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.

It is a means to an end. The end is influence. Were the paper unable to influence, they could not sell advertising. Advertising revenue is usually the lion's share of print media revenue; in the case of broadcast media, it's virtually all their revenue. No matter how many people read the paper or watched the station, unless that medium is capable of modifying behavior, there isn't a dime in it no matter how entertaining it might be.

Fiction entertainment sells advertising without (necessarily) selling a message of its own apart from the advertising to which it must draw eyes and/or ears. So it's not obvious that nonfiction entertainment must have Walter Cronkite levels of sheeple-benumbing credence in order for the advertisements to sell Oldsmobiles, or whatnot. Now a Rush Limbaugh charges an even more "confiscatory" rate (as he would put it) if he records the ad himself for use on his program: in that case Rush's credibility is playing into the effectiveness of the ad. But people not only would have been horrified if Walter Cronkite had personally advertised Coke and Pepsi on alternate days, they would have been horrified if he had personally endorsed either one for pay.

You have a very odd and subjectively broad definition of, "entertainment."

I mean by "entertainment" the attracting of attention to something unimportant. On any given day The New York Times will have a lead headline - and the best news you could have would be if the lead headline on the front page was a story about a midseason baseball game. That would signify that nothing particuarly bad happened since the last deadline.

some enterprising attorney should be able to find a way to hold the New York Times- "the paper of record"-as it is sold-liable for mail fraud.

Journalism is the pilot fish of liberalism - and if anything, The New York Times is the pilot fish of journalism.
Taking on the NYT means taking on a brutal PR assault; broadcast journalism has no lodestar for its putatively "objective" reports except that everyone takes for granted, and demands that you take for granted, the objectivity of the NYT. If they didn't herd together like that - if they were, horror of horrors, actually independent - there would be discrepancies among the reports and the facade of "objectivity" of journalism would crack, affecting all journalism outlets.
So, herd together they do. It's a "conspiracy," but it's done in plain sight - and we are then conned into thinking that it is good for us.
Clarence Thomas' "hi-tech lynching" is the best you could expect if you seriously challenged the vast left wing conspiracy in court. And the court would be as reliable in adjudicating your case as it was in vetting the blatantly unconstitutional McCain Feingold law which SCOTUS sprinkled holy water on a while back.

I mean by "entertainment" the attracting of attention to something unimportant.

As I said, subjectively broad, to the point of meaninglessness.

I believe you wrote a nonfiction book. Was your treatment of the subject more in-depth than I would have gotten by reading everything The New York Times said on the topic? Almost certainly. Was your book more objective than the reports of The New York Times? Almost certainly, though I warrant that if the Times deigned to mention your book they did so from a patronizing position of superior objectivity. Finally, was the topic of your book more substantive than the typical story on the front page of the Times? And is the Pope Catholic?
Isn't it true that the difference between your book and an issue of the NY Times the fact that the subject was more significant than the average article, that your book was more thoroughly researched and fact-checked than the vaunted NY Times article, and the you took the time to tell a larger story more edifyingly set in context than the Times article? If so, isn't the Times comparatively superficial? Certainly. But the Times has a ready excuse - your book took a lot longer to get to the public; your information was "old news." Fine. But why should I settle for schlock just because it met the superficial criteria of news?

This was a deliberate act, no matter how much the lying media protests that fact. I wonder what they will do this time to attempt to defeat President Bush. Believe me, they are already working on a plan for election day.

Here's a classic example of the superficiality of "news."

The establishment survey suffers from over-hype. In a given quarter, more than 7.5 million jobs are created and roughly that number lost, with the difference -- 179,000 in the fourth quarter, 513,000 more in the first quarter -- being the job growth shown in the establishment survey. It is based on a statistical sample seeking to measure small changes in a large number, the 131 million U.S. non-farm labor force. It's like taking the temperature in one city per state, then asking people to guess whether the average temperature for the whole nation is 51.3 degrees or 51.4 degrees.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Wall Street Journal | April 6, 2004 | DAVID MALPASS

Here we have a statistic which is inherently wildly volitile - the small difference of two large statistical results - but it is all the rage for a day or two. I'm glad it's up; don't get me wrong - but seen in historical perspective that number may mean far less than we hope ( in this case). We just don't know. But, we have a number to talk about!

Why do journalists talk about statistically insignificant results? Because we are curious, and willing to get sucked in to speculating on what that number means for Bush/Kerry. The reason to suspect that Kerry is in trouble on the economy (meaning, we-the-people are not) has more to do with the timing of the last recession than most anything. The "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" statistic is really just a straw in the wind. But it gives journalists something to talk about when their deadline is approaching - as it always is. The show must go on.

