To claim objectivity is to claim wisdom. To claim wisdom is to reject the idea that you have anything to learn - thus, to reject the need to listen to the facts and logic of others.Obviously you cannot get away with that sort of arrogance without power. PBS is part of the Establishment which has that power - and uses its power to maintain itself. That Establishment is Objective JournalismTM, and membership in that Establishment is available for a price. The price of membership in the Establishment is conformity to it, and furtherance of its agenda.
The first objective of Objective JournalismTM is self-preservation, of itself and its members. To do that it must protect its brand - which it aggressively uses its propaganda power to do. That is why the objectivity of, say, CBS News is never questioned by the Establishment.
Never mind that 60 Minutes was caught in bed with a dead girl, a live boy, a smoking gun, and a hand in the cookie jar. CBS can institute an "independent investigation" of the "TANG Memos" for the purpose of not learning that the "memos" were patent frauds. And the rest of the Establishment studiously avoids noticing a thing. There can be no piling on a "competitor" for a failing like that.
There is only one cardinal sin to the Establishment, and that is breaking ranks with the Establishment. Piling on a member of the Establishment is just not done. Now if a Bernard Goldberg, say, breaks ranks and announces that broadcast journalism is tendentious then he is not a member of the Establishment from that very moment, if not indeed retroactively. It is not failing to make a good-faith effort at objectivity which excludes you from the Establishment; if that were the case there would be no members of it. But pointing out tendentiousness in the product of a member of the Objective JournalismTM Establishment.
You are a member of the Establishment if you are useful to the Establishment. You are useful to the Establishment if you facilitate the profitable operation of its members. And the profitable operation of the members of Objective JournalismTM depends on second-guessing and cheap criticism of the people and institutions upon whom the
suckerspublic depends. Because Objective JournalismTM is simply cheap talk.You do not have to be a journalist to be a member of the Objective JournalismTM Establishment; all you have to be is willingly useful to its cheap self-aggrandizing criticism of the people we depend on. For example, if you announce that an innocuous chemical used to help produce high quality food inexpensively is a threat to public health, you are useful to the Establishment. And if you are critical of politicians who want the economy to grow smoothly and who favor values which will facilitate the growth of the middle class, you are useful to Objective JournalismTM and are a member of the Establishment.
And that is why there is a revolving door between journalism and the Democratic Party. And why Republicans - be they never so numerous in seats of political power - are not accepted in the Establishment. Republicans are useful to Objective JournalismTM only as bogeymen.
PBS "Objective?" Our Future ^ | 5-11-05 | TheRobb7
The fundamental fact is that, to "liberals", the facts don't matter. The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR. Another way of putting it is that "there is no such thing as 'the long run'." That is, "in the long run" - when the chickens threaten to come to roost - we will change the subject.Changing the subject is the fundamental propaganda power of the Establishment which is Objective JournalismTM; what an acolyte of the Establishment said yesterday need not, as the Clinton mouthpieces used to say during the troubles (1993-2001), be "operative" today.
It's Unanimous: The Democrats Are Sliming Justice Owen
Powerline ^ | 5/12/05