Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate

The framers of our Constitution gave carte blance protection to “speech” and “the press”. They did not grant that anyone was then in possession of complete and unalloyed truth, and it was impossible that they should be able to a priori institutionalize the truth of a future such human paragon even if she/he/it were to arrive.

At the time of the framing, the 1830s advent of mass marketing was in the distant future. Since that era, journalism has positioned itself as the embodiment of nonpartisan truth-telling, and used its enormous propaganda power to make the burden of proof of any “bias” essentially infinite. If somehow you nail them dead to rights in consistent tendentiousness, they will merely shrug and change the subject. And the press is protected by the First Amendment. That is where conservatives have always been stuck.

And make no mistake, conservatives are right to think that journalism is their opponent. Examples abound so that any conservative must scratch his/her head and ask “Why?” Why do those whose job it is to tell the truth tell it so tendentiously, and even lie? The answer is bound and gagged, and lying on your doorstep in plain sight. The money in the business of journalism is in entertainment, not truth. It is that imperative to entertain which produces the perspective of journalism.

And that journalism does indeed have a perspective is demonstrated every day in what it considers a good news story, and what is no news story at all. Part of that perspective is that news must be new--fresh today--as if the events of every new day were of equal importance with the events of all other days. So journalism is superficial. Journalism is negative as well, because the bad news is best suited to keep the audience from daring to ignore the news. Those two characteristics predominate in the perspective of journalism.

But how is that related to political bias? Since superficiality and negativity are anthema to conservatives there is inherent conflict between journalism and conservatism.. By contrast, and whatever pious intentions the journalist might have, political liberalism simply aligns itself with whatever journalism deems a “good story.” Journalists would have to work to create differences between journalism and liberalism, and simply lack any motive to do so. Indeed, the echo chamber of political “liberalism” aids the journalist--and since liberalism consistently exacerbates the issues it addresses, successful liberal politicians make plenty of bad news to report.

The First Amendment which protects the expression of opinion must also be understood to protect claims by people of infallibility--and to forbid claims of infallibility to be made by the government. What, after all, is the point of elections if the government is infallible? Clearly the free criticism of the government is at the heart of freedom of speech and press. Freedom, that is, of communication.

By formatting the bands and standardizing the bandwiths the government actually created broadcasting as we know it. The FCC regulates broadcasting--licensing a handful of priveledged people to broadcast at different frequency bands in particular locations. That is something not contemplated in the First Amendment, and which should never pass constitutional muster if applied to the literal press. Not only so, but the FCC requires application for renewal on the basis that a licensee broadcaster is “operating in the public interest as a public trustee.” That is a breathtaking departure from the First Amendment.

No one questions the political power of broadcasting; the broadcasters themselves obviously sell that viewpoint when they are taking money for political advertising. What does it mean, therefore, when the government (FCC) creates a political venue which transcends the literal press? And what does it mean when the government excludes you and me--and almost everyone else--from that venue in favor of a few priviledged licensees? And what does it mean when the government maintains the right to pull the license of anyone it does allow to participate in that venue? It means a government far outside its First Amendment limits. When it comes to broadcasting and the FCC, clearly the First Amendment has nothing to do with the case.

The problem of journalism’s control of the venue of argument would be ameliorated if we could get them into court. In front of SCOTUS they would not be permitted to use their mighty megaphones. And to get to court all it takes is the filing of a civil suit. A lawsuit must be filed against broadcast journalism, naming not only the broadcast licensees, but the FCC.

We saw the tendency of broadcast journalism in the past election, when the delay in calling any given State for Bush was out of all proportion to the delay in calling a state for Gore, the margin of victory being similar--and, most notoriously, the state of Florida was wrongly called for Gore in time to suppress legal voting in the Central Time Zone portion of the state, to the detriment of Bush and very nearly turning the election. That was electioneering over the regulated airwaves on election day, quite on a par with the impact that illegal electioneering inside a polling place would have. It was an enormous tort.

And it is on that basis that someone should sue the socks off the FCC and all of broadcast journalism.

Journalism has a simbiotic relation with liberal Democrat politicians, journalists and liberal politicians are interchangable parts. Print journalism is only part of the press (which also includes books and magazines and, it should be argued, the internet), and broadcast journalism is no part of the press at all. Liberals never take issue with the perspective of journalism, so liberal politicians and journalists are interchangable parts. The FCC compromises my ability to compete in the marketplace of ideas by giving preferential access addresses to broadcasters, thus advantaging its licensees over me. And broadcast journalism, with the imprimatur of the government, casts a long shadow over elections. Its role in our political life is illegitimate.

