Posted on 09/14/2001 7:02:19 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
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.
I have come to look at liberalism the other way around--not that big journalism is in the pockets of particular politicians, but that particular politicians known as "liberals" sail down the natural propaganda wind which emanates from journalism.Those who have a comparative advantage in journalism are populists who flatter the audience and themselves by belittling things/people whose only justification is the bottom line--that is, practical utility. Indeed journalists criticize everyone; it's just that their criticism always comes from the left and therefore is actually helpful to liberal politicians.
To be criticized from the left as well as the right "positions" liberal politicians as being "moderate;" liberals don't mind it at all but they do exploit it. And liberal politicians are too busy pandering to journalism to find much energy to criticize it.
Any given journalist is just as coopted by the PR power of journalism as a whole as is any other liberal; no journalist can retain recognition as a journalist after questioning the objectivity of any other recognized journalist. Indeed talk radio is a form of journalism, obviously--but is outside the guild of "objective journalists" because its practitioners are willing to accept the "conservative" label and are not unwilling to call mainstream journalists the liberals they so obviously are.
That NYT Poll...
Andrew Sullivan web site | Jan. 20, 2004 | Andrew Sullivan
“It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that — except for a few liberal columnists — that there is any such thing as the big liberal media,” Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne argued late in 2002. Dionne, formerly a top political reporter for both the Post and the New York Times, asserted that the media are actually “heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians.”The existence of a thing cannot be doubted by those who understand its nature and its causes. OTOH any belief, seemingly, can be adhered to by some who find consolation in it and can take pride in holding it.But as a new election year begins, the news organizations who truly dominate the media landscape — such as the Big Three broadcast networks and influential papers like the New York Times — remain what they have been for decades: allies of liberalism and enemies of conservative policies.
The existence and power of PR, for example, are not denied by many. The desirability of the existence of that power can, however, be debated.
After studying the issue of the nexus between the media and political liberalism, I conclude that liberalism is simply a way of pandering to us by pretending that our economic fantasies are reality. We can all see things in retrospect, and our fantasy is that only malevalent or self-interested forces caused those who saw those things in prospect, and labored for them and profited by them, to get the credit for them. The fantasy is that the prudent and diligent prospective action is no more valuable than the easy second guess.
With that unlovely envy motivating prospective readers and voters, is it a marvel that journalists and politicians pander to that? Is it a marvel that journalists prefer to report ill of those with a good bottom line? And that journalist who do more of that prosper more than those who do it less?
Is it a marvel that politicians, faced both with the natural temptation of voters and the pandering of journalism, simply play to the reporters' gallery?
Journalists criticize everyone except other journalists; journalists individually pander to journalism. Like all liberals do. And the claim of journalism's "objectivity" is nothing else but pandering journalsm--pandering to the PR power.
But journalism's criticism is criticism from the left; it falls on the liberal politician as a friendly tug and on the conservative as a hostile attack.
Still Liberal, Still Biased
Media Research Center ^ | 1-22-04 | Tim Graham and Rich Noyes
A well-intended But flawed formulation of the biblical (Mathew 28:19) mandate to preach the gospel.The right to choose who you will listen to, and to choose to reject or accept what you hear, is precious. Let the gospel be preached in love--and let those who are moved by God to accept the good news as good have the honor of voluntarily doing so.
That is bedrock Baptist doctrine. And it in no sense conflicts with the First Amendment (indeed the much loved and grieviously distorted Jefferson quote about "a wall of seperation between church and state" is wrenched out of context with the cordial reply to a cordial letter from a Baptist association which is its source).
The contrast with militant Islamic doctrine could scarcely be more stark.
Donohue: 'Relentless' Attacks on 'The Passion' Will Backfire
News Max | JAn 23, 2004
There may be no way to remove a journalist, but there is a way to mitigate the damage.
Ridicule.
Hey, don't knock the teletubbies.
Without their keen investigative journalism, I never would have known that the sun was really a gurgling infant.
With good cause.
This successfully explains something I've been trying with limited success to say for some time.http://drakeraft.com/And what better time than this for technology to allow traditional poets to triumph in the literary arena? The infrastructure to support contemporary classical literature had been eroded by the postmodern ideology and its diverse manifestations throughout the greater culture. Science and technology, which enabled the mass media based on sound and video, amplified the more superficial, Dionysian, idolatrous aspects of mankind, and when coupled with the postmodern theories which were fostered by the misapplication of science to the soul, the written Word was assaulted on all fronts. People read less in the popular culture, and reading meant less within the academy. And yet, they still had this marvelous potential and will to know their eternal soul. Hence the cynicism and irony and apathy which afflicts this generation, which shall never be satiated by the fleeting Dionysian alone--we long for the eternal, and eternity is only known by thoughts, and thoughts are only known by words. The deconstruction and desecration hath cleared the field of our imaginations for a renaissance.
