Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate

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.

"Most people have no idea what goes on even in Journalism 101. Kids, aspiring newhounds, are taught that "objectivity" is impossible."

I was taught that perfect objectivity is impossible, and it is. We all are corrupt sinners who by nature are selfish due to the Fall. However, I WAS ALSO taught that while we can't be perfectly objective, we CAN be fair and balanced, giving as much equal time to all sides of a story as we can, with EQUALLY CREDIBLE sources for all sides (instead of getting some smart liberal and a dumb conservative like some in the press do to skew the news to the left in a less obvious way).

However, unfortunately, not all J101's teach this anymore.

I somewhat agree, somewhat disagree. I still say true, perfect objectivity is impossible because we all have a bias we will lean to even when we try not to do so. HOWEVER, you are correct that the old journalists received respect because they came as darn near close to perfect objectivity as you can as a flawed human being.

They reported both sides equally and fairly. And journalists today CAN work on that. I go so far as to count how many quotes I use in stories from each perspective on a story. I also attempt to make sure I am not subconsciously trying to make the side I disagree with look bad by choosing quotes that makes the person look stupid etc.

The result? I feel good about the quality of my work and I get lots of compliments from people impressed that I can report fairly even on issues I am very passionate about.

Your point about the broadcast medium attracting many less intelligent people is unfortunately right.

Part of me would like to be different.....actually be a smart broadcast journalist....which is why I am more interested in broadcast currently than print, despite the ability of print to have longer and more detailed stories. I also am interested in broadcast because of a greater sense of immediacy to the news and being able to tell the stories in a visual manner. But by golly, the broadcast medium is often just pretty faces, with some notable exceptions I have met.

I'm one class away from earning an MA in journalism at a Massachusetts university. I know all about J-school.

If that is so, then I must only assume you wrote this in a big hurry:

Absolute objectivity is absolutely impossible, and even it it were possible, it would make for an incredibly boring, milquetoast piece that wasn't worth writing, reading, taping, or broadcasting. Objectivity is the angle, the passion, that each writer or broadcaster brings to his subject. News coverage is flat and meaningless without objectivity.

Before the advent of the FCC and legal monopolies on broadcast frequencies, the First Amendment more or less meant what it said. Its meaning followed logically from the Declaration of Independence and its insistence on equality before the law. The First Amendment did not say that you had the same ability to afford paper and ink as The New York Times had, but it did (and still does) say that you have the same right to spend your own money on ink and paper, and distribute the paper after you have smeared the ink on it in the way that suits you.
In places and times where the writ of the First Amendment has not run, there have been instances of governments controling the supply of paper to supress the expression of dissent. Indeed I could worry that the precedents of wage and price controls in America would, if aggressively followed, allow the government to do that very thing--by the simple expedient of reducing the price of paper so low ("to enhance communication") that the supply of paper dried up.
Along comes wireless technology--creating the possiblity of communication but also the possibility of interference under unbridled competition. "To enhance communication" the government siezes control of the radio spectrum, and formats it by licensing only certain individuals to broadcast at certain frequencies at limited power from a given location. We-the-people respond by buying radio and TV receivers which allow us to hear and see the signals which the FCC licensees transmit. Viola! Broadcasting is created.
But at what cost? The First Amendment declares freedom of speech and only derivitively freedom of listening. In the (increasingly dominant) broadcast medium of "communication" we-the-people are equal to each other before the law as listeners/viewers but not as as speakers. That is a "State of Denmark" in which something is rotten, and I am merely pointing it out.

You couldn't be more wrong! Any public voice is or can be press if it expresses an opinion. Your narrowing of the 1st ammendment is very dangerous.

I am confident that anyone with a handle like "Natural Law," will reflect on those words and see error in them. The "narrowing of the First Amendment" of which I speak is not my idea or desire, it is an accomplished fact.

