Posted on 09/14/2001 7:02:19 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
The framers of our Constitution gave carte blance protection to “speech” and “the press”. They did not grant that anyone was then in possession of complete and unalloyed truth, and it was impossible that they should be able to a priori institutionalize the truth of a future such human paragon even if she/he/it were to arrive.
At the time of the framing, the 1830s advent of mass marketing was in the distant future. Since that era, journalism has positioned itself as the embodiment of nonpartisan truth-telling, and used its enormous propaganda power to make the burden of proof of any “bias” essentially infinite. If somehow you nail them dead to rights in consistent tendentiousness, they will merely shrug and change the subject. And the press is protected by the First Amendment. That is where conservatives have always been stuck.
And make no mistake, conservatives are right to think that journalism is their opponent. Examples abound so that any conservative must scratch his/her head and ask “Why?” Why do those whose job it is to tell the truth tell it so tendentiously, and even lie? The answer is bound and gagged, and lying on your doorstep in plain sight. The money in the business of journalism is in entertainment, not truth. It is that imperative to entertain which produces the perspective of journalism.
And that journalism does indeed have a perspective is demonstrated every day in what it considers a good news story, and what is no news story at all. Part of that perspective is that news must be new--fresh today--as if the events of every new day were of equal importance with the events of all other days. So journalism is superficial. Journalism is negative as well, because the bad news is best suited to keep the audience from daring to ignore the news. Those two characteristics predominate in the perspective of journalism.
But how is that related to political bias? Since superficiality and negativity are anthema to conservatives there is inherent conflict between journalism and conservatism.. By contrast, and whatever pious intentions the journalist might have, political liberalism simply aligns itself with whatever journalism deems a “good story.” Journalists would have to work to create differences between journalism and liberalism, and simply lack any motive to do so. Indeed, the echo chamber of political “liberalism” aids the journalist--and since liberalism consistently exacerbates the issues it addresses, successful liberal politicians make plenty of bad news to report.
The First Amendment which protects the expression of opinion must also be understood to protect claims by people of infallibility--and to forbid claims of infallibility to be made by the government. What, after all, is the point of elections if the government is infallible? Clearly the free criticism of the government is at the heart of freedom of speech and press. Freedom, that is, of communication.
By formatting the bands and standardizing the bandwiths the government actually created broadcasting as we know it. The FCC regulates broadcasting--licensing a handful of priveledged people to broadcast at different frequency bands in particular locations. That is something not contemplated in the First Amendment, and which should never pass constitutional muster if applied to the literal press. Not only so, but the FCC requires application for renewal on the basis that a licensee broadcaster is “operating in the public interest as a public trustee.” That is a breathtaking departure from the First Amendment.
No one questions the political power of broadcasting; the broadcasters themselves obviously sell that viewpoint when they are taking money for political advertising. What does it mean, therefore, when the government (FCC) creates a political venue which transcends the literal press? And what does it mean when the government excludes you and me--and almost everyone else--from that venue in favor of a few priviledged licensees? And what does it mean when the government maintains the right to pull the license of anyone it does allow to participate in that venue? It means a government far outside its First Amendment limits. When it comes to broadcasting and the FCC, clearly the First Amendment has nothing to do with the case.
The problem of journalism’s control of the venue of argument would be ameliorated if we could get them into court. In front of SCOTUS they would not be permitted to use their mighty megaphones. And to get to court all it takes is the filing of a civil suit. A lawsuit must be filed against broadcast journalism, naming not only the broadcast licensees, but the FCC.
We saw the tendency of broadcast journalism in the past election, when the delay in calling any given State for Bush was out of all proportion to the delay in calling a state for Gore, the margin of victory being similar--and, most notoriously, the state of Florida was wrongly called for Gore in time to suppress legal voting in the Central Time Zone portion of the state, to the detriment of Bush and very nearly turning the election. That was electioneering over the regulated airwaves on election day, quite on a par with the impact that illegal electioneering inside a polling place would have. It was an enormous tort.
