The mentality behind the MSM? Selfishness, pure and simple. Selfishness and cowardice.Cheap talk about how bad everyone is who has to make decisions and live with the results - who have to work to a bottom line - makes journalists feel superior to the people who make the country work. That is pure selfishness.
The MSM coheres in the idea that nothing actually matters except PR, and each individual component of the MSM gets good PR from all the others. Provided, of course, that the favor remains mutual. But the moment any person or institution ceases to support the pretensions of any of the others, all of the others will turn on him and drum him out of "objective journalism."
So the MSM is at bottom a mutual admiration society and a non-aggression pact which makes the MSM cohere in selfishness and fear. It is united for the purpose of picking on people who are natural Republicans - people who have responsibilities and who naturally make mistakes because they actually do things.
The result is that the MSM is hyper partisan under its facade of "objectivity"; liberal politicians do not so much lead and direct the MSM as they follow it, and operate in symbiosis with it.
THE MENTALITY BEHIND THE MSM
RCP ^ | Thursday, May 19 2005 | Tom Bevan
The main difficulty I perceive is credulousness - falling into the hayseed mode and assuming that the MSM are acting in good faith. We've grown up being bombarded with a fantastic barrage of propaganda to the effect that journalism is objective, and I find I have to constantly remind myself that the conceit of journalistic objectivity is a degree foolishness which makes buying the Brooklyn Bridge from a seedy character on the street look like "due diligence." As Adam Smith put it, "It is age and experience alone that teaches incredulity. And they seldom teach it enough."We should all strive for virtue, yet one of the virtues we should strive for is humility. And what does humility consist of but restraining ourselves from boasting of the virtues to which we aspire. The trouble, for those who work in journalism, is that there's no money in humility. Journalists are a bunch of carnival barkers. And the freak show that they are selling is the length to which they will go to hype bogeymen. They strain at gnats and swallow camels in order to sustain the pretense that we should trust them rather than the businesses and other institutions on which we do and must depend.
Rush parodies journalists beautifully when he boasts of "talent on loan from God" - which is actually humility pretending to be arrogance - and rants about how perfect he is. But the crucial point is that he doesn't con anyone that he is objective, he is openly conservative. And although the old Fairness Doctrine and the only-too-new Bush-McCain-Feingold "Campaign Finance Reform" horse hockey put a premium on the pretense of objectivity - actually denigrated humility - Rush and the other openly conservative commentators are consistently more reliable sources of information than "objective journalism."
What is the standard by which a source of information should be judged? Well, the Old Testament says that if someone declares themself to be a prophet and says that God will do something, then if the prophesy doesn't come true the speaker was a false prophet (and must be executed). These days we don't execute commentors (or, more's the pity </hyperbole>, reporters) whose words consistently fail to hold up in the light of time and experience. But we can and must do the virtual equivalent, with our remotes. CBS, Newsweek, et al are on notice.
THE MENTALITY BEHIND THE MSM
RCP ^ | Thursday, May 19 2005 | Tom Bevan