We both see journalism as being a carrier of the liberal agenda. Both of us risk being cynical.

A journalist would call me cynical because I attempt to explain journalism's liberal agenda as

existing, in disregard of any codes of ethics preaching to the contrary
explainable by the actual financial/business motives of free, competitive publishing.

I am tempted to call you cynical because, to the extent that I understand you, you go beyond that indictment to assert that journalism exists for the purpose of swindling people into voting for politicians against their own interests.

Certainly the two are not mutually exclusive; my theory allows that the journalist took the job in the first place because he was a leftist, and the leftist wants to con people into voting against their own long-run interests. But the job allows him to do that only because people buy newspapers, which are profitable only if/as they draw attention. And the strategies for drawing and keeping attention - what I have suggested are entertainment strategies - amount to pretending to tell "all the news that's fit to print" but delivering negativity and superficiality which systematically filters out the conservative themes and amplifies the anti conservative themes in "what's going on".

I'm saying that the innate tendencies of journalism produce a liberal outlook, that liberalism is a planted axiom in the kind of story selection which makes journalism profitable. And I stipulate that the kind of person who signs on to do the job of reporting that particular kind of information is naturally going to be a leftist to begin with. Mutually reinforcing tendencies.

But in my model the liberal politician does not, in the first instance, corruptly motivate the journalist. The journalist's natural tendencies motivate and reward the liberal politician. Liberal politicians are the journalist's kind of people, and there is a revolving door between liberal politics and journalism. Poster Boy, George Stephanopolis. There is not, OTOH, a revolving door between conservative politics and journalism. Just not the same kind of people.

Somebody needs to be charged with treason so this crap stops!! It should have been Hanoi Jane 45 years ago, but today, Kennedy's quotes comming from Al-Jazeera would suffice.

Back in the sixties the antivalor agitators prattled about "the Establishment" which they were opposing but they were able to do it on broadcast TV because the actual "Establishment" - journalism - was on their side.
The 911 Commission is a miserable failure for the simple reason that pointing out that it is journalism which is the institution which could have put us on the alert before 911 far more effectively than it did. By alerting the public to the fact that there was more at stake in the hijacking of an airliner than the lives of the passengers and crew, journalism, in fact, prevented the success of the kamikazee pilot who had seized the controls of Flight 93.
That's ironic because as leftists, journalists believe in the magic incantation of big government, whereas when journalism's alert got transmitted via cell phone to the passengers of Flight 93 the people took action to prevent the success of the intended kamikazee attack. Knowing that their own lives were forfeit, either way. Government had nothing to do with it; the people learned that the short straw was in their hand, and they acted on their own initiative.
Web Poll: Should the U.S. send more American forces to Iraq if the situation worsens?

The time and money -- not to mention the news-media overkill -- spent on historical hindsight by the 9-11 commission is worthwhile because it is aimed at understanding why the system in place was unable to prevent the tragedy. Yet it is just as important to think about the present and what the lack of a repeat incident says about the future.
Obviously, a similar public investigation into why nothing has happened would be impractical, given the hypothetical nature of the whole exercise.

A fine article, but IMHO the first paragraph above is negated by the last two. In fact, "the news-media overkill spent on historical hindsight by the 9-11 commission" is NOT worthwhile because it is aimed, NOT at "understanding why the system in place was unable to prevent the tragedy," but at second guessing the Bush Administration.

This is obvious in the composition of the Coverup Commission:

members such as Bob Kerry are institutionally disposed to protect Democrats in Congress
members such as Slade Gordon who are institutionally disposed to protect Republicans in Congress
members such as Gorelick and ben Veniste who are institutionally disposed toe protect the Clinton Administration
no members who are institutionally disposed to protect the Bush Administration.
And that expresses itself in demands for public testimony by Bush Administration officials such as Rice and (though even more so than Rice, he extracted a price) Ashcroft, which turn into shouting matches because ben Veniste in particular and Democrats in general patently have the knives out.
And that expresses itself in the fatuous defense by Kean of the indefensible composition of "his" committee. The Gorelick Commission contains the "Number 2" ("Number 1" having been a figurehead) in the Clinton Justice Department. A person who, as Ashcroft's testimony makes clear, would be the single best witness for the committee to grill under oath.
The Gorelick Commission is constructed not to produce a reliable history but to perpetrate objective journalism^TM. To produce, that is, fodder for reports which are wise ("objective") in their authors' own conceit but in fact are heavily slanted against the middle class which the Republican Party represents. No less obviously than the questions of the "objective" reporters in the recent press conference were intended to produce a sound bite for the Kerry campaign.
No attacks in U.S. since 9-11: Why?
Orlando Sentinel ^ | 4/16/04 | Peter Brown

Several of Gorelick's colleagues on the commission rushed to her defense, characterizing her as qualified and nonpartisan

Here is how the Gorelick directive describes itself:

These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.