And it is on that basis that someone should sue the socks off the FCC and all of broadcast journalism.
Journalism has a simbiotic relation with liberal Democrat politicians, journalists and liberal politicians are interchangable parts. Print journalism is only part of the press (which also includes books and magazines and, it should be argued, the internet), and broadcast journalism is no part of the press at all. Liberals never take issue with the perspective of journalism, so liberal politicians and journalists are interchangable parts. The FCC compromises my ability to compete in the marketplace of ideas by giving preferential access addresses to broadcasters, thus advantaging its licensees over me. And broadcast journalism, with the imprimatur of the government, casts a long shadow over elections. Its role in our political life is illegitimate.
The First Amendment, far from guaranteeing that journalism will be the truth, protects your right to speak and print your fallible opinion. Appeal to the First Amendment is appeal to the right to be, by the government or anyone else’s lights, wrong. A claim of objectivity has nothing to do with the case; we all think our own opinions are right.
When the Constitution was written communication from one end of the country to the othe could take weeks. Our republic is designed to work admirably if most of the electorate is not up to date on every cause celebre. Leave aside traffic and weather, and broadcast journalism essentially never tells you anything that you need to know on a real-time basis.
Definitely. But what are its roots? The knowledge there's no oversight and no one to hold them accountable for their bad behaviour, the deliberate rudeness?
Obviously. And what is the root of "the knowledge there's no oversight and no one to hold them accountable?" Here we take pride in our open sources of information - multiple radio and TV broadcasters, multiple newspapers, magazines, books . . . and yet we see the "MSM" - the journalists, as a practical matter - behaving as (let's take Mrs. Clinton's formulation) a vast left wing conspiracy.That "conspiracy" operates in plain sight, and it centers around the go-along-and-get-along principle that each will prosper best if all prosper. So each part of "objective journalism" accepts the mission of delegitimating dissent while glorifying the ersatz "dissent" which is actually conformity to the propostition that people who have responsibility are suckers. Why have responsibility when you can have a media outlet, and merely have authority? At least the authority to criticize . . .
Leftism is simply the elevation of criticism above performance; second-guessing is at its core. After all, "government ownership of the means of production" takes the products to be produced as a given. And yet the major economic opportunities lie in discerning what new products it is worthwhile to develop the ability to produce. I was browsing in the public library and stumbled across an old book which was written to promote socialism. I really enjoyed reading the musty discussions about how a planning board was going to figure out whether to switch production from steam to diesel locomotives. Because from this perspective what is plainer than the fact that they could not properly do so is the fact that they couldn't figure out what the real problem even was. Instead of worrying about locomotives - already by then a mature industry - they should have been throwing all efforts into developing integrated circuits and computers. And that planning board never was going to figure that out.
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.""Citizenship in a Republic,"
Theodore Roosevelt,
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
conservatism_IS_compassion: The Internet is a far, far better venue for political argument because it is far less regulated.One glance at DU demonstrates that. :')
The Internet is a far, far better venue for political argument because it is far less regulated.One glance at DU demonstrates that. :')
Indeed. We don't have to pay attention to them, and they can ignore us. Each site is moderated to appeal to a particular audience, and we aren't the only two. Anyone thinks they can do better than Jim Rob, all they gotta do is jump right in. No barrier to entry.
The question is spurred by your conduct the other day over this Dick Cheney matter. The vice president was involved in a hunting accident and all of a sudden it wasn’t about him or what happened, it was how you weren’t notified.
Like the world revolves around you.
And you started acting like idiots. Juvenile, arrogant, antagonistic idiots.
> Journalists argue from the assumption that they are more objective than other people - an inherently arrogant presumption, belied by the fact that their deadlines place them squarely in the superficial entertainment industry.WHITE HOUSE PRESS SHAMES ITSELF (Lonsberry)
boblonsberry.com ^ | 02/15/06 | Bob Lonsberry
Journalism exists to promote the moral superiority of journalists. Journalists promote the idea of their own moral superiority the easy way - by tearing down the reputations of all the possible competition.The Dale Carnegie course tells you, "Don't Criticize, Condemn, or Complain." Journalism does nothing else.
