Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate

They held on to the Armstrong Williams story, sat on it, until it served a useful purpose for their associates in the established media at CBS. Through USA Today the story was disclosed a mere one business day before the CBS internal investigation was released, the timing for which media insiders surely knew quite well. By doing so they rationalized turning attention away from the CBS scandal.

"The Timing Is Suspicious"

The thing is, journalism is constantly on the lookout for a mole hill to make a mountain out of.
Consider the Rodney King video; as a whole the tape shows someone resisting arrest and ultimately being subdued by the police who, in the circumstances not entirely surprisingly, then belabored him. Did journalists show the exculpatory portion of the tape? Initially they did - but they quickly edited the tape down to the bad news story that would attract an audience - "police brutality."
That's an extreme example of course, but if journalism had its way it would not be. Even within the CBS report debate itself, journalists have assayed to tax "bloggers" for not all being 100% accurate in their speculations on Rathergate. Journalists build themselves up by tearing down people and institutions upon whom/which we-the-people depend.
Journalists exist to critize. Criticize Republicans.
DISTRACTING THE MARK (Using Armstrong Williams to distract from Rathergate)
American Roulette ^ | 1/13/05

Article I, Section 9, it reads: “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States…

The other great mandate of political equality is of course the First Amendment stricture:
Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .
The FCC, however, abridges the freedom "of speech or of the press" when it presumes to stipulate which among us are entitled to broadcast "in the public interest as a public trustee" - and which of us (almost the entire people) who are subject to arrest if they do what the FCC's licensees are legally entitled to do. That is censorship, and it is also the granting of a defacto title of nobility. It is presumably true that broadcasting as we know it could not exist in the absence of that censorship and those "titles of nobility" known as "licenses." But then, it is also presumptively true that a republic which was in place for a hundred years before radio transmission/reception was invented would have continued to work as well without without the institution of broadcasting for the succeeding generations up to the present day.
The great problem of broadcasting "in the public interest as a public trustee" is that there is no guidance in the Constitution or any other legitimating source as to what broadcast transmission is "in the public interest." The broadcasters have addressed this conundrum by redefining "the press" to mean not the technology of printing ink on paper (irrespective of whether that is journalism, other nonfiction, or fiction) but journalism in whatever medium. And by redefining "freedom" to mean freedom of the holder of the title of nobility known as a "broadcast license," and none other. The broadcaster says exactly what The New York Times says, it just says it quicker and verbally instead of in print.
Superficially, freedom which is used in exactly the same way as the actually free press of The New York Times et al does not seem to infringe on freedom for the great unwashed (and unlicensed) masses. But that analysis takes for granted the existence of The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the rest as an establishment. Which is another way of saying that it does not notice the perspective of commercial mass-market journalism.
In the real world, commercial mass-market journalism is by its nature superficial (its deadlines make it so), negative (its need to attract attention drives it to try to make the potential reader/audience insecure if it does not find out the end of the story), and bullying (it is defensive because its practitioners fear the propanda power of their rivals, and arrogant because its propaganda power intimidates those outside its clique).

However, to render activist decisions, a liberal judge would easily find support from foreign sources given his or her distrust of American law and the enactments of the States. Then, the issue becomes not what the People or the framers of the Constitution thought, but: What do I think? What does the New York Times think?

The arrogant bullying of The New York Times and the rest of wise-in-its-own-conceit "objective" journalism attempts to prevent anyone from daring to think that they have a right to disagree with The New York Times.

The American Revolution, In Reverse
http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_6490.shtml ^
Fine article, whose thrust is that the application of foreign decisions as precedent for interpreting the Constitution is nothing less than the reversing of the American Revolution.

See, I told you so . . . In the first half hour of today's show, Rush went into a rant about the predicability of journalists and liberal politicians. He was absolutely right. But the key point is that Rush, after the first "obscene profit center" break, rehearsed for us what he had told an unnamed Democratic politician who had asked Rush in person what he judged to be the Democrats' problem.