I go so far as to count how many quotes I use in stories from each perspective on a story. I also attempt to make sure I am not subconsciously trying to make the side I disagree with look bad by choosing quotes that makes the person look stupid etc.
The result? I feel good about the quality of my work and I get lots of compliments from people impressed that I can report fairly even on issues I am very passionate about. --rwfromkansas

From my #45 (see "TO 45" link below): the writer who declares his own perspective up front is the one whose writing is less, rather than more, tendentious. The one who affects to have no perspective is the one who is insufferably self-righteous. And tendentious.
Ultimately I think that the claim of objectivity is sliding board with a 60-degree downward slope toward "liberal" PC.

I must only assume you wrote this in a big hurry:

Absolute objectivity is absolutely impossible, and even it it were possible, it would make for an incredibly boring, milquetoast piece that wasn't worth writing, reading, taping, or broadcasting. Objectivity is the angle, the passion, that each writer or broadcaster brings to his subject. News coverage is flat and meaningless without objectivity. --Hemingway's Ghost

Don't be too hard on him please, Prof.

H.G. was generally dead on target, except that he and MW got wrapped up in a flame war while I was on the road and unable to provide adult supervision.

But of course you're right that "the angle" is hardly to be styled "objectivity." If any writing is to be styled "objective," it must come from a writer who is aware of his own POV and scrupulous to give differing POVs their due.

No matter how bad you may think self-righteous Christians are, they at least recognize that self-righteousness is sinful even when it is they who are guilty of it. The journalist who thinks he is objective, OTOH, is ipso facto self-righteous and utterly unconscious of the possibility of sin.

Of course absolute objectivity is impossible.

However, new age "Truth is relative," has infused academia.

I will give you a case in point. The incident I am about to describe is what made me stop watching virtually all broadcast news.

After the Oklahoma bombing, I was watching the network news and Bryant Gumbel was standing in front of the bomb site. He was wailing about how the "Ultra-Right" wing hates government and this could probably be traced back to Conservatives.

Now, here is the objective fact... some of the building was blown up. Where does Mr. Gumbel's bizarre rantings come in?

The goal of actual REPORTING is to TRY to present the facts in an objective manner. If the journalism classes do not teach this today, than I am not surprised that Journalists in general are held to such a low regard in public opinion.

One of my partners was telling me about how "All truths are different," and he went on for quite a while. I said in some respects he is correct and ultimately he may even BE correct. So I said "In the practical world, we have to proceed with the notion that some things must be taken for truth." I then threw his pack of cigarettes on the ground. I stated that perhaps it was an illusion but for all intents and purposes in the real world, his cigarettes were still on the floor. See my point?

I am dismayed when society at large buys into a psuedo-intellectualization of metaphysical doctrines that interest me. Hollywood Buddhists are a great example. They miss the ENTIRE point of certain philosophical ideals and then squawk on about how wise they are.

Yet I have news for them... the cigarettes are still on the floor!

Did that make sense? I am drunk shovelling so perhaps I am delirious!

broadcast journalism is by and large a joke. It tends not to attract the same intellects and print. Pretty faces, vapid minds. -- motexva

Your point about the broadcast medium attracting many less intelligent people is unfortunately right.

Part of me would like to be different.....actually be a smart broadcast journalist....which is why I am more interested in broadcast currently than print, despite the ability of print to have longer and more detailed stories. I also am interested in broadcast because of a greater sense of immediacy to the news and being able to tell the stories in a visual manner. But by golly, the broadcast medium is often just pretty faces, with some notable exceptions I have met.

Actually I have a different view of "journalism" than most. As I have used the term in this thread, an "objective journalist" is self-righteous and unable understand not only what conservatives think but even that conservatives think--quite a lot, actually. That sort of person "wants to make a difference"--but somehow projects the idea that only a low-life scum would accuse them of actually trying to do so. And broadcast journalists are IMHO pretty much the extreme case of that.
But if you must speak of journalism as being the discussion of "what is going on", journalism itself must be one of the subjects of any analysis of what is going on. And subject selection is the central issue of journalism which must be discussed. What stories are hyped, what are reported, what are "not news?" Always assuming that the journalistic reports are not outright false, the issue is "What is the particular fraction of the truth" that we are being told?
But commit that sort of journalism and guess what? You are in the eyes of the journalistic establishment "not a journalist--not objective." You are instead a conservative talk show host.