Naturally journalism promoted MLK and his complaints, and naturally it promotes Jesse Jackson and his complaints. It's all so convenient for journalism.
And the blacks who follow Jesse Jackson certainly aren't gonna become competition for journalists, because they can't ammount to anything apart from the support they need journalism for.
Martin Luther and Coretta King and the victim industry
RenewAmerica ^ | 02.13.06 | Mary Mostert
There is nothing in the Constitution or the laws that says that the media have a right to be in the White House at all, much less to have press conferences.
. . . and certainly nothing which would entitle some journalists to exclude other people on grounds that they are not journalists.Spoiled Brat Media
RCP ^ | February 16, 2006 | Thomas Sowell
True. And that, I regret to say, is something I can express no confidence in Ms. Fonda's capacity for."I have been spending time with Iraq veterans who have come back ... their voices are the most important because the Bush administration can't say they are unpatriotic.In the first place,
"We have to support the ones who have been there who say this is wrong. What they are saying is, pull the troops out now."
is sheer tendentiousness; why are those who do not "say this is wrong" less worthy of "support"? In the nature of things the American military is for good and sufficent reason determinedly apolitical; General Eisenhower was courted by both political parties to be their candidate for POTUS in 1952 because he was not a known political quantity. Ms. Fonda and her ilk subvert a crucial American tradition by promoting political activism in the military.Fonda's stand on the Vietnam War made her deeply unpopular among war veterans and that animosity survives today.Journalists who give this sort of rhetoric legs are acting out a fantasy of rescuing the mutinous troops trapped in the quagmire of the Western Front in WWI. Ms. Fonda is promoting herself by indulging in that fantasy for the journalists' benefit.
So much for the "mutinous troops in the quagmire" fantasy she promoted then and is promoting now . . .Fonda's political activism, film career and personal life are covered in her autobiography, titled My Life So Far, which she is in Australia to promote.
. . . so she has a financial as well as an ego motive in this confidence swindle . . .Fonda calls for Iraq exit
Herald Sun ^ | 28 February 2006 | Jonathon Moran
BTTT
Ms. Fonda's "political activism" once got people hanged. Treason just ain't what it used to be.
Certainly, not since John Kerry got away with treating with the enemy - and openly talking to Congress about having done so . . .
Journalism is the business of attracting attention by the use of topical nonfiction. So while most of life, for most people, is muddling through mundane problems and earning a living, in the artificial reality of journalism most of the discussion is about unusual - primarily unusually bad things.
bttt
The trouble with wanting "the news" is that the story selection criteria which make "the news" interesting and therefore make a news outlet profitable are inherently anticonservative:. The conservative thing to do is simply to discount the news. First reports are usually wrong. Instead of focusing on the latest news, focus on reliable (i.e., proven track record) commentary. And that will direct you to a conservative editorial page such as that of The Wall Street Journal. And also to a web site known as FreeRepublic.com. Better yet, read a book.
- If it bleeds, it leads. And it also inherently insinuates that the powers-that-be ought to have prevented it.
- "Man Bites Dog" rather than "Dog Bites Man" makes news stories unrepresentative of what usually happens.
- "Always make your deadline" (the print version of 'the show must go on') makes journalism superficial.
If you want to know what is going on, "the news" is a distraction.
I Need A Conservative Television News Network
The Reality Check ^ | 03/16/2006 | Edward L. Daley
That I can agree with wholeheartedly; the problem of story selection (most events are not reported at all, a few are printed in the body of the paper, and very little makes the front page above the fold - and all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, human beings decide which is which) assures that "fair and balanced news" is in the eye of the beholder.. . . I need a television news network that's more competent and truthful than it is "fair and balanced", (3) and anyone who can't appreciate that deserves to be misinformed.