Rush told the Democrat that the Democratic Party is too closely associated with the mainstream press, and take its support for granted so much that you are intellectually lazy. You are too closely associated with the mainstream press, and they are hemmoraging respect and is seen by ordinary Americans as a problem - and you are associated with those people and that problem. In fact, you guys do not tell the mainstream press what to think, it's the other way around. You follow the mainstream press.

Which this humble FReeper has been posting here for years. 26 posted on 01/19/2005 1:01:18 PM EST by conservatism_IS_compassion

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC's top executive sharply criticized CBS News and anchorman Dan Rather on Friday for broadcasting a botched report questioning President Bush (news - web sites)'s military record -- and said such a mistake could never happen at his network. In a public rebuke of a rival network's news judgment that was rare for its bluntness, NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker said NBC News had learned its lesson from a discredited report on automobile safety aired by "Dateline NBC" in the early 1990s.

Asked about the recent CBS News gaffe at NBC's annual winter presentation to TV critics, Zucker said, "Nothing like that could have gotten through at any level (at NBC) because of the safeguards that we instituted more than a decade ago."

Good ping, PGalt.

Oh good. They're eating their own.

I think this NBC response should be filed right next to the CBS "investigation" of Rathergate.
The CBS "investigation" made a show of roundly criticizing the "Killian memo" report and scapegoated some CBS employees, but it had no other purpose than to promote an infinite standard of proof on the "question" of political bias at CBS News (It was in service to that objective that the CBS "investigation" found it "too hard" to come to a conclusion on the validity of those forged documents). Likewise NBC scapegoats CBS when it claims that it is far above such chicanery as ~~using forged documents~~ planting an incindiary in a gas tank in order to "prove" a vehicle's lack of crashworthiness.
This is the obvious response to the egregious tendentiousness not merely of CBS's failure to vet the transparent forgeries but even of the effort, at that late date, to find those "documents" - given that Bush had signed Standard Form 180, and CBS was helping Kerry stonewall on that issue while claiming to have revealed his entire military record. NBC criticizes CBS far less sharply than the facts warrant.
NBC really, really doesn't want to start a flame war within "objective" journalism. After all, CBS was not alone in stonewalling for Kerry; NBC ~~was~~ is right there with all the rest of "objective" journalism in stonewalling the SBVT.
NBC Execs Slam CBS for Handling of Bush Report
Reuters via Yahoo! ^ | January 21, 2005 | Steve Gorman

"But for most professors, neither finding truth nor seeking wisdom nor teaching is the primary goal of the university; promoting leftist ideas is."

A very good overall article, but the above statement is false. The primary goal for most professors is promoting themselves, and, in the current climate, promoting and using leftist ideas is a means to that end.

Hear, hear! A great deal of "liberal" behavior is explained if you take the "cynical" view that professors and journalists enter their professions for the purpose of making themselves important by seeming to be intelligent. And that they are mere celebrities who "don't exist" if they don't have good PR.
The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR; that means that individual journalists herd together and never conduct flame wars among themselves. Journalism creates a cowardly and not particularly intelligent consensus, and calls it "objectivity."

8 posted on 01/25/2005 6:36:05 AM EST by sneakers

It's amazing how arrogant these people are. Many of them truly DO think they are above us rabble of half-wits.

"Objectivity" is used not as an actual description of journalism but as a code word for wisdom - wisdom in "liberal" conceit
Professors as inquisitors
townhall.com ^ | 1/25/05 | Dennis Prager

this is 4th Generation warfare. It is not about killing, occupying territory, and securing the objective. It is about one thing and one thing only. PUBLIC OPINION.