"I learned of the existence of bias in the media back in the late 1970s, and subscribed to AIM for a year or two.Why did I stop? Because I was convinced! The parade of further examples became a twice-told tale, a bit like reading a daily report on the rising of the sun."

So what are you saying, AIM has had nothing new to tell you since the late '70s? I beg to differ.

Did you know about how Google discriminates against vendors based upon politics and bullies the little guy even when politics is not involved?
http://www.aim.org/publications/briefings/2003/nov19.html

Did you know about the communist sympathy for radical Islam in the West?
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2003/12/04.html

On our sister site, Accuracy In Academia did you know that "On Campus, History Gives Way To Behavior Modification"
http://www.academia.org/news/campus_history.php

Even if you did know some of these things are you making the case that it is useless to have top analysts monitoring the media/academia and condensing the findings in an accessible format?

What's the use of the Free Republic then if you know all you need to know?

Since superficiality and negativity are anthema to conservatives there is inherent conflict between journalism and conservatism..

Wouldn't we love for this to be the truth. Human beings love superficiality and negativity, and conservatives are not in any way immune.

You are right in the sense that conservatives walking past a newsstand are almost as badly suckered by the negative headlineIs Your Drinking Water Unsafe? as anyone else.
But I am right in the sense that the political implications of negativity toward the things--e.g., drinking water--upon which we-the-people depend are anathema to conservatism.

Even if you did know some of these things are you making the case that it is useless to have top analysts monitoring the media/academia and condensing the findings in an accessible format?

I am glad that you are doing what you are doing; that work is necessary because at any given time there are people who need to be shown the tendentiousness which journalism is manifesting. I needed it in the 1970s, lots of people need it now--and wouldn't necessarily learn from examples from thirty years ago.

What's the use of the Free Republic then if you know all you need to know?

The great virtue of Free Republic is that I not only can choose to read, I can help unify the current-events information on this site. My attempt to generalize the examples you and others compile is my modest contribution to the nation's intellectual discourse.
If we-the-people merely subject ourselves to example after example of what Ann Coulter styles Slander, and have no more of a response than an annual vote among imperfet-to-criminal politicians--well, all it did was raise my blood pressure.
Your project is to "out" liberal tendentiousness whereever it appears. That is a Sysyphusian task, for it appears everywhere that people have been indoctrinated to expect to be given the truth. Especially in journalism and academia.
I once showed my Dad a trick which he didn't think really worked. He snorted, "Once in a million." I repeated the trick and he rejoined, "Twice in two million." He was half-joking, but the point is that he could talk that way because he was Dad. IOW, he was the Establishment in my family. You likewise face an Establishment, and you likewise are subjected to fundamentally impossible standards of proof.
My project is to transcend the unbounded standard of proof which the liberal establishment has been demanding of you for decades--and which that establishments fully expects to demand of your grandchildren, if they follow in your footsteps.

Collins said [the program] appeared to fit into a pattern of Jennings' past reports. Instead of calling the show an example of bias, however, Collins rather questioned the competency of Jennings and his associates.
"When he and his producer load and tilt a story, you can argue it's leftist bias, but it's just as effective to say they left out basic facts because they couldn't see them or they are incompetent to see them."

Another, more respectful, way of saying it is that "Jennings and his associates"--I would say, "all of journalism"--have a perspective which makes "basic facts" seem insignificant or almost invisible to them.

We all have a perspective, nothing unusual about that--and there are undoubtedly things which I do not notice which will become obvious to me when events cause my perspective to shift. As, for example, 911 did. What is specific to journalists is not the fact of having a perspective but their control of the journalistic conversation.

It is hardly to be wondered at that journalists take the journalistic conversation for the societal conversation; indeed journalists sell that idea more than any other--and they buy it before they take on the job of selling it. But confusion of the two limits the ability of journalists to internalize the lessons of humility with respect to their own perspective. Since they have the same perspective as all other journalists, they think that they have no perspective--that they are objective.

But ironically, belief in your own objectivity is the essence of subjectivity. To belong to a group which mutually reinforces that idea within its members is to be a member of a cult.

Former ABC Reporter Questions 'Competence' of Jennings CNSNEWS.com | 12/08/03 | Robert B. Bluey

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