuine free press and based on atavistic appeals to emotion, prejudice, and the personal authority of a depraved elite. It is anathema to Enlightenment principles of individual rights and equality and therefore the deadly enemy of free people everywhere.
Another Enemy Propagandist (Journalist) Detained by U.S. Forces?
Ping.I'm curious as to your take on this article of mine, and how your "media-industrial complex" formulation agrees or contrasts with it.
And why do those who hate those principles have the clout to define who is called what? Because they are journalists, or fellow travelers of journalists.America obviously had something which could be meaningfully called "the press" in the founding era - but it was not journalism as we know it. Newspapers of the day were idiosyncratic and opinionated, and did not claim to be objective. They couldn't, and get away with it - because, before the telegraph and the Associated Press, newspapers were often explicitly associated with one political party or another, but they were independent of each other. With the advent of the AP, newspapers are all associated, and they are all selling the same product. And as such they are a special interest.
Journalists call themselves (and, especially, call each other) "objective." They call others who promote the product journalists are selling but are not themselves working journalists "liberal" or "progressive." And they call those who denigrate the product journalists are selling "conservative" or "right wing." Those labels are nothing but advertising slogans, having no natural descriptive power. In the case of "conservatives" and "right wingers," of course, the labels are negative advertising slogans.
The Misnomer of Conservatism By Bruce Walker
American Thinker ^ | February 23, 2008 | Bruce Walker
The declining credibility of the New York Times and of other tendentious media is, in one sense, a healthy thing. There has been too much public gullibility that has been cynically exploited by both the media and politicians.
Perfectly true.In another sense, however, it is a sad day for the country as a whole that there are shrinking sources of reliable news and informed and honest commentary.
Not true.I put it to you that the definition of subjectivity is believing in your own objectivity. And that it is just plain silly to look for "sources of reliable news and informed and honest commentary" among those who claim to be objective .
It's not as though Big Journalism was unbiased in some long-ago Eden. Journalism as we know it was formed with the advent of the telegraph and the Associated Press in the 1840s. In no time the AP was becoming monopolistic and, to deflect criticism of its role, was claiming to be "objective." And the AP was a government lapdog during the Lincoln Administration, taking government favors and censoring the news at the behest of the government. It may be hard to think of the consequences had it not done so. But for the people who were reading reports from the AP in their newspapers at the time, those newspapers were not "sources of reliable news and informed and honest commentary."
Then of course there was the role of the Hurst papers in fomenting the Spanish America War, and there is the coverup of the role of the Communist Party in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations. The latter coverup, of course, is still in progress, with the use of the name of a flawed and human but responsible man as a byword for arrogant bullying of the innocent. That is precisely what Sowell is criticizing The New York Times for - but no newspaper or broadcast network calls their actions "McCarthyism." Because ultimately, the newspapers are not independent of each other - they are all part of the Associated Press, and are all thereby co-opted by the "objective journalism" scam.
Bad times (Thomas Sowell)
Jewish World Review ^ | February 26, 2008 | Thomas Sowell
I'm sure the Nazis would have just been looking to do the jobs Americans wouldn't do.......
That is the function of a free press. Contrary to the presumptuous claims of Big Journalism, however, Big Journalism is neither the whole of "the press" nor is it free. It is not free, in the sense that you or I cannot enter the field by the mere act of acquiring the requisite technology. The reason is that we are expressly forbidden by the government to engage in broadcast journalism without a license to broadcast, and - more generally - we are not part of the Associated Press, and we do not subscribe to the fatuous conceit that all journalists are objective.Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan -- all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.
. . . the media never acknowledged . . . [that on] his first day in public office . . . Mr. Spitzer became the big guy, the titan.
Precisely. The fawning coverage of Eliot Spitzer, not despite but because of Spitzer's actual record of abusing power, is a picture of the actual nature of Big Journalism. The only difference between Spitzer and Michael Nifong is that Nifong was a mere wannabe in comparison to Spitzer. Accordingly Nifong was vulnerable to higher state governmental authorities, in a state which is not nearly as dominated by "liberal" politics as New York is - and therefore it was possible for Nifong to be caught without the help of Big Journalism.The fact that such help from Big Journalism was not forthcoming for the victims either of Nifong or of Spitzer puts the lie to the conceit that journalism is objective (a conceit which traces back only to the advent of the telegraph and the monopolistic Associated Press). Wikipedia describes the classic dystopian short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. In that dark story, there is a town which conducts a lottery once a year - the "winner" of which is stoned to death by everyone else in town.
That happens in America. But in real life, an Eliot Spitzer of a Michael Nifong typically functions as the arbitrary selector of victims to be destroyed - and Big Journalism functions as the villagers with stones inflicting much of the arbitrary abuse.
Spitzer's Media Enablers
WSJ ^ | March 12, 2008 | KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails is my book report on a book:Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails:which printed a map of the telegraph lines reported to the Census Bureau in (I think) 1850, but maybe 1860.
The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln
Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.
This is yours? Excellent. Just ordered a copy from Am.
Yes, it's my "book report" - certainly not my book, unfortunately.Although I do have some quibbles with some of the author's interpretation. He considers Samuel Morse a bit of a fraud because he didn't invent the hardware of the telegraph but only invented Morse Code and did the promotional entrepreneurial work to get the telegraph off the ground. Which is like saying that Bill Gates is a fraud because he never made, let alone invented, any microprocessors.
The Farrakhan-Wright vision is fundamentally evil: it tells people from disadvantaged circumstances that they are not true Americans, merely “victims of Americanism.” It tells those without money or power that they will always be without money or power, always dependent upon government largesse for their daily bread. It teaches people to hate this country and the majority of its citizens. The Farrakhan-Wright social vision is a cancer that must be removed—by any means necessary.
Leftism is simply cynicism about endeavor and accomplishment. Since journalists don't do anything, the easy way for them to promote their own significance is to criticize those who do attempt to accomplish things, which means working to a bottom line. For journalists there is no true bottom line, because when things don't go the way they predicted, journalists merely change the subject. In fact the whole system of journalism, and of leftism, is to divert attention away from the big picture, which is the accomplishments of personal responsibility and initiative, and to focus on the individual failures to which we are all subject as if they were all of the story.John Maynard Keynes famously asserted, "In the long run we are all dead." In the long run, certainly, each of us will be dead - but that is not quite the same as to say the we - the human race - are all dead. And indeed, life expectancy of individuals has been increasing, to such an extent that speculation has been raised about "escape velocity" - the possibility that our children's life expectancy might increase by ten years with each passing decade, so that death becomes less certain than taxes. In such a context we have even less excuse than Keynes' contemporaries to avert our eyes from the long-run perspective - the perspective in which personal responsibility and individual initiative are dominant.
The evil of the Farrakhan-Wright vision is fundamentally that it is a dishonest attack on the individual initiative and personal responsibility which has produced a geometrically increasing standard of living for Americans. An attack, that is, on what has made the modern American secretary so well situated that she would be ill advised to trade her circumstances for those of the fabulously wealthy Queen Victoria (1819-1901) of Great Britain.
you’re on my ‘to read’ list.
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