The First Amendment, far from guaranteeing that journalism will be the truth, protects your right to speak and print your fallible opinion. Appeal to the First Amendment is appeal to the right to be, by the government or anyone else’s lights, wrong. A claim of objectivity has nothing to do with the case; we all think our own opinions are right.

When the Constitution was written communication from one end of the country to the othe could take weeks. Our republic is designed to work admirably if most of the electorate is not up to date on every cause celebre. Leave aside traffic and weather, and broadcast journalism essentially never tells you anything that you need to know on a real-time basis.

Nifong should go to jail for this.

His behaviour was criminal - or should be.

His behavior was transparently unethical. Actually, he slandered the entire Duke Lacrosse Team by publicly accusing them, falsely, of sonewalling ("a blue wall of silence").
But we all know that the actual exploiters of the Duke Lacrosse Team were others who picked up on the gambit, and ran with it. The Duke 88, for example. But the real deep pockets exploiters were in the propaganda (so-called "objective") media. Just as in the case of the 60 Minutes "Killian Memos" October surprise hit on President Bush - and as in the case of the post-election commentary on Fox News Channel's calling the '00 election for Bush in the wee hours after the election, Big Journalism systematically promotes itself at the expense of others. Its claim of objectivity is a fraud, and that fraud makes all other frauds it perpetrates doubly - no, trebly as in "triple damages for RICO" - egregious.
The proper target of the legitimate lawsuit which should lie in all these cases is not just an individual like Nifong but broadcast journalism and the FCC for licensing broadcasters and allowing them to pull these stunts with impunity.

Any politician can choose not to appear on FNC or any other venue which doesn't float their boat. But it certainly speaks volumes about the relative clout of FNC and ABC (et. al.) that the Democratic candidates feel entirely free to dis Fox in a way that it would never occur to a Republican candidate to dis ABC.
The planted axiom of the choice of the Democrats to dis FNC is that ABC et. al. are objective. Indeed, that axiom is planted in the entire FCC broadcast licensing scheme - and more-or-less explicit in McCain-Feingold. It is also embedded in the "Fairness Doctrine" which the Democrats are determined to resurrect, precisely to suppress the open discussion of politics.
Democrats oppose the open expression of political opinion because they reject the idea of the possibility of their own fallibility. That is not an unprecedented position for people to take - otherwise it would not have a name handed down to us by history. The name for that attitude is "sophistry," and it derives from the Sophists of ancient Greece. The root of the word means "wisdom." The Sophists claimed to be wise.
That implied, of course, that any opposition to their own ideas was foolish. And that is precisely the position that "progressive" politicians and "objective" journalists take. Indeed, journalists call politicians who agree with them "progressive" because Americans universally believe in progress (i.e., they are not conservative). Journalists and other Democrats use "Objectivity" (applied only to journalists) and "progressivism" (never applied to journalists) as surrogates for "wisdom," but their meaning is the same.
Many Americans, including Jim Robinson and those who subscribe to the tenets of FR, call themselves "conservatives," but the term - like "right wingers" - is actually a slur (much as the term "Yankee" originally was). This is obvious from the fact that "conservatives" are the ones who want to accomplish such things as drilling for the oil in and near ANWR and producing nuclear electric power, whereas "progressives" want to stop the expansion of industry and fuel production - indeed, they want to reduce the production of power. American "conservatives" conserve freedom, and freedom implies the ability to do things that were not done before - the sine qua non of progress.
The conceit of the Sophists was rejected by the Philosophers. Philosophers rejected argument from a claim of wisdom, and insisted only that they loved wisdom - not that they were specially endowed with it. Thus the philosopher is open to facts and logic, whereas the sophist is eager to shut off debate.
It is obvious that the sophist requires an advantage in power to make it possible to foreclose his opponent's ability to bring facts and logic to the table. The modern sophists of the Democratic Party exploit the PR power of the one-way media for that purpose. The reason they enjoy the overwhelming advantage in that arena is simple - journalists who claim to be objective must band together to sustain their image, and by acting in unison they reject criticism of journalism as a whole by rejecting criticism of each individual journalist. And "progressives" - be they Democratic politicians or labor unionists or plaintiff lawyers or teachers - join in and support the project of sustaining the image of journalism as being objective. All such people have the common objective of promoting criticism above action. "Progressivism" is simply the attitude that criticism and second guessing is what is significant, and the person who undertakes a task and works to achieve it - Theodore Roosevelt's "man in the arena" - counts for nothing.
The irony of the claim of the "progressive" to superior wisdom is that "progressivism" the journalism which it adores is inherently not wise but superficial. The most topical book, for example, will be written on a subject of more enduring significance than a reporter's story which was chosen because it was either bad ("If it bleeds, it leads) or what usually does not happen ("Man Bites Dog, not Dog Bites Man"). And will be written on a much longer deadline, which allows for superior research and editing.

