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.

7 Principles of Media Objectivity

How can readers discern the truth between the lines? Listed here are common methods employed by the media -- intentionally or not -- to influence public opinion. By being aware of these methods, we can avoid becoming a pawn in the media war.

Here are the "7 Violations of Media Objectivity":

Violation #1 Misleading definitions and terminology.
By using terminology and definitions in a way that implies accepted fact, the media injects bias under the guise of objectivity.

Violation #2 Imbalanced reporting.
Media reports frequently skew the picture by presenting only one side of the story.

Violation #3 Opinions disguised as news.
An objective reporter should not use adjectives or adverbs, unless they are part of a quotation. Also, the source for any facts and opinions should be clear from the report, or alternatively it should be stated that source is intentionally undisclosed.

Violation #4 Lack of context.
By failing to provide proper context and full background information, journalists can dramatically distort the true picture.

Violation #5 Selective omission.
By choosing to report certain events over others, the media controls access to information and manipulates public sentiment.

Violation #6 Using true facts to draw false conclusions.
Media reports frequently use true facts to draw erroneous conclusions.

Violation #7 Distortion of facts.
In today's competitive media world, reporters frequently do not have the time, inclination or resources to properly verify information before submitting a story for publication.

See Media Ethics
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~jcsouth/hotlists/ethics.htm

http://www.aish.com/Israel/articles/7_Principles_of_Media_Objectivity_p.asp

did you miss that [superficial "breaking news" alerts that run most of two days or Blinky Van Susteren] show?

Yes. I only watch talk shows and avoid the news unless there is serious news coming down, like a war. Even then I understand that "the fog of war" affects the reports. Even Fox will go into a rhapsody over the rescue of Jessica Lynch - will become the Jessica Lynch network - while the actual news is that the military has passed the last apparently defensible position on the way to Baghdad. All networks did that.
But anything but Fox, you'd think no military breifing of the press was ever honest, and you'd think that Baghdad Bob was just as good a source as an eyewitness report by Oliver North. Anything but Fox, and it's the military's fault if it succeeds in reaching the vicinity of the Palestine Hotel and, during a fight, ends up firing a shot into that hotel. Sad for the reporters killed. But then, how arrogant do you have to be to assume that the military will accept casualties to its own people just to protect your sorry rear after they had warned you of the danger of staying in Baghdad?
Ultimately that's the point - journalists don't think of Republicans, policemen, or soldiers as being people. Let a Hillary Clinton speak of "a vast right-wing conspiracy," and journalism as a profession buys into the demonization of her oppositon without qualification. Socialists are in love with the idea of government and in contempt of society. They love the idea of secular power at the top of government and despise the frail humanity at the bottom of govenment.
Conservatives love society, the bottom of the pyramid where all the risk is taken and all the work is done, and are suspicious of government power and those at the peak of government. Socialists prattle about "society" but, critically, socialists actually conflate the word "society" with government in general and the President of the United States in particular. And, indeed, socialists prefer the United Nations as their ideal global god - feet of clay and lack of any pretense of democracy notwithstanding.
Thus a George W. Bush who manifestly loves the troops as human beings is offensive to journalists. Offensive exactly for the human qualities which endear him to conservatives. It does not matter to socialists that in terms of policy George W. Bush is the second coming of John F. Kennedy; journalists loved Clinton precisely because he was a president who loved the president!
Socialists want a president who is contemptuous of those below him, just as they in their fantasy lives consider themselves to be above practical people, and will tolerate and celebrate them only to the extent that they (e.g., Warren Buffet) promote the anti-practical ideal of government as god. The Clinton Administration represented the ideal seperation of responsibility from authority - all the responsibility heaped on the people, all the authority concentrated within the White House. There is only way we-the-people can have divided government, and thus have some connection of responsibilty to authority in government. And that is to have a Republican president - because the fourth branch of government which sets the agenda of political discussion, journalism, is permanently socialist.

Six thousand seventy-seven members of the National Guard or Reserves died in Vietnam . . . [and] One hundred and forty Medal of Honor recipients were in the National Guard.
When Kerry said he would not comment on anyone's decision back then to "join the Guard, go to Canada, be a conscientious objector, or go AWOL" . . . [he] simply disrespected them all for political expedience.

The plain fact is that "liberalism" is simply cynicism directed at every profession which entails risk taking. The only way to avoid risk taking is to do nothing, and the "liberal" professions are the complaining professions:

journalism
plaintiff lawyer
unionist

Complainers do not make decisions beforehand but, more-or-less subtly, assign to their own cheap second guesses the honor which is due to courageous decisions made before the outcome was manifest. Thus, for example, the investor who bought Microsoft or Walmart stock before their fabulous runups has "unearned income" and the investor who bought AOL at its peak was gypped by whoever sold it. Thus the policeman is either "brutal" or lax - or simply unworthy of comment.

Kerry simply shows liberalism's colors when he disrespects the National Guard; liberalism naturally disrespects everyone who respects courage in any form.

Abandoned Brothers
American Spectator ^ | 4/21/04 | Don Bendell

I'm NOT fair and balanced.

