Death Knell for 'Mainstream' Journalism

Print journalism today, and by that I mean daily newspapers, stands at a bloody crossroads. Those who practice it must come to grips with realities, such as all the whys behind the decline in their readership, thus circulation and advertising revenue, and by all means, not continue to espouse personal agendas, or show slavish favoritism to their ideological pals.

Yes, it's a crackpot theory, I realize, that the prime function of journalism is to inform the public impartially without fear or favor. Color me naive. Casting that delusion aside, journalism, particularly today's dailies, suffers from life-threatening credibility issues amidst plummeting circulation. Result: Cutbacks, suspended publications, bankruptcy for some. Some wags might say fine, good riddance, but the loss of daily newspapers plainly leaves a hole in the ether of how and where we get our news, however mangled or tainted.

Journalists have not come around to recognize the question raised by mid-last century novelist and critic James Agee in his landmark Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) written originally for Fortune Magazine:

"Why is it that, written, facts lose so much of their force, and reality? Partly the writers' doing: as part-artist he [sic] feels the strength of need to select and then, to invent. Also, he is not aware that the truth is more important than any petty lie he may tell..."

Agee, himself basically a journalist, decried journalists' "temptation to invent." Words can "be made to do or tell anything within human conceit," he wrote. They were always bedeviled in two "centrally important and inescapable ways":

Remarkably, a host of journalists don't give a rat's ass about their lack of credibility. They defend the indefensible.

Nothing is indefensible because nothing is true. They are products of The Frankfurt School. The author makes reference to journalists' professors teaching them these values. Actually they teach them relativism, critical theory, an epistemology that has no polar star of truth, only a set of shibboliths.

The shibboliths alone are worthy of defending. And these shibboliths associate virtue with race, class, gender, sexual proclivity etc. Truth is derived from these virtues and the virtues are not dependent upon being true, hence the eschatology is a one-way street.

Barak Obama as the iconic first African-American president of the United States is, in himself, a history making event much like the entire civil rights movement. In fact it is the culmination of that movement when journalism was on the right side of history. If the civil rights movement can be a analogize to war, journalists had a very good war.

It is essential that Barak Obama succeed even when he is wrong, just as it was essential that the civil rights movement succeed even though the race riots in our inner cities were wrong. Truth has not a damned thing to do with any of this. Higher values are at stake and higher values means that one value is accorded a higher value than the next. In this case the higher value is the election and the subsequent success of the first African-American president and the inferior value is the welfare of the nation.

The highest value is the vindication of the race value system in the person of Barak Obama who by extension must be protected and any threat that might discredit that iconic person must be prevented at all costs.

I said during the election campaign that unless Barak Obama was destroyed morally he could not be defeated. That is no less true today. There are some who understand this viscerally and I would put the birther movement in that category. John McCain did not understand that in the run-up to the election and his appearance on the Sunday talk show with Bob Schieffer demonstrates that he still does not understand it. Most of FreeRepublic does understand it, and most of the Republican Party establishment does not.

The journalists will persist in floating their prejudices as "truth" in the unshakable belief that they are defending the highest possible moral good. So long as journalists persevere in their delusion, there can be no real hope to unhorse Obama absent some clarifying event.

I was posting to a journalist forum (before I got banned). These guys (and gals) absolutely deny there is any bias in the media (except for that worthless Fox network).

They blame the decline on everything except the fact that people no longer want their product.

I was really surprised to discover that few of them understood what the business of a newspaper was. They were confused between content (what they contribute) and advertising (the real reason a newspaper exist, that is to make a profit).

I attempted to point out that their contribution (content) was only necessary to gain subscribers (eyeballs) which translates into higher ad rates. There is a direct connection between the number of readers and profit. Lots of readers, lots of profit.

This set off a firestorm as I was called everything from troll (which I was) to an ignorant right wing wacko that listens to Rush and Bill O. I did note that anyone that did not agree with them is a right wing wacko so I did not take offense.

The point is they were trained to think the purpose of a newspaper was to educate the people in what is right and what is wrong. Of course they decide which is which. They do not seem to be concerned that their readers have choices and really do not like to be lectured at or told that their basic beliefs are wrong. So their readers go elsewhere for information.

Oh, they also firmly believe only “journalist” can gather and report the news. I think what is going on in Iran right now sort of puts the lie to that belief. Technology today makes everyone of us a “journalist”.

No one killed newspapes, they commited suicide.

(I fully realize that all sensible, thinking Americans — that’d be conservatives —fully understand this information. I post it only for the brain-dead Obama voters and statists — that’d be liberals — who might have slipped out of their rubber rooms over at DU and are lurking, hacking or generally causing trouble here at FR.)

Recently, I read what probably amounts to the obituary for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. (My wife insists on buying the Sunday edition for the TV guide.) It joins the growing list of print newspapers in deep, deep financial trouble. The LA Times, NY Times, Boston Globe, Cleveland Plain Dealer, etc.

Here’s my horseback analysis of why they’re heading for extinction.

As generally liberal statist propaganda outlets, they have for decades supported a government “education” system (and I used the term very loosely) dominated by the NEA and the idiot bureaucrats running the DOE in Washington. The unions and the NEA have largely hurled the traditional three “Rs” and critical thinking skills under the bus in favor of touchy-feely diversity training, self-esteem building, political correctness, African studies, teaching Hispanic kids in SPANISH instead of teaching them English on day one, social promotions, basket weaving, navel gazing, etc., etc.

I won’t dwell on it here but would, instead, refer you to my personal experience with the government schools here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lR1KQq2-U

What I cannot grasp is precisely why, after effectively dumbing down the members of the American populace who have traversed the conveyor belt of mediocrity called government schools, the overeducated owners and operators of these newspapers are surprised that this population has lost its interest in READING NEWSPAPERS: Many of them CAN’T read!!

Those folks – especially conservatives who resent the increasingly liberal drivel found in the major papers — who can and DO read things are now getting their information from the Internet or, for those too busy to actually read, from largely conservative talk radio (which helps explain why Algore, Pelosi, Reid, et al feel the need to control both these formats).

Their statist dumbing down has produced huge numbers of voters who lacked the critical thinking skills necessary to determine that their present-voting, slick-talking liar of a candidate had virtually NO management or legislative experience. And the economic illiterates they have elevated to high office in Washington for years have produced a growing economic crisis which has even those with any money left spending it on “luxuries” like food, clothing and shelter. Newspapers and advertising therein are far down the list.

And did I mention that the economic collapse Obama “inherited” has its genesis in Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act? It was then expanded by Clinton and stridently defended by Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters and Barney Frank (who was sleeping with Herb Moses while he held a top spot at – appropriately – Fannie). Only government could turn the dream of home ownership for poor folks into a NIGHTMARE for the rest of us.

Now that they have control of the White House and both houses of Congress, the liberals who run most of the newspapers here SHOULD be on a beach somewhere throwing a huge party. Instead, they are dusting off their resumes. The Editor of the AJC informed us that she was actively seeking to get more conservative/traditional values writers in the pages down there. I’d submit that it’s too little, too late!

Perhaps she’ll write and let us know if that “Hope” and “Change We Can Believe In” thing helps with the job search.

If you just have to have one of those 1,000 new jobs dunning folks for Tim Geithner’s IRS, it couldn’t hurt.

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