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.
The case of the BBC vs. the Blair government reminds us why the world has moved beyond state monopolies. They are inefficient, can be blinded by arrogance and often have an exaggerated sense of their own power. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of media, a profession that is crowded with big egos in any event.What else would one expect, but that those attracted to the entertainment media would be people with an elevated view of their own importance? What else would one expect, but that those attracted to the socialist government would be people with an elevated view of their own importance?
All of which should call into question the BBC's reporting during the Iraq War. It was unrelentingly hostile toward the allied forces and became known here as the Baghdad Broadcasting Corp. Of course, this was not an unknown phenomenon here in the United States. But in Britain, the BBC has a unique lock on the power to shape public opinion. A shake-up should be focused on getting the corporation back to basics — through competition and privatization. After all it is the job of the media to report the news — "get it right and get it first" as this newspaper's editor in chief, Wesley Pruden, likes to say — not to promote its own agendas.The claim is made that journalism is not as uniformly socialist in Europe as it is in America. That certainly seems ironic in the context of the necessity socialists have faced here to continually rebrand their product, trying to outrun the reputation their actual policies merits--"social"ism was deceptive enough in Europe, suggesting social processes rather than government coercion--but here it had to be rebranded "liberalism" (originally meaning the opposite of tyranny), and that brand has degenerated into "the L-word" so they now try to call socialism "progressive" or "moderate" politics. It seems odd to me that our journalists can uniformly be socialist--that is, "mainstream" journalists consistently wage propaganda war on the idea that a conservative such as Rush Limbaugh might be considered a journalist--yet that socialism is accepted under its own name in Europe.
Bumbling Broadcast Corp.
Washington Times ^ | 2/04/04 | Helle Dale
I am not a mindreader, and it really doesn't matter what the motives were. What matters is the practical effect on the Republic. Janet Jackson's "coup" hardly defines that effect, but is one symptom of it.IMHO the effect of the FCC is to create titles of nobility. Certain people are selected to be able to tell us "what is going on." That is "wonderful;" everyone is dying of curiosity to know what is really going on. The trouble is, of course, that nobody knows what is really going on, except God. But for free, just a little of your time spent listening to a few commercials, these princes will condescend to share with you the "objective truth."
The problem is not the commercials, the problem is "objective truth," a.k.a., "broadcasting in the public interest." The noblemen of the PR business bend every effort to insinuate that what interests the public is "the public interest." It is not so much that the medium is the message as that the genre of publishing is the message.
The best way to illustrate the problem is by reference to Florida 2000. The public was on pins and needles to know "what was going on" with the election of a new president. We thought Bush would win, but we didn't know, so we were glued to the TV set, channel surfing between news programs. And what did we get? The truth?
What we got was a PR campaign designed with malice aforethought to throw the election to Gore. We got quick calls of states for Gore and slow calls, the margin of victory being the same, for Bush. We even got a call of FL for Gore before all the polls were "closed"--and only entry into the queue, not the voting itself, stopped at the time of poll "closing"--at a time when Bush had a nontrival lead over Gore in the raw count in FL.
After the polls were closed in most of the country--certainly after it could not affect the vote in FL--the call for Gore was retracted, and we waited for the final result. Finally, about 3AM, Fox called FL for Bush. Gore started to concede, then balked. From then on, the networks had nothing to say about their own erroneous call of FL for Gore but vociferously attacked the Bush relative at Fox for establishing the idea in the public mind that Bush had won.
Why were they so bitter against Fox for that? As Ann Coulter points out in Slander, the networks' bitterness over the call (which a year of re-re-recounting ultimately vindicated) betrayed the fact that they knew perfectly well that their early call for Gore had tended to move the election toward Gore. It is obvious on its face that Fox's sin was in doing, after the polls were closed but before the nth recount, what the networks had done while the polls were open.
The public was dying of curiousity to hear "reports from the front" but the public interest is in the conduct of elections without undue influence by government-licensed agents. The public is interested, even fascinated--but the public interest is in conflict with the satisfaction of that curiosity. You may be interested in exactly who I will vote for in the next election, but nobody will be allowed in the voting booth with me because although making that knowledge public could interest the public it would not be in the public interest.