The press has treated the Rutgers women as heroes and the Duke players as lepers. Early on that was true, but after the first month or so I would have to say that press stories disparaging to the Duke LAX players were more of the exception than the rule.

Actually he understates the case when he says that
Whites victimized by blacks aren't just victims – they're quasi-villains.
The reality is,as Thomas Sowell points out, that
It is hard to believe that Nifong believed that these other charges would stand up in court. But they didn't have to. After months of mounting pressure and growing legal bills, many people would have plea-bargained, "confessed" to something minor, just to get the nightmare over with.
Such a "confession" might have spared Nifong from being hauled up before the state bar association on ethics charges.
When he speaks of "mounting pressure," he includes the fact that the cabbie who was witness to the fact that one of the accused was somewhere else at the time was taken to the station house and interrogated for hours . . . and thereafter understandably fell publicly silent. So the bottom line is that the Duke 3 not only are not villains, they and their families are heroes for resisting Nifong's full-court press.
In that context the test of whether journalism is being fair to the Duke 3 or not is the behavior and status not only of Al Sharpton but of the Duke 88. They have not recanted their libel, and clearly are confident that they don't have to. Their calumny against heroes still stands. Why are they not being humiliated worse than Don Imus?
This is an illustration of the superficiality of journalism - compared to the stress to which the Duke 3 were viciously subjected, initially with journalism against them along with the Duke 88 and legions of others calling for their castration, the Don Imus flap is insignificant. But that is not the way journalism has played the two stories. In fact, the Duke 88 are not in the news at all. And neither, in any negative way, is Al Sharpton.
The Racist Press ..........(Rutgers women as heroes and the Duke players as lepers)
WND ^ | April 18, 2007 | Benjamin Shapiro

while, we're at it, why don't we get those nasty Tories to ban drugs, bank robberies and car thefts, too. And murder. Let's get them to ban murder, because murder is bad. And if all it takes to prevent bad things from happening are federal bans on them, well let's just ban lots of stuff--because then all sorts of crime and personal pain will just magically go away.

Oh, right: Ottawa has already banned drugs, murder and robbery. And despite those prohibitions, bad things continue to happen. In spite of laws making it a crime to murder, deal drugs and hold up credit unions, criminals still do it.

Transparently, passing new laws against things which are already illegal is simply elevating talk above action. Who talks the most, and does the least otherwise? Why, I believe that would be Big Journalism!
The elevation of talk over action is easy; nothing is easier than criticizing and second guessing because action always clarifies, and the second guesser has the advantage of seeing results - an advantage which the person who initially acted could only dream of when he made his decision to act.
It is natural for the journalist to second guess, and the natural implication of second guessing would be that the second guesser - who has no track record of ever having taken difficult decisions without full knowledge of the ultimate results, and followed through successfully - would obviously have done better than the person who was actually in charge. And the natural implication of that is that people with big mouths and no experience of actually doing anything should be put in charge.
And where better for such "geniuses" to be given in charge but in the government, where they can control everything! Leftism is simply the drive toward incompetent management, for the foolish separation of responsibility from authority. And leftism is the natural attitude for a journalist to have - and for a journalist to promote with favorable labels on leftist politicians.
Blame urban culture, not urban guns
National Post ^ | 2007-05-28 | Lorne Gunter