That was true of Vietnam, and it is true - in spades - today. It is always true. As Thomas Jefferson put it, "I study politics so my son can study war, and his son can study mathematics and his son can study art." (IIRC, from memory . . .) If you don't have the politics you don't have the defense budget; you don't even have an army. The difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that we-the-people are less vulnerable to our quislings now than we were before:

historical perspective on the bitter experience of quisling manipulation in Vietnam,
talk radio and Fox News Channel (for which thank Ronald Reagan), and
FreeRepublic.com and the rest of the Internet.

. . . If it bleeds, it leads, is going to lose this war not the actions on the ground. We all need to wake up

Sir, have faith - we are awake. Journalists claim to be objective, but we know that they are merely wise in their own conceit. Which is another thing entirely. Not all of us, unfortunately - but many of us are wide awake.
Thirty years ago "Buckhead" would have been a lonely voice talking to his neighbors, if he even got a clear enough look at the documents to smell a rat in the first place. Now, when one of us sees something amiss (s)he has an outlet which can put her/his suspicions in the public domain (worldwide!) at the click of a button. The "little boy" can point out that the emperor has no clothes on, and in a matter of hours if not minutes journalism's noise and smoke is penetrated by the unification of diffused intelligence and knowledge via the Internet.

. . . 'Why isn't the American media reporting the real story, which is we are winning this war"?

Free, competitive journalism would be a great idea - and one which the First Amendment purposed to assure Americans for all time. Unfortunately, "cooperating and graduating" doesn't end in school, and the business of journalism is scarcely to be thought to be free of it. The reality is that journalists decided that they could form a guild around the use of the euphemism "objectivity" for "not breaking the curve by operating outside the consensus of the guild." The entire objective of journalists is to make themselves look good, which requires the cooperation of other journalists. So they formed a mutual admiration society instead of competing on serious grounds rather than on fluff such as the speed with which they can sling out their partial truths and lies.
Marine's Weekly Update Home
E-Mail | Maj Caponi
Good read!

When you wrote about journalism back on 1/25 -- nice insights. They made themselves a one-way media and put concern for instantly reputable appearence first. That of course is a comfort to their advertisers who seek validation by association.

And you noted that a well-written and researched truthful post on FR may be set out with some idiocy just prior and some silliness just after. -- there is NO validation by association to be had in that, nor does any expectation of "instantly repurtable apperance" develop.

Each post must make its own way in the world, even the handle of the poster is rarely remembered long-term.

Yet there's more to it than that -- and why we posting here on FR actually have hold of a greater lever than any a Rather or Cronkite ever held.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - After warnings, inspections and finally a raid, 90.9 FM is silent.
Knoxville First Amendment Radio, or KFAR (pronounced "kay-far"), was an unapologetic voice of unlicensed "pirate radio" activism, freewheeling conversation, alternative news like "Democracy Now!" and "Free Speech Radio News" and music since 2001.

But Federal Communications Commission agents and U.S. marshals emptied the station's graffiti-decorated trailer - a former crack house on a hilltop near the University of Tennessee - of radio gear Sept. 14. A poster of Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary, remains on a control room wall.

All ye who suppose that the First Amendment is applicable to broadcasting, take note.
And journalism which does not have First Amendment protection is inherently elitist and illegitimate.
FCC silences pirate airwaves
Barre Montpelier Times Argus ^ | February 6, 2005 | DUNCAN MANSFIELD The Associated Press

I fail to see any constitutional reason why the First Amendment's "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW" language should not be read as absolute.

