You echo Rush’s scare quotes around “media.” I have a different perspective. It’s not as if “the media” were some exalted title of respect. “Media” was invented to be criticized, as in “bias in the media.” But that is a confusion which weakens the deserved critique which “the media” has been getting.“The media” originally referred not only to journalism but also to (undoubtedly leftward-slanted) movies and TV drama. The trouble with critiquing “the media” in that sense is, of course, that no one thinks that fictional movies/TV should be eliminated, or could be censored or held to any objective standard. The only thing that “the media” now seems to refer to is “nonfiction” journalism.
. . . and that is precisely what should be critiqued. If you can’t say the word “journalism” perjoratively in response when journalism is libeling you, you are in a very weak position. Thus, my mission on FR - and before - has been to sort out how to critique journalism. I have learned that:
IMHO journalism is cynical about society and naive about government. Which, coincidentally, is a perfect description of “liberalism."
- Journalism - newspaper reporting - started out very different from what we have always known.
- Newspapers were relatively small, local, and infrequent. Most were weeklies, some had no deadline at all and just printed when the printer was good and ready.
- Newspapers were fractiously independent, and wore their printers’ viewpoints on their sleeves. None were regarded as “objective.”
- Newspapers were always engaged in an official news sharing system. The Post Office officially abetted this by charging a preferential rate for mailing newspapers.
- Moorse demonstrated his Baltimore-Washington telegraph in 1844, and in just a few years the Associated Press was in business as an aggressive monopoly.
- The AP was such an obvious concentration of propaganda power that it had to defend itself from charges of taking over the news business. The AP responded that its members had widely varied perspectives - and that the AP itself was “objective.”
- The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in 1890, long after the AP was entrenched. In 1945 the AP was found by SCOTUS to be in violation of Sherman.
- Bad news sells, so journalism rules for commercial success include “If it bleeds, it leads” and “‘Man Bites Dog,’ not ‘Dog Bites Man’” (which is negative in its own way, considering that most of the time most people can trust most people).
- Journalism which knowingly is negative and yet claims to be objective can only be called cynical.
“Mitch McConnell is the other half, and frankly, his winning gamble of holding off the Obama nominee will prove one of the most profoundly influential choices of all history.”
Hmm.. lf McConell really thought we would lose the Presidency and the Senate that means he had to know we would end up with a absolute radical to Replace Scalia right? I believe Obama put someone up who was almost palatable in the hopes they would get confirmed. Thank God it worked out the way it did but again if McConell really expected what he said if makes me wonder.