The person who does not claim to be objective is self-critical and thus gives a more balanced account than the person who claims to be objective can ever do.
To believe in your own objectivity would be to be wise in your own conceit. A pitfall which you, and conservative commentators generally, seek to avoid. But one into which the "objective journalist" heedlessly leaps. Thus

Free Republic is far less subjective than CBS News is.
And operating as it does without special permission of the government such as CBS requires in its scarce FCC licenses,
Free Republic is legitimate on constitutional principle

in a way that CBS News is not.
Statement by the founder of Free Republic

Your right to know is under assault.

I am about to make what I consider to be a cogent argument, but you have the right not to read it. And If you choose not to read it you will exercise an inherent right not to "know" the burden of my argument.
In fact, you don't have a right to "know" at all. If you have a right to your own opinion - which you do, for you even have the right to speak it and to print it - and the right to decide who you will pay attention to and who you will ignore, you have a right not to know whatever the people you are ignoring are trying to tell you . Whether those people are right or wrong, or both.
And if people who clamor for your attention belong to a mutual-admiration-society which claims "objectivity" for its membership, you have the right to believe them, of course. But you also have the right to consider them, rightly IMHO, to be wise in their own conceit.
People who claim that you have a "right to know" something are merely packaging their desire as "your right." Well, yes - if you want to listen, you have a right to, but because you have a right to is not proof that you should want to. Because unless your capacity for attention is amazing, you have to ignore everything else in order to hear any one thing.
And there are things which you might like to know which are secret from you - by law. You are not allowed to listen in on cabinet meetings which are not being televised publicly, for example. You are not allowed to listen in on jury deliberations, for another. And you are not allowed to see who I actually vote for in the voting booth, either. And on top of that, you don't have a right to know the combination to any lock which you don't own.
"Your right to know" is a propaganda ploy to try to seize your attention.

Journalism and its Discontents - Glenn Reynolds

Good catch, Piranha!

(a note about links, now that you have learned that
<a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1125180/posts">Journalism and its Discontents - Glenn Reynolds</a>
is the code I used above. For one thing, the above display of the html obviously wouldn't have displayed the way you see it if it had been typed the way you see it. I used
& LT;
to order the display of "&LT;" and
& GT;
to order the display of "&GT;"
The other thing is that when you do create links it can be prudent to Murphy-proof your post by confirming that the link indeed goes where you intend it to. In order to do that you would of course click "Preview" but then you want to select the link in the preview page in a new window.
You would use your browser options to do that (a right-click on the button offers you the choice to open in a new window in Internet Explorer on the PC; consult your "File" heading in the browser tool bar).
Because I caused the html of the link to be displayed above by using my & trick, you could try that experiment on the html of the link above: select and copy that link into a "post reply" window, and preview it and open the link in a new window. And since I've suggested you do that, I darn well want to check it first, myself before you get the chance to).

the UCMJ ban on military political action or attacking certain elected officials by commissioned officers does not make a distinction between active and Guard/Reserve."

I believe you are quite correct. The only problem is if they prosecute this guy, then he becomes a sympathetic, darling figure of the left

. . . and the president of the United States must not be "positioned" as having a personal fight with a Lieutenant.
The fundamental problem is, of course, that journalism and the Democratic Party in Congress put this peon up to it and gave him the microphone. They are at fault, just as journalism and the Democratic Party gave John Kerry the microphone and the political cover (did you hear the softball questions from that Democrat-controlled Senate committee Kerry testified before back in 1971 or 2?).
So the issue is, will the old media and the Democratic Congressional minority be able to cover for this "very Kerry" Lieutenant? Or will talk radio and the internet let the air out of this particular balloon?
And, foolish as it might be to speak of the possibility of Republican senators showing actual courage, might they not "invite" this clown to testify before a Senate committee sitting beside Senators McCain and Cunningham as they could not do when Kerry testified while they were in the Hanoi Hilton?
This is not a fight for President Bush, and probably not even for VP Cheney. This is for the rest of the Republican Party to confront.
Iraq War Veteran Gives Democratic Radio Address Criticizing Bush
AP via San Diego Union-Tribune ^ | May 1, 2004 | Pete Yost

The people who are making a towering mountain out of the dung heap du jour are journalists. Print journalists (like book publishers) are protected from censorship by the First Amendment. They are not responsible to the government, and the natural consequence is that journalists are responsible only to do what is profitable for their employers. Accordingly, journalists:

hype insignificant news if it's a slow news day, just to meet the deadline (because the show must go on);
hype stories to the skies for no other reason than that (as in this case) they embarrass the people upon whom the public must depend. This tends to intimidate everyone, liberal or conservative, into reading the report.
emphasize stories for no other reason than that they are unusual; and
they operate their profession as a guild to propagandize for the fatuous conceit that its members are uniquely objective. Objectivity would require wisdom, whereas the business of journalism promotes superficiality, negativity, and lack of perspective. So that idea is quite simply silly, but the propaganda power of journalism is such that that this whopper is swallowed whole almost universally. It is even taken for granted in the (utterly illegitimate) Campaign Finance "Reform" law.

Print journalism, I emphasized, is protected by the First Amendment. Broadcast journalism, OTOH, depends on the censorship of competition by the FCC to allow broadcast licensees to be heard far and wide. Broadcast journalism is protected not by the First Amendment but by the propaganda power of journalism as a whole, which would intimidate a majority of the Supreme Court if broadcast journalism were required by government to be responsible. That in fact has already happened in respect to the McCain-Feingold law.

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