The practical reason is, of course, the fact that people who are retiring today have no memory of a time when Congress did NOT make a law regulating radio communication - society is largely addicted to this "right to listen, and duty to shut up" paradigm. But it has pernicious consequences like the Rathergate scandal.
Rathergate is a violation of fiduciary responsibility, essentially. If my duty to shut up buys my right to listen to CBS, it also buys a duty on the part of CBS - if it is going to indulge in a pretense of nonfiction - actually to tell me and my neighbors the truth. What CBS in fact did was, at best, to transmit its institutional prejudice as if it were fact. Institutional prejudice covered by a fig leaf of pseudodocumentary "evidence' of the most transparently fraudulent nature.
The fallacy is that journalism, because it is journalism, does not have institutional prejudice. The truth is that journalism has institutional prejudice inherent in it, precisely because it is journalism. Broadcasting, having been given an undeserved title of nobility certifying that it is "in the public interest," assays to live up to that billing by parroting print journalism - all too often, the print journalism of The New York Times. But since the First Amendment not only does not guarantee the objectivity of newspapers but prevents the government from requiring objectivity of them, journalism's claim of objectivity is backed by nothing but platitudes and by begging the question if challenged.
Freedom of speech and of print - the literal press - is sine qua non for liberty. And the internet lies on the continuum between the two; it is more expensive to post on the web than it is to speak, and it is cheaper by far for me to post on the web than it would be to print and distribute newspapers. And none of those activities is inherently a priviledge for which the government would be justified to require me to get a license.
The same could now be made true of radio. If cell phone technology were even slightly modified, you could allow and encourage all your neighbors to listen in on one big "cellular telephone call" just as they now tune in a radio station. But the closest thing to that is the low power FM radio, and this article illustrates that that is not tolerated by the FCC - precisely because it produces listening choices not sanctioned by the government. Licensed broadcasters can deceive the public about the vote in Florida in real time, suppressing turnout and very nearly turning the election - but God help you if you turn on a transmitter and tell the truth in competition with the licensees of the government!
FCC silences pirate airwaves
Barre Montpelier Times Argus ^ | February 6, 2005 | DUNCAN MANSFIELD The Associated Press

To be conservative is to withdraw from the fog of current events and look to more permanent things.

Withdraw from the fog of current events? Are you suggesting that conservatives ignore what's going on around them? Or does "fog" suggest something else? Please explain....

"First reports are always wrong," as Rumsfeld (undoubtedly not originally) put it. It is no accident that it was the SecDef saying that, because the lack of adequate timely intelligence is excruciating to the commander in the field; in battle his people die because of what he doesn't know. The problem is known as "the fog of war."
During an emergency anyone in a responsible position has no choice but to operate in that sort of fog, because he never has a perfect understanding of the exact consequences of his actions - and because failing to make a decision is a decision, and typically a bad one.
That is a description of an emergency. But suppose that there isn't an emergency, and people act as if there were one. What you will then see is people making decisions which do not have to be made, on the basis of inadequate information. That is the other side of the coin from the commander who cannot make a decision when the emergency occurs, and it obviously results in poor - sometimes almost crazy - decisions. People shooting family members because they thought a burglar was in the house . . . that sort of thing.
Obviously the conservative thing to do is to plan for contingencies in advance and to prevent emergencies from arising in the first place. And, having done so, to trust those plans and stick to them when the contingencies arise, even in the excitement of the moment. That is why we build hospitals, put emergency rooms in them, and staff them with doctors and nurses who know what they are going to do when a patient presents with dire symtoms.
The unconservative thing to do is to claim at all times that there is an emergency under way, and that normal procedures are inadequate for them. It is the business of journalism to entertain its audience, and it does so exactly by suggesting or saying that today is not a "business as usual" day. Which is IMHO a fair explanation of why people with a conservative temperament don't decide to become journalists.
And, in the context of this thread, that explains why a judge who didn't read the newspaper might be superior to one who did. We have a fundamental right to know what the law is. That right can only be vindicated by judges who go by the book rather than the newspaper.
Order in the Court: Chief Justice Thomas Presiding (Ingraham)
Laura's E-Blast ^ | February 8, 2005 | Laura Ingraham

Our own view, stated several times before, is that we take no satisfaction from seeing liberal editors driven from their newsrooms. What we think will best serve the public interest is for more newsrooms to be set up, so the truth can be hammered out in the great journalistical fray.

