But as we saw in the Bush years, no one in the GOP will stand up to MSM slander. Kerry threatened to sue any station airing swift boat ads, and a movie documenting facts about it. What did Bush do when CBS actually aired fake documents suggesting he was AWOL in the National Guard, hoping to effect an election? Nothing. And so the MSM thrives in a niche of appeasement to one side only.
That’s why I suggest a civil action, not depending on a Karl Rove to give a President Bush a spine and get him to use the Justice Dept. And I don’t suggest that the Republican Party do it, either - they never will. The plaintiff needs to be the class of people who wish the Republicans were their defenders because we know that the Democrats and the journalists with whom the Democrats exist in symbiosis, are systematically abusing us.So, say I, we go to court alleging that:
- ”journalism” functions as a single entity, because of the unifying effect of the continuous contact among journalism institutions which is the purpose of the AP. Those institutions, and the reporters and editors who work for them, conspire against the public precisely as Adam Smith could have predicted.
- This conspiracy against the public manifests itself in the promotion of propaganda to the effect that journalists can, indeed must, be trusted implicitly as the “first draft of history," and
- This conspiracy against the public manifests itself in the promotion of propaganda to the effect that they, and “liberals” who go along and get along with them, are the only ones who can be trusted at all. This manifests itself in the systematic slander of people we count on to get things like production and distribution of goods and services done, and indeed of anyone who does not go along to get along with that conspiracy - or who simply are convenient targets to pick on. Examples, being legion, include but are far from limited to the AGW hoax, and other alarmism including the Alar “poisoned apple” scare, just about every artificial sweetener scare, overhyped oil spill scares, the fraudulent "Texas Air National Guard memos,” the smear of the SBVT, the “government outting of Valerie Plame” hoax, the promotion of the Nifonging of the Duke Lacrosse team, the smearing of Joe the Plumber, witch hunting through Sarah Palin’s emails, etc, etc. Including everything in Ann Coulter’s Slander and a great deal of Thomas Sowell’s writing.
- The AP and all other wire services have the same unifying effect on journalism, and what little competition they have among themselves does not mitigate the fact that ideological competition among them is essentially completely suppressed. The members of those services individually cooperate through the mechanism of the wire services, and each, tacitly or openly, claim that all are objective.
- The FCC promotes broadcast journalism, placing its imprimatur on the so-called objectivity of that journalism conspiracy, and assisting journalism’s promotion of paranoia among the public by the implication that the public should be paying attention to journalism’s reports every waking hour. And accepting at face value claims that journalism is objective, when it is merely unified in promoting its own interest at the expense of the public - and in particular the plaintiffs’ - good.
- Plaintiffs demand restitution for damages in the amount of the cost of enough advertising to counterbalance the dolorous impact of the aforementioned fraud on reputations, great and small, over the history back to any applicable Statute of Limitations. And plaintiffs demand triple damages under RICO because of the extent, duration, and damage to the public and to the reputation of the Republic caused by this vast conspiracy. In the era of satellite, microwave, and laser/fiber optic communication, the justification of the wire services’ “association” of nominally independent presses - the conservation of communications bandwidth - is an anachronistic issue. And the claim of objectivity, being functionally equivalent to a claim of wisdom, is and always was sophistry and must be expunged from all communication which has the imprimatur of the government. Open advocacy is legitimate, but fraudulent self-promotion must be something which is disinfected with maximum daylight. The government must not in any active or passive way suggest or insinuate otherwise.
Journalism and Objectivity