It is not enough that what is printed be the truth - it must be the truth in perspective. The reporting from Iraq is probably mostly true - butLiberal bias only irritates the minority of people who can detect it. Most of the decline can probably be attributed to short attention spans of TV addicted masses. People simply do not like read anything longer than a street sign. Most college grads I know have not read a nonfiction book since graduation.Half the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin FranklinThus, people get the impression that things are only bad and not good in Iraq. They seldom reflect that they would conclude the same about their own home town, if they knew nothing but what was reported about it.
Here there is a solution - the end of broadcast journalism. Broadcast journalism - all broadcasting - is a creature of the government. As such broadcast journalism is illegitimate government intrusion in politics - and the fact that broadcast journalism perfectly mirrors the political tendencies of print journalism does not make it OK. That is because the FCC puts the imprimatur of the government on broadcast journalism's claim of objectivity - and the government is not authorized to do that and is not competent to do that. After all, the government presumptively would style eternal incumbency "objective" if it were permitted to do so.Red All Over -- Is there any hope for the future of newspapers?
The Wall Street Journal ^ | February 19, 2007 | Steven Rattner
Too little by far, IMHO is made by conservatives of the intrusive nature of the moderator in presidential candidate debates.There is no reason that the participants - all presumably grownups - should need a reporter to define the issues for the candidates. That is - that certainly should be - the job of the candidates themselves. There is no reason for the debates to be moderated in any other way than by a chess timer to equalize microphone time.
And there is no necessary reason why the debates have to be on (scarce, expensive) TV instead of radio and/or the Internet/Youtube. IMHO production values seem nice to have but actually are the tail wagging the dog - it's a huge logistical deal for candidates in a national general election to even get together at the same place at the same time. When you make them a big deal like that, they don't have the potential for informing the public that less formal settings would have.
If Rush set out to do it, he could have a debate a week between each pair of candidates in the Republican primary. Two hours, divided equally between the candidates, all on one day's program. In a month or two, you could do most of the interesting pairings and probably would be able to narrow the field down. And definitely define the issues of the campaign.
Come to think of it, probably the reason the MSM doesn't do that now is that it might take all the suspense out of the primary season, and so would be bad for business.
MSNBC to telecast (GOP) presidential debate at Iowa State (Nov. 2007)
Iowa State University News Service ^ | Iowa State University News Service