The principle of the First Amendment is freedom.
And freedom is inconsistent with censorship.
The reality is that although radio transmission can exist without censorship, broadcasting - the ability to be hearable over a geographical area of hundreds of square miles - has depended on censorship of everyone else but the relative handful of government licensees. The principle of broadcasting is that you have a right to listen purchased with the duty to shut up.
That system was justified on the grounds that bandwidth was scarce. But in the 21^st Century, bandwidth is not scarce in the way that it (arguably) has historically been. For example, there are laws against intercepting someone else's cell phone call - which means that it is technologically possible for anyone to do so, and hence, technologically, it is possible that cell phones could be constructed to be able to listen to any of a large number of other cell phones. That is, if the law were changed it is technologically possible to have hundreds or thousands of "radio" channels in a given city. So the "limited bandwidth" rationale of FCC censorship is at this point something of a red herring.
In an alternative universe where the FCC promotes our ability to talk rather than promoting only our ability to listen, there's nothing wrong with broadcasting as such. In that universe broadcasting is just like blogging or FReeping. And not different in principle from newspaper publishing - there is no barrier to entry.
But in the real America, the newspapers have gone into "go along and get along" mode with each other. Newspapers do not knock their competitors but promote journalism in general rather than saying that our brand of newspaper is giving you the word, and Brand X newspaper is slanted. So what you have is a situation where all the newspapers claim that journalism as such is objective, by definition. Journalism has created itself as an establishment which, by the power of PR, is able to persuade a huge plurality if not a majority of people to check their mental faculties at the door and accept the premise that journalists are superior beings who - unlike you or me - are "objective."
And if newspapers do that, broadcast journalists do it in spades. They need that system of consensus as a rationale for their very licenses to broadcast. According to that rationale, they aren't broadcasting propaganda of the left or right, they are broadcasting objectivity in the public interest and therefore are the good guys who should have licenses. How can you say that there is a First Amendment problem with broadcasters, when broadcast journalism is indistinguishable from print journalism, and there is no barrier to entry in print journalism?
Well, at least here on FR, I can say that there is a problem with broadcast journalism. Here on FR, I can point out the obvious fact that it is arrogant to claim superior objectivity, and to thereby claim that anyone who doesn't go along with you "is not a journalist, not objective." I can say that journalism which claims to be objective is the establishment in America. I can say that "talk radio" hosts like Rush Limbaugh are in fact journalists, whatever Tim Russert or any other establishment journalist might say. The fact that Rush doesn't presume to claim to be objective is not disabling as a journalist, it is a virtue - the virtue of humility.

Maybe Hugo will give you a job...to determine the continued Hugo-objectivity of the peoples' struggle against bourgeois concepts of press freedom and countervailing opinion

I deliberately chose to take this issue on in this thread because it represents a hard case. Venezuela has a dictator shutting down actual dissent. In the US, the reality is that Big Journalism, not the government, is the establishment which is suppressing dissent.
The Democratic Party promotes Big Journalism. And Big Journalism returns the favor and promotes the Democratic Party. Consequently the Democratic Party is "known" to be the party of the little guy, and the Republicans are "the party of the rich" - even though it is the Democrats who get the largest individual donations, and the Republicans who get the most donations.
Media under assault in the Americas
Miami Herald | May. 30, 2007 | Staff

If 15 stories ran on the REAL al Queda torture house, versus 6000+ fake stories on NON-EXISTENT Abu Gharib torture, then it is possible to come up with a precise calculation of Media Bias.

The formula is that (6000 - 15)/6000 x 100% of the Mainstream Media stories are faked or overtly biased. That works precisely out to 99.75% of Mainstream Media being fake or heavily biased.

You don't understand the simplest thing about journalistic objectivity. The rule of journalism is that you select your stories on the basis that they are too unusual and/or too scary to be ignored.
That is encapsulated in the famous dicta,

"'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man,'" and

"If it bleeds, it leads."
Journalism makes no secret of these dicta; journalists will tell you that that is how they select their stories for reporting and for emphasis. Now here we have two different stories, Abu Graib and al Qaeda torture.

Al Qaeda torture isn't at all surprising, everyone knows it happens all the time. And torture of foreigners, by other foreigners seven time zones from America, is not scary to Americans. So the al Qaeda torture story is strictly "Dog Bites Man," and not worthy of the attention of American Journalism.

Abu Graib, OTOH, is just the opposite. It has:

behavior which is completely unexpected of American officials anywhere,

behavior which would be terrible if done by American officials anywhere, and

behavior which reflects discreditably on the people - Republicans - whom Americans who want things done count on to get things done, right (nobody who actually cares about the government's getting the government's job - control of the power of the sword - done right would ever vote Democratic. Democrats just don't care about the government's controlling the power of the sword; they take that for granted. Bread and circus is all that matters to them).