You will rightly point out that "the freedom of speech, and of the press" implies that information which interests the public will in fact be published, even sometimes in conflict with the public interest. But since the government does not have authority over in-person speech or over the printing press, the imprimatur of the government cannot be implied in the operation of literal speech and the literal press.
Ineluctably the FCC implies the government's imprimatur on the operation of its licensees. And so you have the government imprimatur on violation of the public trust, in the case of Ms. Jackson's flashing the children of the nation's NFL fans and in case of broadcast journalism's reporting--never mind its pseudo-scientific extrapolations of--exit poll data in time to influence voting.
And the gathering of exit-poll data is in dubious accord with the secret ballot principle and the provisions of the laws which institute it. Which is why, according to Bill Sammon, the "selected precints" from which exit poll data are gathered are only "selected" from the precints from which that data can be obtained without the pollsters getting arrested.The Constitution was designed to implement a republic, the officers of which are chosen (not always directly) by voters on the basis of character as well as temperment. Journalism in general, and TV journalism in particular, bombard the public with pseudo-authoritative claims of the "public interest" as suggested by polls the wording of which may be designed to elicit a favored response. We-the-people are sovereign only on election day, and the PR establishment considers itself entitled to control the election results. The reason there is Democrat but not (on any systematic national scale) Republican vote fraud is quite simple; the PR establishment does not respect popular sovereignty, and is dead-set against Republican governance. The Republican Party is the party of the middle class, generally in favor of being left alone.The Democrat Party is the party of "the poor" willing to be taken care of by--and have the Republicans controlled by--the government--but financed and led by the often upper-income people with a lust to feel superior to the middle class. Superiority over the middle class obviously implies superiority over "the poor"--but a patronizing pretense of identification with "the poor" against "the rich" is for such people a small price to pay for seperation from the middle class.
The Government Doesn’t Belong in Television
Future of Freedom Foundation ^ | 2/6/04 | Scott McPherson
You can see on this thread that I for one do not!
Why do these environmental pseudo-scientists always conveniently ignore the Medieval Climate Optimum? We already know what the Earth is like with higher temperatures. It's much better.Theories of planetary life suggest that the Earth is in the farther part of the orbital region where life would be sustainable. We are already in the cool zone. A bit of warming won't hurt one bit. It would actually improve things.
There's far more money, public and private, in spreading doom and disaster. It's the old bottom line.
8 posted on 02/08/2004 9:54:18 AM EST by Seruzawa
Let Them Confess Their Faith [Global Warming editorial]This ongoing thread is essentialy a study of the issue of doing well by "doing good" spreading doom and gloom . . .
NY Post ^ | Feb 8, 2004 | Roy Spencer
Support of the Democratic Party by the rich (exploitative trial lawyers always excepted) is against financial self-interest; indeed it is against most people's best interest. But support for the Democratic Party buys great PR and is entirely understandable--as an egregious, truly destructive example of conspicuous consumption.
Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."
They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.
More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.
TheNote
abcnews.com Feb. 10 2004
This book contains some fascinating points.
Chapter 2 is entitled "deception and self-deception," and discusses at some length the WWII Allied disinformation campaign code-named "Operation Fortitude." General George Patton, highly respected by the Germans but in the doghouse over having slapped two shellshocked GIs at a field hospital in Italy, was put "in charge" of a huge--but entirely ficticious--First United States Army Group "poised" to assault Pas de Calais.It is a familiar story to many, but one from which Professor Mylroie has a little-noticed moral. She points out that Operation Fortitude was not discontinued on D-Day but was kept going at full tilt long afterwards. The Germans, having been convinced of the existence of that force and having made decisions of the basis of that "knowledge," actually acquired a vested interest in that "certainty."
For another five weeks, until mid-July, Hitler still expected the main Allied force to arrive at Pas de Calais, and therefore held back crucial forces . . .. . . CIA training includes training in practicing as well as defending against deception. In addition to learning the history of military deception, intelligence analysts learn to be aware of their own prior assumptions by matching wits with a professional magician--who invariably proves to students that they too can indeed be fooled.The author's point in this was that the CIA and the State Dept. were by 2001 committed to the "white man in a white van" template for terrorism as opposed to having an open mind about state sponsorship of terrorism. But I mention it in this thread because of its explanatory power in conjunction with my dictum that "Belief in your own objectivity is the essence of subjectivity." That is, journalists who are superficial enough to believe in their own objectivity and are constantly committing their "objective" opinions to print are prime candidates for putting themselves in a bind where the facts don't fit their prejudgements--and then deciding that the facts and not their opinions are what must give way.In real life, of course, deception plays out diffferently than it does in a magic show. Instead of a momment of "aha!" there is a gradual recognition of a disturbing possibilty. And instead of the rueful appreciation of the well-executed trick, there is the unpleasant sensation of having been made a dupe.
