Replies

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.”
Journalism and Objectivity