So ever-parochial American journalism considers itself perfectly objective when, following its time-honored rules, it reacts with a "ho hum" to the discovery of an al Qaeda torture cell in Iraq, after having made a mountain out of a mole hill over Abu Graib. The reality is, of course, that their analysis of the case is profoundly contemptuous and dismissive of any interests other than their own.

NETS AND TOP PAPERS SILENT OVER AL-QAEDA TORTURE HOUSE
MRC ^ | 6/3/07

So the actionable feature of the offense - when broadcasters claim objectivity for themselves yet speak otherwise - is due to the wide range and ease of hear-ability?

The actionable offense is actually committed by the FCC when it prosecutes people for "broadcast piracy" - presuming to reserve the right of freedom of the press - if broadcasting is "the press" - to some few "licensees" when freedom of the press implies that there can be no such thing as a requirement for a "press license." It is that which is at the root of unconstitutional setting up of media kingpins by the government. So the FCC is the first one to be sued. And that goes double for the Federal Election Commission, when it enforces laws which purport to control what you can say about an incumbent politician within a few weeks of an election - and under what conditions you can use your own money to propagate your political opinions in "the press." If in fact the FCC rules requiring radio transmission to be "in the public interest" are not ruled a complete sham, then the FCC has a duty actually to enforce those rules. And legitimate FCC regulation cannot impose a "Fairness Doctrine" which is "fair" in the same way that "journalistic objectivity" is "objective."
The only possible standard which could approximate fairness would be the philosophical standard. Since Socrates, it has been known that arguing from a claim of superior virtue is arrogant. The "Sophists" of ancient Greece argued from claims of superior wisdom ("soph" being the Greek word of wisdom). And of course if I am wise and you are not wise, then whenever we disagree I am automatically right and you are automatically wrong; there is no point in my wise self having to argue with a donderhead like you. And that is the essence of "journalistic objectivity" - journalists dismissing any challenge to their perspective with naked PR power, thinly veiled with fraudulent claims of objectivity which boil down to the fact that all journalists are in cahoots to promote their own interest by equating the interests of journalism with the public interest.
In contrast to the sophists, the "philosophers" disavowed any claim of superior wisdom and claimed only to love wisdom, not to possess it ("philo" = "brotherly love" as "Philadelphia" = "city of brotherly love"). If you love wisdom but do not claim to possess it, you are open to facts and logical argument. And that is what is missing from "objective" journalism. Journalism which claims to be objective claims superior wisdom - and is, demonstrably, sophistry. But the implication of a requirement for the FCC (and FEC) to reject sophistry would be a requirement that the FCC police its licensees to eliminate - not, as is current practice, to promote - "objective" journalism.
That would not eliminate journalism, but it would eliminate what establishment journalists call "journalism." What would remain would be broadcast show hosts who discuss the issues and debate facts and logic. What would remain of broadcast journalism would be talk radio.
NETS AND TOP PAPERS SILENT OVER AL-QAEDA TORTURE HOUSE
MRC ^ | 6/3/07

"government can rarely hide...what it wishes to hide" This may be true, but the Propaganda Machine (the "Mainstream Newsmedia") can hide anything behind a wall of disinformation, obfuscation, censorship, manipulation, groupthink, re-writing of history, and confusion--and its so-called "journalists" regularly do.

Ann Coulter can write whole books debunking the conspiracy theories of Objective Journalism^TM - and it is as if nothing was ever said. For example, Treason discusses the lack of evidence, and the positive evidence against, journalism's theory of "McCarthyism." The reality of so-called "McCarthyite censorship" is that the evidence for the theory actually rebuts the theory completely.
That is, the only "evidence" of McCarthyite censorship is found in published complaints about it. Now if something were being effectively censored in America with its First Amendment, that censorship would have to suppress not only its direct object but the very fact that that object was being censored. Once absorb that obvious point, and all evidence for McCarthyite censorship evaporates. And what you are left with is the realization that the theory of McCarthyite censorship is a conspiracy theory - and the knowledge that to challenge that theory is to inspire publication of conspiracy theories about yourself.