People's egos and career concerns almaost inevitably come into play, and those who have been duped resist admittingh it as long as possible--and sometimes longer . . .
So the deceiver quickly finds an unlikely ally in the deceived. At a certain point--once sef-deception has kicked in--the effort of concealment becomes almost superfluous.
See also http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/954564/posts.
I get your point.
Money follows the messenger:he offered to lead.Votes, not money, determine elections:Democratic voters wanted the strongest candidate against President Bush, not the candidate most strongly expressing their deepest hopes and fears. Money couldn't change that judgment.Partisanship determines campaign-finance laws:no one criticized Dean (or Kerry) for foregoing public money. Beating Bush was far more important than "keeping our elections clean."
THE LESSONS OF DR. DEAN
New York Post ^ | 2/19/04 | JOHN SAMPLES
media reaction to my book was spontaneous collective silence. I was invited to one good TV show and one radio show, there were a few lines in two or three newspapers, but that’s about all. For a book that was very aggressive with the five leading French newspapers and the way they covered a very important event, there was no reaction. They didn’t defend themselves, they didn’t criticize my book, they said nothing.This nicely illustrates the problem inherent in attempting to regulate "campaign finance." You end up trying to regulate political speech--but how do you regulate silence? "Half the truth," said Winston Churchill, "can be a very big lie." Obviously, it not the half of the truth which is said, but the half which is not said, which is the lie.
The entire article is interesting and illuminating as to the issue of "bias in the media" or, as I prefer to put it, perspective in journalism.
French Lies About Iraq(This is, appropriately, posted as a reply to my reference to "The American Media in Wartime" -by Brit Hume)
FrontPage Magazine ^ | February 19, 2004 | Nidra Poller
NBC sources said that when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw declined to put Dr. [Bob] Arnot on the air, even though he was the sole NBC reporter on the scene. Instead, Mr. Brokaw aired a British reporter from a news agency called ITN. "They used ITN, their British affiliate...rather than someone on the NBC payroll," said the NBC staffer. "They don't use his reporting because they don't trust his reporting."...Isn't that a coincidence! I don't trust NBC's reporting, either! See also,
NBC Forces Out Bob Arnot Who Delivered Upbeat Stories from Iraq(Arnot Charges Bias)See also
MRC ^ | 11:10am EST, Friday February 20, 2004 | BrentBaker
Dr. Bob Arnot’s Parting Shot [Fired by NBC for reporting truthfully?]
New York Observer ^ | February 11, 2004 | Joe Hagan
Advocacy Groups Permitted to Use Unlimited Funds . . . Ruling Favors Democrats(1) You know, I remember reading those stories. And I remember being totally confused by them. Should I be embarrassed? No
--New York Times, lead story, February 19FEC Moves to Regulate Groups Opposing Bush
--Washington Post, same day
Actually, there's no way in hell the commission's February 18 ruling--and related, still-pending rulings that might logically follow--could possibly help the Democratic party.(2) Whoa, back up a minute. What exactly did the FEC do on February 18?
ABC intended to use huge, unregulated pots of cash--deposited in separate, "nonfederal" bank accounts that weren't registered with the FEC--to produce the same, "sham" electioneering appeals that campaign finance reformers had hoped to make illegal. Can we do that, ABC asked the FEC last November? How much soft money does the new law allow us to raise and spend on behalf of the Bush reelection campaign?(3) Why should the commission's less than accommodating response to a Bush-friendly group of Republicans pose problems for the Democratic party?To make a long story short, the FEC's February 18 answer was: Not very much.
Most observers don't believe ABC ever really intended to pursue the extensive agenda of broadcast and grassroots pro-Bush activity outlined in that query letter. Most observers think, instead, that ABC's sole ambition was to secure a public regulatory pronouncement from the commission about the legality of such a program: Can a Republican 527 raise and spend soft money in support of George W. Bush exactly the way those Democratic 527s are raising and spending soft money against him? Most observers suspect that ABC always wanted the FEC to say "no way."(4) These Democratic 527 groups you speak of--they're the people financier George Soros has been giving money to, aren't they?