That is happening. Note well, I emphasize the last word, fray. A fray implies at least two viewpoints being expressed vigorously.
Yet the defining characteristic of the "mainstream media" is that it is a self-selecting Estatblishment - a group which wields influence but which denies its own existence as an entity. This Establishment defines itself as "objective journalism"; anyone who attacks the objectivity of a member of this Establishment (e.g., Bernard Goldberg) calls down the wrath of the whole Establishment on his head. And the punishment they mete out is exclusion from their club of "objective journalists."
This self-defining Establishment exhibits ideological coherence, as any conservative has by now noticed. But as the Post here proposes, "the public interest is for more newsrooms to be set up," and this is being done. But if "more newsrooms" meant more Establishment newsrooms, the result would not be a "fray."
We are seeing a "fray" between old members of the "objective journalism" Establishment and "more" newsrooms which are outside of the "objective journalism" consensus. That is, the fray is joined against the MSM by talk radio and the blogosphere. The former is leftist but claims to be objective - whereas the latter is, openly, conservative. The former is wise in its own conceit, or in the Greek-derived term, sophist. The latter takes the stance not of claiming wisdom but of being interested facts and logic and aspiring to wisdom. The Greek-derived term for that position is philosophical.
After Eason Jordan
New York Sun | February 14, 2005 | Editorial

The "objective journalism" Establishment is leftist but claims simultaneously to not exist at all, and to be objective. The fray against that Establishment is joined by new "newsroom." The latter can exist independent of, and critical of, the "objective journalism" Establishment only as these "newsrooms" reject the flattery and derision of the "objective journalism" Establishment. To be critical of the "old newsrooms" of the Establishment, which is leftist, the "new newsrooms" must be, and are, conservative. And they must, and do, reject any claim of objectivity.
The Establishment's claim of objectivity is in its essence a claim of wisdom. But whoso is wise in his own conceit rejects the principle that there is always more which can be learned - and thus excuses himself from the hard work of analyzing new facts and different logical perspectives. Such a person engages in sophistry, which is merely an ironic use of the Greek term for "wisdom."
The "new newsrooms" take the stance not of claiming wisdom but of being interested in facts and logic and aspiring to wisdom. They are, in the Greek-derived term, philosophical. By comparison the Establishment is is lazy and, being so, expends more energy defending a reactionary posture than it actually takes to be philosophical. Avoiding work is work.

I don't see how your proposed blanket banning of broadcast journalism would pass constitutional muster. The first amendment is there to protect political free speech. If, as you assert, and I concur, that broadcast journalism is politics, shutting down ABC News, CNN, and FOX would violate the first amendment.

At this vey moment the FCC is preemptively "shutting down" gazillions of TV and radio stations. No one really knows how many there would be if in fact there were no barrier to entry into the field.
You will say, "But without the FCC censorship of the many, radio transmission would be - just radio transmission, not broadcasting. People wouldn't be able to hear anyone everywhere in the country." And my reply is that that is exactly correct; the First Amendment did not give anyone the right to be hearable nationwide, and it still doesn't give me the right to be hearable nationwide. The FCC could refuse to give me a license even if I had a lot of money.
Super access for a few, on the backs of the censored many, is exactly counter to Constitutional principle. An FCC license is essentialy a title of nobility - the "title" being the right to be hearable over a wide area, and (incidentally) the imprimatur of the U.S. government that what the licensee says is "in the public interest." I don't care how many times you read
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
you will not find where it says the government has a right to do that. The govenment doesn't have the right to tell you to worship five gods, and it doesn't have the right to tell you to believe CBS. Yet if the licensees of CBS are not speaking "in the public interest" it makes no sense at all to censor you and me so that CBS can be heard.
Note well, part of the scam is to conflate "the public interest" with "what interests the public." But although I would be interested, perhaps, to eavesdrop on a jury deliberation or on details of homeland security arrangements or military action plans, the public interest (as the law will clearly state) is that those things be kept secret from certain people - which could never be possible unless they were also kept secret from the public at large, including me.
You do not have "a right to know" anything specific; you may have been a recalcitrant child who was unwilling to study the times table, and if so you will not know the product of 9 and six. You know only what you choose to learn, and to believe. That is why the First Amendment codifies a right to speak, and implies a right (and no duty) to exert yourself to listen. If Alan Keyes is speaking in Chicago, you have a right to listen to him if you pay the cost of getting to Chicago and into the venue in which he is to speak. You do not have the right to hear him speak if you are in New Orleans on that occasion. You certainly have no right to hear him in New Orleans if that right can only come at the expense of Alan Colmes' duty to shut up.
McCain waves stick at TV over news coverage
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter | 02/16/2005 | By Brooks Boliek