From JFK To 9/11: Why People Believe In Conspiracy (Sometimes Its Just Obvious, DUH Alert)

NGOs and pundits know that unless they are prepared to go over the top, they shouldn't venture out at all. Talk to any public service leader - especially in the NHS or the field of law and order - and they will tell you not that they mind the criticism, but they become totally demoralised by the completely unbalanced nature of it.
Here in America, we call it "Bush Derangement Syndrome." Here, it is received wisdom that the hurricane which caused such devastation in New Orleans some time ago actually was directed by President Bush! And that is simply an illustration of your earlier point that
Third, the fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.
Herd journalism breeds utterly conspiracy theories such as the idea that Bush steered Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans, or that, having the authority to declassify the information, Bush clandestinely "outted" Valerie Plame's role in the CIA in punishment for her husband's opposition to Mr. Bush's (and your own) position on Saddam Hussain's interest in acquiring Uranium. Indeed, what is happening to Scooter Libby is exhibit "A" of "just tearing people and reputations to bits."
But, it is important to realize, this phenomenon is actually not new at all, and is not generally a transient phenomenon. The same thing happened here, half a century ago, to Senator Joseph McCarthy - and to this day his name is a byword for evils which he himself neither perpetrated nor attempted.
Blair Slams Media as he Heads for Exit Door
MND ^ | June 13, 2007 | Warner Todd Huston

What responsibility for the murders, therefore, and for more murders to come, lies with NBC, to whom the killer sent written and videotaped public statements about his rampage which NBC obligingly broadcast? “It was a tough call” for NBC, according to Bob Schieffer of CBS in a radio interview I chanced to listen to. Really? Funny, then, isn’t it, that it always gets called the same way—that is, for making such demented ramblings public instead of consigning them, unopened, unviewed, and unread, to the incinerator. We have to try to understand why these things happen, the media cry. No, we don’t! In fact, it’s the trying to understand that makes them happen. By telling a potential killer that he’s eligible for understanding, you confirm him in the belief that there are reasons for him to kill and therefore, to that extent, that it is all right to kill. The therapeutic approach, which the media find it convenient to adopt in these cases, essentially concedes the killer’s case that he is a martyr to whatever wrongs, imaginary or real, he sees himself as avenging. And, of course, his efforts at self-glorification depend on the media and their ability both to elicit such a response to his actions and, by doing so, to make him famous.

The importance of prospective fame as a motivator for those whose grievances against the world so often include their own obscurity and loneliness can hardly be overstated.

Getting it right (The Media)
The New Criterion ^ | June 2007 | James Bowman

Hunter is my first choice also. I’ve sent him some $$$ and talk him up to anyone who will listen.

My big gripe is that the MSM won’t let him be heard. In the debates he could barely get a word in edgewise. They constantly called on McCain, Romney, Guiliani. I know, they were the first tier, but I wanted to hear Hunter and the others.

I favored Alan Keyes in '00, so I'm not completely unwilling to interest myself in a second tier candidate, but electability does have to be a consideration. Otherwise we'd all just favor our own selves to be president, more or less. Sadly, I think Keyes completely jumped the shark in Illinois. But Keyes will make valid, thought-provoking constitutional points from time to time.
On point, Objective Journalism^TM is in the business of using printing presses and radio/TV transmitters for fun and profit. Journalism is topical nonfiction, and it stands or falls commercially on its ability to attract attention (and thereby to attract eyeballs to advertisements). And it does so by promoting itself generally as being important and "objective, and specifically by promoting its reports with "headlines and other emphases which suggest that your trust in the people/organizations which get things done (e.g., the police/military, businessmen, Republican politicians - not to put too fine a point on it, white men generally) is misplaced.
And in claiming objectivity but never competing among themselves on that basis, Objective Journalism^TM functions as a single entity, an establishment, which promotes its own interest as "the public interest." That is what claiming to be objective actually implies. But as the "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man'" dictum makes clear, journalism is about what interests the public. Journalism conflates that with "the public interest," but they are different matters entirely

the public interest is in a growing economy and the public is therefore interested and alarmed by reports of weakness in the economy.

the public interest is in 'domestic tranquility,' and the public is therefore interested and alarmed by reports of riots.

the public interest is in justice, and the public is therefore interested and alarmed by reports of injustice and police brutality.

the public interest is in the common defense, and the public is therefore interested and alarmed by reports of weakness and venality anywhere in the military.

