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To a child with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Journalists are people with a printing press, to whom everything looks like a problem that people need to be read about. Journalists are the pilot fish of those who desire celebrity; whatever journalists identify as a problem is something any celebrity finds safe, and convenient, to criticize. The catch, for the journalist, is competition. While the journalist leads the timid celebrity to identify himself with what the journalist will not criticize, the journalist is himself a PR-craving celebrity in his own right.

Newsstands are placed whereever people are waiting around and bored. Newspaper headlines are designed as an antidote to boredom. Bad news for the reader sells--prevents the passerby from ignoring the story.

That sort of news implies limitations on the adequacy and/or the beneficence of the powers-that-be; the more sensational and extreme, the greater the implied criticism of the status quo. That is, although identifying and correcting problems is prudent and thus conservative, the more things seem to need to be corrected the less legitimate the status quo--and conservation of it--seems to be.

Desire for celebrity and good PR is a motive for working in any of the entertainment media, including journalism. But all celebrities working in the media not only desire but have a commercial need for good PR. Journalists are far from immune from that desire and that need. Consequently the effect of competition in journalism is not diversity of journalistic perspective but, by and large, a homogenizing herd mentality. The resulting consensus is a safe haven, and the only safe haven, for anyone whose desire for celebrity transcends any considerations of long-term perspective (such as those articulated in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

Journalism could conform around any consensus, but in fact the observable tendency of that consensus is anticonservative. Like journalists, policemen's daily beat shows them the limitations under which unprosperous people labor--but police have the incentive to minimize the resulting chaos while journalists have the incentive to exaggerate and even exacerbate the problems they see. Thus the Rodney King riot was excitedly covered by journalism--and the version of video of the arrest of Mr. King was edited, not to summarize the truth as found by the jury but the "truth" that there should be no peace because there was no justice in that jury verdict.

The LA Times went even further by producing more allegations of sexual assaults. To publish allegations without any attempt to confirm them is a gross breach of journalistic ethics.

The First Amendment protects printers from legal consequence for just about anything short of dropping a printing press on your head. So having a journalist toying with peoples' reputations is about like being in a jungle where a tiger may lurk--you don't assume the best but seriously consider the likelihood of encountering the worst.
Belief in "journalistic ethics" is a sign of education-induced brain damage.

Rush Limbaugh and the Dems' smear offensive http://www.brookesnews.com ^ | Monday 6 October 2003 | Addison Ross

A number of prominent liberal voices are totally uneducated....Streisand is a glaring example. Amazing!

That is not to be wondered at. To be a celebrity is to be asked to opine about many things--and since celebrities generally are "celebrated" for looks or vocal aparatus rather than intellectual accomplishment, that sets them up to be made to look very publicly foolish.
To avoid looking foolish in that situation is however quite easy--just ask yourself "what would Peter Jennings say?" Peter Jennings (Dan Rather, whoever) is on the tube every day of the week, saying what uninformed people (most of us, on most topics) will believe. Just go with the flow of that facile line, and viola!--instant genius!
Of course everyone is conservative in any area in which they are actually expert, and what you are mouthing is liberal claptrap. But once Peter Jennings and Dan Rather have certified you as a genius, it is hard not to assume that you know better than any conservative ever will.
Former ABC Reporter Questions 'Competence' of Jennings
CNSNEWS.com | 12/08/03 | Robert B. Bluey