A large question, however, is who will be shielded.

The answer is simple: Leftwing journalists will be shielded.
4 posted on 02/23/2005 7:33:17 AM EST by ClearCase_guy

The Reporters Committer for Freedom of the Press wants to protect not just reporters from established news organizations but everyone who writes anything, which means that almost anyone with a laptop and a Web site could claim to be protected from having to provide grand jury testimony. This Congress will never pass such an expansive shield, and we aren't sure it should.

As the article suggested, that coverage would be too broad to pass, and so either the law will be voted down or else the protections very limited (which in my opinion would not be a bad result). - Piranha
IMHO you are exactly correct. The Wall Street Journal takes too much of an establishment position here, for my taste. Codes of journalistic ethics aren't enforcable in court and have nothing to do with the law. That being the case, the law should have nothing to do with them, either. Whatever law makes sense to apply to "established news organizations" makes sense for bloggers; whatever law does NOT make sense to apply to bloggers does NOT make sense for "established news organizations."
I'm delighted that recognition of the rights of ~~the bloggers~~ we-the-people are being promoted by The Reporters Committer for Freedom of the Press.
Prosecutor of the Times. A partisan "leak" probe boomerangs on the media.
Opinion Journal (WSJ) | February 23, 2005 | Unsigned

The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.

I'll go you a step further--and add 'successful advertising.' Because IMHO, it's not PR--it's PROFITS.

No, IMHO - the problem is the lust for power, and for the appearance of virtue without which you don't really have power (see Nixon, Richard M.).
Journalists become journalists because they want the power (they don't call it such, but . . . ) to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." IOW, they want the appearance of virtue - and, through that, they want power. Journalism is politics. And journalism is especially political when it claims that journalism is NOT politics - when it claims the virtue of ~~objectivity~~ wisdom.
To be a celebrity is to have PR - which is an appearance of virtue, seen through the entertainment media in general and journalism in particular. For the mere celebrity, PR - the appearance of virtue - is his/her only stock in trade; what does the shapely form and smooth skin of the movie actor to do with the virtues which PR enables them to project? What did Meryl Streep actually know about the condition of farm wives and the policy which would be virtuous (because its benefit to farm wives was not at the cost of greater imposition on people who are not farm wives - including the great-grandchildren of those same farm wives)?
To be a celebrity (of that sort) is to lust for PR as an expression of lust for power. And the journalist, who reports on things on which s/he is not expert, is a mere celebrity who lives and dies by PR. Even though the journalist (or his boss) "buys ink by the carload," s/he yet lives in terror of other people who do likewise - thus, journalists "go along and get along" by never questioning the objectivity of another journalist.
Thus, the phenomenon of mainstream journalists evading the issue when 60 Minutes II is caught trumpeting obvious forgeries - somehow CBS is not "comfortable" enough to be "afflicted" by the rest of journalism when CBS is caught with smoking gun in hand. Too comfortable to be safely afflicted, more like . . .
Pope Labels (Totaliarianism Masquerading As) Democracy "godless"
Telegraph | 2/23/2005 | Bruce Johnston

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