In short, journalism promotes itself by promoting the idea that the rest of society does not fulfill its obligations - in effect, that our society 'couldn't be worse' and our constitutional order is deeply flawed. IOW, Objective Journalism^TM is inherently radical.
In an FR posting, in print, I can express that concept using the ^TM device to make clear that I am not speaking about actual objectivity, which it is inherently arrogant to claim, but the ersatz "objectivity" of the deeply committed ideologues who run establishment journalism who honestly do not realize that they even have a viewpoint, let alone that a different viewpoint might be legitimate. Objective Journalism^TM therefore functions in American politics the way a bull does in a china shop - completely oblivious to values outside itself. But the spoken word is limited in its ability to express the concept, because Objective Journalism^TM promotes Newspeak inversions of the English language which limit discussion of any criticism of itself. "Objective" becomes an adjective which applies to journalists only, and its meaning is distorted to the point of inversion. "Liberal" and "progressive" become synonyms for "objective," but never apply to journalists even though they refer to exactly the same attitudes that make a journalist "objective." "Conservative" becomes a pejorative for attitudes which are in reality progressive and liberal, but which are in opposition to "progressive" and "liberal" ideas.
Once understand that Objective Journalism^TM is inherently radical, and it becomes obvious that there a distinction but not a difference between Objective Journalism^TM and what Objective Journalism^TM calls "progressive" or "liberal" politics. A Hillary Clinton can therefore speak of a desire to transform American society without raising the slightest alarm among journalists.
So we see that there is no reason why Objective Journalism^TM would promote any conservative idea or candidate.
A Very Big Thank You(Duncan Hunter's family reads FR!) Email | June 17,2007 | The Hunter Family

TWohlford:
Last week, a noted print media NASCAR guy took a shot at people like me — “People declare themselves journalists not because they have any training but because they managed to secure for themselves a Web site.”
I suspect that his disdain is shared by most in threatened media.

I just wonder — who is a journalist, and how can you tell?

Back in 1953 at the start of the Eisenhower Administration, Ike nominated General Motors Chairman Charles E. Wilson to be SecDef. In those (relatively) innocent times, Wilson had precedent on his side when he assumed that he could be SecDef without divesting himself of his GM stock. But he was asked during his confirmation hearing whether that was not a conflict of interest. Wilson replied, "What's good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa."
Well! Journalism went into high dudgeon, inverted the emphasis by quoting him as saying "What's good for General Motors is good for the country" (which admittedly is implied by "vice versa"), and harped on the statement to the point where Wilson's confirmation came to be in doubt. Wilson agreed to divest himself of his GM stock holding (which was a big enough block to risk glutting the market and temporarily depressing the price of the stock, or he wouldn't have been chairman of the company).
Why does that apply to the question of who is a journalist? Just this - the claim that "What's good for General Motors is good for the country" is in effect a claim that General Motors is the Establishment. And if you claim to be the Establishment when you are not the Establishment, the real Establishment will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Just as Big Journalism came down on the chairman of General Motors. Big Journalism is the Establishment.
Now, do you think you can become accepted as a member of the Establishment just by freelancing for some web site? Not a chance. To be accepted as a member of the journalism establishment, you have to play by the rules of Big Journalism. You have to dismiss any thought of competing with other journalists on the basis of superior objectivity - if you are a member of establishment journalism, you never question the objectivity of another journalist. And if CBS jumps the shark with an "objective" October Surprise hit piece on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record based on crude forgeries, you do not pile on; you basically take no notice. You allow CBS to investigate itself and conclude that it was not partisan just because it unreservedly promoted the Democratic candidate's perspective on what the campaign was about, and you do not ask questions. You may as one question, but you do not ask the second question, as would be second nature for a journalist investigating anyone outside the club.
If you are a member of the journalism establishment, you promote journalism unreservedly as, in effect, the very definition of the public interest. You advocate "shield laws" to give journalists more rights than ordinary citizens, and you advocate "campaign finance reform" to denigrate the rights of ordinary citizens to discuss politics in the way that journalists take for granted that they may - indeed, "in the public interest," "must" - do. You promote the conceit that it is more important for the journalist to investigate and criticize the farmer than it is for the farmer to grow food, that it is more important for the journalist to investigate and criticize the policeman than it is for the policeman to enforce the law, it is more important for the journalist to investigate and criticize the businessman than it is for the businessman to produce and market fuel, automobiles, houses, or anything else.
In short you hold that Theodore Roosevelt had it exactly wrong when he declared,
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena
And if you promote criticism over performance, you promote not only journalism as such but fellow travelers such as plaintiff lawyers, labor unionists, teachers, and like-minded politicians. The journalists (and only the journalists) you approvingly label "objective;" the fellow travelers you approvingly label "progressive" or "liberal" or "moderate." Those who attempt to win credit for actual performance you condemn as "right wing" or "conservative."
In short if you are an establishment journalist you are a radical - and if you are not a radical then, from the POV of the Establishment, you are "not a journalist, not objective."

