[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The point remains: Democratic sexual indiscretions are OK while Republicans' are not. This double standard should not exist in a media that is as fair as it pretends to be.

. . . raising the obvious question as to why anyone would take for granted that "the media" (sic) "is as fair as it pretends to be."

Notice if you will, Gentle Reader, that "media" is a plural noun. Yet it is no accident that the above sentence treats "the media" as a singular entity. We are after all discussing journalism, not publishing/broadcasting "media" in general. Granted that the other entertainment genres ("other" used advisedly) predictably will conform to the topical nonfiction genre known as "journalism."

My point is that although it consists of many nominally independent outlets (ABC News, The New York Times, etc) journalism is so homogeneous that it is proper to speak of "them" as a singular entity. Just as the famously competitive New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are part of "Major League Baseball" which promotes, and hires the umpires for, their contests. In a similar vein, journalism is all part of the Associated Press, and treats the newswire as their very own Oracle of Delphi.

So journalism is in a very real sense a singular entity with a singular interest - the promotion of journalism. In a usage which is so commonplace as to be scarcely noticed, journalism styles itself "the press" - as if under the First Amendment other genres of nonfiction and even of fiction were not part of "the press," and as if government-licensed broadcast journalism were.

Journalism has the motive and the opportunity to promote itself, and in some ways it does so openly - as with the self-hype of its various organs. But the main way journalism promotes journalism as such, independent of any particular organ, is in the basic rules which all the various organs adhere to. Famously, "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog' not 'Dog Bites Man'," and "Always make your deadline." And less openly, "Thou shalt not question the objectivity of a fellow journalist." The rules of journalism promote the public image of journalism as "objective" but they do not in fact promote objectivity itself. In fact, self-hype and self aggrandizement are the very definition of subjectivity, not related to objectivity at all. "Objective journalism" is shameless in its self-promotion.

What effect would that have on politics? Quite simply, if you want good PR - and what kind of a politician would not? - then you have to get it from what is effectively a PR monopoly. And the temptation to trim your belief in what constitutes the public good to suit that monopoly is omnipresent. So the obvious question is, "Who panders to the PR establishment the most?" And the answer, just as obvious, is,

• "Who gets the best PR for the worst objective performance?"

• "Who gets credit for being for the little guy no matter how predominantly wealthy they are, while their opponents are criticized for favoring the rich?"

• "Who can openly flout convention, when their opponents are pilloried mercilessly if they are even in morally ambiguous circumstances?"

• "Who can flip-flop on significant issues and be credited with 'good intentions' while their opponents get second guessed even when they are steadfast in their positions?"

Not only are Democrats indisputably the ones who pander most for PR, they generally have no other principle but to go for PR.

Larry Craig and Abuse of Power--By the Media
NewsBusters.org ^ | Matthew Sheffield

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

there always seems to be enough dirt in a politician's background to make that charge plausible.

People, emphatically including Rush Limbaugh, rant about the lack of courage of conservatives to confront liberals. But the problem is not merely lack of courage so much as it is lack of understanding of the real source of the strength of "liberalism."

The source of the strength of liberalism resides, essentially exclusively, in the acceptance by the people of the assumption that journalism is objective. That assumption is baseless. In the founding era, newspapers were openly partisan. They also tended to localism, since they had no independent means of obtaining regional and national and international news. But think of what it meant that the papers were openly partisan. Jefferson and Hamilton each sponsored a newspaper to support their own policies and trash the other's policies. There really was little to choose between those newspapers and party propaganda organs.

Fast forward to the era of the penny press and the telegraph, and newspapers had different market conditions. They had the technology to acquire news from the nation and indeed the world, and they - and their competitors - had high-speed presses with a large bandwidth to sell. But no individual newspaper could afford to operate a national and international news gathering and distribution operation - so they joined forces in the Associated Press.

The AP obviously had enormous clout in its ability to talk to the entire nation. So it had to protest its objectivity, and affect to be objective. And from that acorn the mighty oak tree of "journalistic objectivity" has sprung. Not from any rational reason why it should be believed, but merely from raw propaganda power of men desperate to promote it. And a public faced with the novelty of the situation, which wanted to believe it could buy "the world" of "what was going on" for a penny.

All the propaganda can be countered with a few simple points:

• The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .

  It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity,
  and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam Smith

• Half the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin Franklin

  and,

• "It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena - Theodore Roosevelt

The first quotation makes the point that the claim of "journalistic objectivity" certainly requires proof.

The second quotation makes the point that such proof would have to demonstrate not merely that journalistic reports were consistently true, but that they constituted a full telling of the truth.

And the third quotation makes the point that the portion of the truth which journalism in fact elects to tell emphasizes the failings of people upon whom the public relies to get things done. And that, in criticizing and second guessing the corporations, the military, and the police, journalism "objectively" promotes the governmentism which it pleases so-called "objective journalism" to call "liberalism" or "progressivism" - and that "liberalism" or "progressivism" opposes both liberty and progress.

Out-of-wedlock births have to be talked about
Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 9/4/07 | Jim Wooten