Here is where I have a problem; a journalist may competently do his story selection according to given criteria, but those criteria impose a perspective on his product which no amount of truthfulness will alter.http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1598598/posts?page=72The standard criteria of journalism, such as "'Man Bites Dog' rather than 'Dog Bites Man'," "If it bleeds, it leads," and the implicit criterion of "You can't report what you don't know yet" (Duh!) and "Always insinuate your superior objectivity and virtue as compared to the subject you are writing about" impose a leftist slant on the news. A slant which can only be openly acknowledged and discussed in opinionated discussion in which the participants are selected with a view toward "balance" and "fairness." Or, better yet, in openly conservative (as a leftist would have it) commentary to balance the leftward slant which inheres in superficial, negative, arrogant "straight news" reporting due, fundamenatally, to the need to attract an audience.
Half of the truth certainly can be. And since nobody prints absolutely all of the truth - no editor even knows all of the truth - all speech and print should be suspected of containing propaganda. Including, sometimes, the dictionary.And certainly including the news reports which, we are solemnly assured by journalists, are "objective." The First Amendment does not say that journalism is objective; it says that it doesn't have to be objective because judging that isn't the government's job. Conversely journalism's judgement of the truthfulness of government officers is not dispositive either. The only way to unseat a president, for example, is impeachment or expiration of his term of office.
No Breach Seen in Work in Iraq on Propaganda
NY Times ^ | March 22, 2006 | THOM SHANKER
Journalism is an artificial reality. In that artificial reality, journalists - who do nothing but talk - are heroes and everyone who does actual work, taking risks that their work or investment might be ill-timed or not suited for actual conditions outside the lab, or (in the case of the military) personally fatal - are competitor for the title of hero and are targets to be denigrated to make the journalist look good.Why Are Socialist Tendencies So Evident in Journalism?And there is a revolving door between Democratic politics and journalism because liberals have no principle which stands in the way of pandering to journalism. Socialism is defined as "government ownership of the means of production," but the dirty little secret is that the planted axiom of socialism is that not only the means of production but what is produced - and at what cost - are taken as a priori givens.
That is, socialists - who love to prattle about their own "progressivism" - have as their entire system the seizure of credit for the work and risk by which the original entrepreneur created not merely the means of production but the actual product being produced. IOW, socialists can seize a petroleum operation but they could never invent one, because that had to be invented in conjunction with the development of the cars and trucks which provide the demand for gasoline &c. Socialists can seize automobile factories, but could never develop cars and trucks because there is no gasoline and oil to run them on.
That means that socialism is founded on second-guessing the successful entrepreneurs. Socialism is embarrassed at the idea of failure; all socialists want to talk about is the successes and how they were "inevitable." The fundamental flaw of socialism is that by arrogating to "society" - by which term socialists never mean anything other than government - the credit for all successful past innovation, socialism destroys the incentive for future innovation. And calling socialism "progressive" cannot change the fact that socialism is inimical to the possibility of rapid progress.
Let's look at history to understand what that means. Queen Victoria was born in 1819 and lived until 1901. In her time she was fabulously wealthy; the richest slave owning Southern planters were pikers compared to her wealth. And yet, less than two centuries later, goods and services and their production and delivery to the general populace have been advanced by entrepreneurs to the point where an American secretary would have to think long and hard about living in Queen Victoria's circumstances. Maybe you can give up the affordable global airline travel, and maybe you can give up the cars and the lights and other things that run on electricity - but can you give up the health care advances which mean that the American secretary's husband probably doesn't die at age 60, leaving her a depressed widow for the last two decades of her life. And her children don't die young, either.
Just in the past half-century, progress has been such that the "poor" American's material well-being is now equivalent to what the American middle class enjoyed in 1950. At any given time, the cost of socialism must include the loss of the prospect of continued economic advancement of society. I do not argue that all science would stop with the advent of socialism, but that advancement of the practical arts which brings fruits of scientific understanding to the market is what socialism destroys. Science proves the possibility of flight, and the most well-connected might be able to get to fly - but commercialization of the science of flight is what socialism would suppress.
