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.

Consequently "No News Is Good News"--good news usually isn't "newsworthy."

I believe your analysis breaks down here. Certainly, "if it bleeds, it leads" serves as the motto for local TV news. A good fire or murder beats the hell of out a Boy Scout getting his Eagle in the ratings. But these are not usual times. American forces advancing on Baghdad while slaughtering Iraqis is just as newsworthy as American forces not advancing because of a sandstorm and supposed supply problems, and it's being treated as such by the media. People are hungry for news either way. What's the biggest story of the last 24 hours? A PFC POW being rescued. If that's not a "good news" story, what is? You seem to be saying that there's an inherent bias in these stories, in that bad news will get better ratings than good news. Maybe in peace, but not in war. Iraqi blood sells as well as American blood. Maybe even better.

The sandstorm and the "supply problems" will scarcely be footnotes in any decent book on Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that is the standard by which you should judge your information source. American forces advancing on Baghdad, taking light casualties, is essentially the only story.

People are hungry for news either way. What's the biggest story of the last 24 hours? A PFC POW being rescued. If that's not a "good news" story, what is?

Certainly it's good news, beyond peradventure. But coverage of it might not have overshadowed a single videotaped American combat death, let alone the repulsing of a local American attack. It did however upstage the smashing of the least contemptible Iraqi military forces, driving them from the last apparently potentially defensible postition south of Baghdad.

You seem to be saying that there's an inherent bias in these stories, in that bad news will get better ratings than good news. Maybe in peace, but not in war. Iraqi blood sells as well as American blood. Maybe even better.

I think to be fair you'd have to say that the few dozen coalition casualties have gotten at least as much coverage as possibly scores of thousands of Iraqi Army deaths. But as to the coverage of the small number of civilian casualties, that is over the top--because it is recognized by all as bad news.
I'm saying that commercially successful journalism features bad news. Any other kind of story is smilingly referred to as "human interest." That means that only people who are willing to feature reports of bad news become journalists. And that causes the "bias" in journalism. Any journalism which does not more-or-less explicitly lean against that wind--which does not seem "patriotic"--will in practice be anticonservative in tone.

The antidote for lies is the same as it has always been--the truth.

If we spent as much time building our own own means to reach the public with the truth as we do worrying about the leftwing purveyors of lies, we would be much further ahead.

That's what many have been busy doing for the last decade, and we are beginning to see some great fruit from those efforts.

And there is no reason that the truth can't be entertaining too. Just listen to Limbaugh or watch Fox News to verify the truth of what I'm saying.

Liberals are boring and tedious, which is one of the reasons they are losing their iron grip on the American electorate.

EV

People are afraid to ignore bad news and are afraid to accept good news uncritically.
That implies that the easiest way to grab people's attention is with a negative headline which people will fear to ignore. The whole phenomonon of "bias in the media" pretty much boils down to the institutionalization of that skewed perspective among journalists. Hey, it works--the journalists who employ that principle survive commercially.
Which explains why journalism leaves a niche wide open for commentary which is consistently more accurate than "The News." Any commentary which is not negative and superficial--ie, not anticonservative--will almost inevitably have a better track record than herd-mentality "pure journalism." Thus, talk radio. Thus, Fox News.

That implies that the easiest way to grab people's attention is with a negative headline which people will fear to ignore.

And how many headlines in conservative-oriented news or commentary articles fit just this description? Generally along the lines of "The country's going to hell in a handbasket", "The liberals are betraying the country to the Communists", or things along that line. "Liberal" media hardly have a lock on negative press.

Any commentary which is not negative and superficial--ie, not anticonservative

I'm afraid that this implies a equivalency that I don't accept; i.e., that negativity and superficiality is limited only to liberals.

Certainly I have been aware for a good many years that journalism is not truth anymore, if it ever was. It is clearly propaganda for the left. The real problem is that so many of our fellow citizens do believe that it is truth if it comes from the mouth of say, Dan Rather. These spokepersons for liberalism have far too much power.
As an aside, I will always believe that the calling of Florida for Gore was a set up, and done deliberately. We were conditioned for weeks before that whoever won Florida would be President.

The sandstorm and the "supply problems" will scarcely be footnotes in any decent book on Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that is the standard by which you should judge your information source.

Hindsight is always 20/20. News reports are not history books. At the time, the sandstorms and supply problems were causing issues with the American advance, and at the time this was reported. Should it have been ignored? Once the sandstorms ceased, and the security of the supply lines was tightened up, the stories ceased. It seems to me that it would have been irresponsible for the media to ignore the effects of weather and improper security on the American forces.