I have been pointing out that the higher the production value of a medium, the more corrupted with leftism that medium is. A movie or a TV show is more expensive to produce than a talk radio show, and particularly than a web site. And liberals are woeful on the internet, pathetic on talk radio, dominant in TV--and make Hollywood "hollywierd."
The other salient point JollyRodger.com makes is the fog of liberalism.
I have made the similar point that "the fog of war" is really the fog of current events, of breaking news--and that we can and should choose not to spend our major attention in that fog but, rather, to make sure to take due account of the things which have long been known.
The Jolly Roger: Navigating An American Renaissance
The Jolly ROger Renaissance ^
No, the reason for a journalist is to report the news.........as it happened..........period.
Certainly, that is what I was taught in school--and certainly, that is the impression the journalist wishes me to have. The question is, do we believe the journalist when he says he's unbiased? I guess we have to, because he wouldn't "spin"; he's unbiased. He told us so himself!Is there any principled reason to believe that the journalist is in fact paid only for "just the facts, ma'am?" Isn't it true that the journalist is in business to hold the attention of an audience more than anything else? Would advertisers pay the journalist if the journalist didn't attract attention?
It (The Press) is only supposed to be about being a "watchdog" of the government......... to keep us free.
How this comes about nowadays is a mystery to me. It seems we are in a hole from which we cannot get out.
The slimeball owners of the mainstream media are the people who are deconstructing this nation with their continual dissemination.
It really is time for all of us to point this out, and to point THEM out. BUT if you point out these particular people, you may be called one thing or the other.
For me, I call myself a patriot.
The Constitution doesn't say a word about journalism; it speaks of "the press." But aren't book publishers "the press" under the First Amendment? Isn't a nonfiction book a better source, generally, for information about a particular subject--provided that the subject was worth writing a book about in the first place?We need to look coldly at the business model of journalism and any other source of information, and not expect what the business model can't make money delivering. Just because speech is protected under the First Amendment, do I expect that all speakers will be objective? Doesn't freedom imply not only the possibility of telling the truth, but also the possibility of being wrong without being thrown in jail?
The fallacy lies in the belief that reportable news just comes over the transom, without any agenda until the reporters and editors apply it.All due respect, but your thesis that the press will, in essence, always seek to buck authority because therein lies the juice may be true, but it depends on how you define authority. For example, if the president is under investigation by an independent counsel, the authority to challenge vigorously is the President (it he is Reagan and the scandal is Iran Contra) or the independent counsel (if he is investigating Clinton and the Scandal is...pick one). Both are chasing a juicy story, but the perspective put on it are the result of personal inclinations, and that is where the ailing of modern journalism is. Reporters don't report, they spin (IMHO).To the contrary, journalists go looking for stories which will hold the public's attention--and there are well-known rules for that. "If it bleeds, it leads", for one. "Man Bites Dog" and not the reverse, for another.
Think of the implications of that last one for a moment. In a country with a free press, the government does in fact respect human rights quite broadly--else it would first have to muzzle the press. But "Government Respects Human Rights--Again" is no kind of headline for a self-respecting editor. So the editor and the reporter are actively looking for the exception to that rule--with the result that a decent government is always subject to attack in the press--and always from the left.
To complain about that is to complain that water ran downhill--as usual. In the immortal words of Ronald Reagan: "There you go again!" is all we can say.
My bottom line is that we cannot be free without freedom of the press, but freedom of the press is just like freedom of speech--it does not imply that the press should be thought of as objective, any more than you assume that my speech (or press, surely the Internet is one or the other) must be objective merely because of the format in which you see it.BBC Workers Back Ex-Director in Iraq FlapThat is not in dispute. The question is, "Why are reporters leftist spinners? Is it a conspiracy? My point is thatIndeed it isn't so much passively filtering out news that is coming in, as much as it is actively going out looking for the other kind of news which will "pass through the 'filter'." If you are a TV news cameraman riding in a police chopper watching the police trying to round up illegal aliens, and some of the aliens head split off from the group and try to evade capture, it would seem natural to use your camera to document the path of their attempted escape--if you were in support of enforcement of the law. But you wouldn't be a newsman if that were your attitude, so in fact what you do is keep the camera focused on the police in hopes of capturing footage of police brutality you "know" must be in the offing.
- journalists have objective rules which they learn in school and which they must follow in practice if the business they are employed by is to prosper economically.
- And that those "objective" rules just happen to function as a de facto left-wing "filter" through which reports favorable to the status quo do not readily pass.
- And that people who elect to study and follow those rules throughout their professional careers are almost certainly leftists going in.
Helping the police isn't on the agenda--getting a "gotcha" on the police certainly is. (That example is of course something I saw on TV; the example of the editing of the tape of the arrest of Rodney King down to only the parts which suggested police brutality is a (much) more famous example).
As surely as you must read this text skeptically, you must read the newspaper skeptically. Why should you believe me, and not the journalist? You should give my words credence, I submit, because I am humble enough to admit openly that you should scrutinize my logic for flaws--whereas the journalist arrogantly claims to be objective. And isn't belief in your own objectivity the very essence of subjectivity?
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