McCain and the rest of the Congressional crowd have zero respect for the Constitution. Or they never would have passed "campaign finance reform" in the first place.

Exactly. And Bush signed it, after I preferred Bush to McCain in the '00 primary exactly because McCain-Feingold was an abomination then, and a worse abomination now that it is being enforced - enforced even by Scalia and Thomas - on the Supreme Court.
The fundamental fallacy of "Campaign Finance Reform" is the conceit, promoted by Big Journalism and ratified by Big Incumbency, that journalism is "objective."
Journalism claims that it objectively follows its own rules as to what is and what is not "news." But (even were that so), that begs the question as to whether those rules are in the public interest. It is easy to see that those rules - "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man,'" and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper," (a.k.a., "Always make your deadline," a.k.a. "The show must go on," are designed to interest the public. But it is far from obvious that the rules of commercially successful journalism promote the public interest.
The public interest - insofar as the government can promote it - is defined by the preamble to the Constitution and does not be reiterated daily in the newspaper. It is far more apt to state that what interests the public is most often what is not in the public interest - but that journalism flatters the public, and itself, by suggesting that journalism interests the public in weighty matters rather than in titillating entertainments.
The reality is that in order to reliably protect the expression of profound analysis and of well-founded fact, the First Amendment was crafted in such a way as to also protect expression which is arrogant, superficial, and/or ill-founded. In McCain-Feingold, Big Journalism and Big Incumbency turned logic on its head and implanted in law the conceit that First Amendment protection of journalism's right to be wrong at the top of its voice implies that journalism is always right.
And the reality is that since
Half the truth is often a great lie - Benjamin Franklin
even proof that journalism never misstates facts (yeah, right) would not be sufficient to prove that journalism expresses the public interest. Such proof would be necessary (and impossible), of course - but not sufficient.
Court Alters '08 Landscape (McCain-Feingold takes a hit.)
The Hill ^ | June 26, 2007 | Alexander Bolton

Obey had to get this little cheap shot in though, comparing Rush to Hilton. Can’t face the cold fact that nobody wants to hear liberal vomit on the airwaves.

It's a perfectly natural human reaction to notice a pretty face, and to point a camera at it if you've got one. IOW, Paris Hilton's face interests the public.
But that hardly qualifies photographs of her face to be a matter which affects the public interest. The point, surely, is that no matter how "objectively journalists follow the rules which tell them that pictures of Paris Hilton interest the public, those pictures will shed no light on what government policies may be wise - may be in the public interest.
The so-called "objectivity" with which journalists attract public attention is irrelevant to any question touching the First Amendment rights of the people - or any other matter of public policy.
Fairness Doctrine hammered 309-115
The Hill ^ | June 28, 2007 | Alexander Bolton

The American elites were far stealthier than Soviet elties. They had a media that helped them convince the American people that no such elite ruling class could possibly exist in a "free and open" society. as the US.

To ask the question, "Are 'the media' objective?" is to raise - and answer - a different and more revealing question - "Are 'the media' independent?"; For if the first question must necessarily have a single answer, the answer to the second question must be, "No." The journalism outlets compete with each other only in the sense that the Yankees and the Red Sox compete with each other: both cooperate in promoting the idea that major league baseball generally, and their rivalry in particular, are significant. Big journalism promotes journalism first and its individual members second.
According to Daniel Boorstin, newspapers were founded in America for the purpose of promoting the locales they served. Little, nascent metropolises like Podunk, Peoria - or Chicago or Cleveland - each had their local newspaper promoting their own locale as the next big thing. So the perspective of journalism is its obsession with the very local, both in space and in time. And that corresponds to an obsession with itself. Journalism's pretension to objectivity is nothing more than an expression of its subjective nature.
Upsetting the Elite (Thomas Sowell)
Townhall.com | July 3, 2007 | Thomas Sowell

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