Yes.(5) So the FEC was being asked to take sides in a purely partisan argument, is that it? Democrats are the pro-527 faction, and Republicans are their enemies?ACT executive Cecile Richards, previously a top aide to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, is doing double duty as president of America Votes, a 527 whose job it is to ensure that a long list of cooperating nonprofit groups traditionally friendly to the Democratic party--Planned Parenthood, the NEA, the Sierra Club, People for the American Way, the trial lawyers, and so forth--don't work at cross purposes with ACT and its satellites.
It's a vast left-wing conspiracy, you might say.
More or less.(6) What about the campaign finance reform lobby? Surely, having worked for years to put the major-party soft money machines out of business, the reformers don't want to see a private, even less accountable version of that system recreated by a couple dozen rich guys like George Soros. Surely the reform folks are lining up with Republicans on this one, no?Not so many years ago, the most notorious such 527 project was run by a man named Newt Gingrich. It was called GOPAC. Most Republicans defended the practice (and soft money generally) on free speech grounds. Almost everyone in the Democratic party, on the other hand, railed against GOPAC-like 527 schemes (and soft money generally) as a species of political corruption. And those were the positions both parties maintained right up through the congressional enactment of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform in 2002.
Since then, the Supreme Court has (a) dramatically reinterpreted its 27-year-old "express advocacy" footnote; and (b) included with that reinterpretation a crucial, brand-new footnote the obscurity of which we will no doubt be debating for another 27 years; while (c) upholding McCain-Feingold's prohibitions on soft money fundraising by the national political committees. So all of a sudden, Newt Gingrich is forgotten, Democratic GOPACs are popping up all over, and it's Republicans who are decrying the 527s as an unconscionable "loophole," demanding that something be done.
Surely you jest.(7) Has anyone in this controversy acted honorably, or at least taken a position that isn't hypocritical?
Sure. John McCain favored a broad-scale regulatory crackdown on soft money in federal elections before. And he favors it now . . . Three smaller campaign finance advocacy groups also stuck by their philosophical guns last month . . .(8) What's the bottom line on the Soros people and the $300 million they want to spend against President Bush?Bradley Smith, as did one of the other Republican FEC commissioners, cast an honorable vote against the interests of his own party. . . . In the end, the FEC's third Republican commissioner, joined by all three of his Democratic counterparts (who were voting against the interests of their party, it bears pointing out), embraced the entire, essential substance of the staff's first draft.
(9) What's the bottom line on the the whole election, then? Are you saying Bush is a lock?It is difficult to imagine how the commission could fail to conclude that an outfit like the Media Fund has the same "major purpose" as ACT--with whom the fund is joined at the hip, and from whom it is otherwise indistinguishable, as both organizations routinely admit. And should the commission indeed draw such a conclusion, then the Media Fund and all the others would immediately become subject to the full reach of federal election law: None would be permitted to accept more than $5,000 per year from George Soros for use against George W. Bush. And under separate but related provisions of the law, Soros would be prohibited from contributing more than a total $37,500 for that purpose--to all the 527s put together, during the whole, biennial 2003-2004 election cycle.
That $300 million would appear to be evaporating awfully fast.
If "things are bad" and they're in the mood, the voters are going to "send Bush back to Texas," as the saying goes, no matter how much money gets squirreled into anybody's bank accounts. And if the reverse is true, yes, Bush is going to win, but campaign fundraising won't have made the difference.Mark my words--even it this scenario eventuates, the fault will be with the FEC and not with the unconstitutional regulation of political speech. Journalists are shameless. Well, they are liberals . . .But . . . if the election is . . . a close one . . . And. . . if . . . money really can make the difference . . . it looks like Bush really will be a lock. Unless the Democratic party--and fast--can figure out a way around the no-soft-money boulder that's been placed in its path by the campaign finance reform law. For which Democrats have only themselves, principally, to blame.
'Tis sport to see the engineer,
hoist on his own petard!
Who's Afraid of George Soros?
FrontPage Magazine.com | David Tell
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.