Journalism is a very cartel-like activity, in the sense that the big media organs systematically avoid competition in the things that matter to their industry. And the only thing that journalists really care about in that sense is their reputation as members of the de facto guild of "objective journalists." Journalists flock together in herds, and the one thing they will not do is question the objectivity of any other member of their guild.Bob Schieffer says, speaking for all of journalism, that "accuracy is the answer to charges of bias" [in the media]. In reality, of course, accuracy is not a sufficient answer to that issue. It would be necessary, of course (I say "would," because a news organization which can trumpet the so-called "TANG memos" as incontrovertible truth has a long way to go in assuring that they are accurate). But although accuracy is necessary, it is not sufficient.
The other issue is, "accuracy about what? Because Winston Churchill was surely correct when he noted that "Half the truth can be a very big lie." The issue of "story selection" - what's the lead, what's inside the paper somewhere, and what isn't reported at all - is fatal to the conceit that journalism can ever be proved to be objective.
The fact is that in its story selection journalism doesn't even try to be objective. Journalism's first priority in its story selection is to attract the attention of the audience. Journalism has its rules to assure that. One is, "If it bleeds, it leads." Another is, "Man Bites Dog," not "Dog Bites Man." Those are perfectly sound rules for selecting stories which will be profitable, but an industry's profits are not a good definition of the public interest. And in the context of any other industry, journalists would be the first to point that out.
Thirty or thirty five years ago we naively wondered when they would get around to our side of the story. But by now, few Freepers are in any doubt that "the MSM" is an identifiable, monolithic-behaving institution. And I flatter myself that I have been in the vanguard of the effort to understand "bias in the media."Not that I taught Reed Irvine anything - back in the 1970s I read his Accuracy In Media (AIM) report assiduously for a year or two - but while he and others have stayed fixated on trying to get "the media" to "do their job" I have moved on. We-the-people have to grow up and understand that "objective journalism" is the Wizard of Oz - it is all image and no substance other than "a man behind a curtain."
The job of the
manpeople behind the curtain is not to impart truth, it is to maintain the image of "The Great and Powerful Oz." Or in this case, the wise and objective media. The reason that maps to "liberalism" is quite simple - "liberalism" is simply political expression of the idea that nothing actually matters but PR. The "liberalism" of journalism is not being in the pocket of the Democrats" - it is the other way around. Liberal politicians say what journalists are thinking - naturally journalists approve of it."Liberalism" is simply contempt for society, and the arrogation of the right to speak for society. The particular part of society for which liberalism presumes to speak via the publicizing of the opinions of the six retired generals just happens to be the active military.
The Generals' Dangerous Whispers
Washington Post ^ | 4/21/06 | Charles Krauthammer
Memo to Mr. and Mrs. Media: No matter how many times you report that the American middle class is getting "squeezed," you're just flat-out wrong.This past Sunday's Parade magazine featured the latest attempt by the mainstream media to deny the self-evident truth that the American economy right now is booming.
American Dreaming
Amaerican Spectator ^ | 26Apr06 | Quin HillyerPosted on 04/26/2006 7:23:11 AM EDT by rellimpank
the rest of the time they cover Duke University and the Gay agenda.
. . . Another very uncurious habit of our main stream media.
For this we have the First Amendment?!
Yes, that's exactly why we have a First Amendment - to assure that we-the-people have the right to spend money promoting our political opinions (whether or not we call them "objective facts").Compare with the historical sponsorship of competing newspapers by Jefferson and Hamilton in the founding era.
Only difference is, now we have government-licensed broadcast journalism to help promote the fatuous conceit that the artificial reality within the pages of a news report matters more than the actual reality outside of those pages. Which works up to a point - and then our own "Baghdad Bobs" may find reality can't be talked away when reality is military control of your own location by people who "don't exist" or "have to respect the Constitution."
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