. . . and all this profile in courage cost was four airliners, the twin towers, a wing of the Pentagon, three thousand lives, and a Depression in the airline industry.

"The September 11 Commission" is structured to protect Congress in general and the Democrats therein in particular and, with ben Veniste and especially Gorelick on it, emphatically to protect the Clinton Administration in particular. Notwithstanding the zero-sum nature of the blame to be distributed, a group which is loaded against attacks on the Clinton Administration has no member who is an obvious loyalist of the Bush Administration.

It is no accident that the slant of the commission is exactly the slant we observed in the questioning by "objective journalists" at the recent presidential news conference, since the political coloration of objective journalism^TM drove the composition and indeed the very creation of the commission.

That political coloration is hostility to individual responsibility. That political coloration is expressed as hostility to the party which represents the class which is defined by the individual responsibility of its members. the political coloration of objective journalism^TM is hostility to the middle class and to its political manifestation known as the Republican Party.

The political coloration of objective journalism^TM is betrayed by its insistence that it has no political coloration at all - that its members have no individual responsibility for their own viewpoints and indeed that its members have no viewpoint.

Liberal Bias: The Media Deny It, But What About...
HumanEvents ^ | 4/15/04 | Chris Field

Buffett . . . Soros, Gates Sr. and some of the Rockefellers got great press for joining with a group called "Responsible Wealth" that seeks preservation of the estate tax. Buffett was given laudatory press for remarks such as the one to the New York Times about "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics."

But one thing the laudatory articles didn't say is that Buffet owns insurance companies that profit mightily from the threat posed by the estate tax.

Whether the superrich have hidden financial motives or no, I know not. But what is excruciatingly clear is that even it not,
The middle class exists because its members adhere to an ethic of personal responsibility

The Republican Party is the party of the middle class

"Objective" journalism is opposed to individual responsibility

The rich get a return in Public Relations flattery when they attack the middle class from the left.

Superrich stand to profit from Kerry
WorldNetDaily.com | Saturday, April 17, 2004 | John Berlau

Excellent, CT - and highly germane to this thread, in which I've been building a critique of the tendentiousness of journalism.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

But stations for just liberal talk or just conservative talk make real debate virtually impossible.

If you need proof that our educational system is a giant falure, all you need do is read this rant.

For all but the last 60 years of our nations histroy the media was openly and proudly partisan. For example leading up to and during the Civil war nearly every town had an anti slavery Republican paper lauding Lincoln. While the other paper in town was openly Democratic and in favor of slavery. The Democratic papers portrayed blacks as little more than animals. They portrayed Lincoln as subhuman too. The Republican papers protrayed Lincoln as a savior of the nation.

The liberal papers of the 30s painted Roosevelt as the perfect leader. The conservative papers painted Roosevelt as an evil man. The Roosevelt adminstation became so fearful of radio, that in 1943 they made it illegal for radio stations to editorialize. It was Democrats who made partisanship on radio and TV illegal with the so called fairness doctrine.

Newspapers began folding in the 1950's. The surviving papers tried to get both sides to read their paper. So they put out the word that they were non partisan. But that was always a lie. Reporters for newspapers, radio and TV always put out their own veiws and called it objective. The object was to fool the viewers into supporting their positions.

The only reason for journalism is so people can get news they can not observe for themselves. With the internet and its huge bandwidth people can now get their own news. They can, with the internet, report for each other. The media monopoly on information is being removed. The media can no longer keep a secret. Everyone knew JFK has females on the payroll whose sole jobs were to provide him sex. The media hid that from us. But now with the internet the sexual escapades of a Clinton are exposed. The media and its followers hate its loss of control.

What this little girl fails to understand is that the journalists she so admires are going the way of the 45 RPM record. She can lament their passing, but her golden days of media rule are soon to be history.

People are informing each other on web sites like Free Republic. The days of the media elite fooling the public are fast comming to an end. And the spin put out by the main stream media is no longer working.

I suspect this young lady would like to be a media star. The media star days will soon be gone as well. Katie Couric and silent film stars will share a situation. They will both be long forgotten history.

It is over. There is no longer a way to control information. And this litte girl was born 50 years too late.

33 posted on 04/08/2004 11:44:07 PM EDT by Common Tator

Sorting opinions in radio airwaves doesn't foster valid discussions (FreeRepublic mentioned)
The Digital Collegian (Penn State) | Monday, April 5, 2004 | Torie Bosch

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