But coverage of [POW Lynch's rescue] might not have overshadowed a single videotaped American combat death, let alone the repulsing of a local American attack. It did however upstage the smashing of the least contemptible Iraqi military forces, driving them from the last apparently potentially defensible postition south of Baghdad.

Any commentary which is not negative and superficial--ie, not anticonservative

I'm afraid that this implies a equivalency that I don't accept; i.e., that negativity and superficiality is limited only to liberals.

Liberals--journalists and those who sail down journalism's prevailing wind for political profit--are negative toward the people and institutions upon whom/which we-the-people do and must depend.
Is your water safe to drink?
Is the supermarket meat department unsanitary?
Are the police incompetent to control crime?
Are the cops arbitrary and brutal?
That is the sort of negative questioning beloved of journalists and other liberals.
As to superificality among conservatives, that is undoubtedly to be found among rank-and-file voters. It is however subject to withering journalistic scrutiny, and therefore has no survival value for the conservative politician or spokesman. In the prevailing journalistic environment you really have to have your ducks in a row to defend a conservative position. Mouthing liberal platitudes, OTOH, is gutless--perfectly safe, if all you are worried about is what Dan Rather will say about you.

The sandstorm and the "supply problems" will scarcely be footnotes in any decent book on Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that is the standard by which you should judge your information source.
Hindsight is always 20/20. News reports are not history books. At the time, the sandstorms and supply problems were causing issues with the American advance, and at the time this was reported. Should it have been ignored? Once the sandstorms ceased, and the security of the supply lines was tightened up, the stories ceased. It seems to me that it would have been irresponsible for the media to ignore the effects of weather and improper security on the American forces.
True, hindsight can be 20/20--if you bother to look backward after the fact. My point is that journalism's credibility depends critically on never looking back when the journalist's first report was wrong. If you do look back into the past, and compare the historical reality with contemporaneous reporting, you will find that whoever was least inclined to accept the worst-case scenarios of the day was nearly always right. Fox News seems "patriotic"; IMHO that's true primarily in contrast to the systematic negativity of "straight journalism."
It may not be appropriate to ignore the problems you know about, but in fact when the military says the problem is minor it almost certainly is minor--the military spokesman just can't afford to sugar-coat things in the slightest precisely because journalism will have a field day if he is overoptimistic. Journalism consistently accuses the military of overoptimism, in any event.
So if you listen to a journalist sniping at a military spokesman, you can pretty well set your watch by the fact that the journalist is making a mountain out of a molehill.

I didn't notice any upstaging. I thought that the Coalition forces successes were quite well covered by all the media, both Fox and CNN. Due to a quirk in what I do for a living, I am able to track what's on both of these all day. When the Coalition advanced, all the media outlets covered it. In the context of Coalition casualties numbering over a hundred, and especially in context of the hundreds of thousands of Coalition troops who are not casualties, how important is the Jessica Lynch story anyway? I wouldn't change the fact that she was rescued--but history shouldn't attach much significance to it. The signal coalition success in aerial bombardment of Iraqi positions saved coalition lives wholesale, but received similar report time as the rescue of that single damsel in distress.

We were all interested in hearing about Private Lynch--but the fact that we were interested in that story does not change the fact that you should have known at the time that the defeat of the Iraqi army was more important. We just didn't know the names of the coalition troops who were not injured or killed because of it--whereas Private Lynch has a pretty face.

I thought at the time that the rescue of Private Lynch was overblown in the media. However, what I didn't notice was any difference between Fox, CNN, or the various broadcast media on how that was covered vs. how the progress of the Coalition forces against the Iraqis was going. I see no evidence of bias, liberal or otherwise, in the way the different media handled the story.

I thought at the time that the rescue of Private Lynch was overblown in the media. However, what I didn't notice was any difference between Fox, CNN, or the various broadcast media on how that was covered vs. how the progress of the Coalition forces against the Iraqis was going. I see no evidence of bias, liberal or otherwise, in the way the different media handled the story.

Fox is less inclined to assume that an American military operation is going bad at the first sign that there is actual (gasp!) opposition. That does not make it any less breathless at the (good) news that a damsel in distress had been rescued.
Overemphasis on the Lynch story was universal so far as I know--which only says that entertainment value trumps historical significance in the heirarchy of values which determines what is, and what is not, "news." This is an illustration not of negativity but of the superficiality intrinsic to journalism. And since the superficiality of journalism applies to Fox News as well as the others, perhaps the best idea is to make it a policy to not get too wrapped up in breaking news, from any source whatsoever. 'Course when there's a war on, that discipline tends to break down . . .

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