in reality, ensuring truthfulness is far easier than securing fairness. In fact, how could the latter possibly be achieved? After all, media bias lies not just in how news is reported but also in what they choose to report on in the first place. Why do they decide to focus on sex-discrimination in the construction industry instead of transgressions by abortionists? Why Abu Ghraib instead of the oil-for-food scandal? Why that which helps or harms one cause but not another?
The perspective of journalism is what they do not say, much more than in what they do say. And the fact that what they do say may in fact represent the most exciting things that happened recently does not prove that story selection does not have a strong political tendency.Half the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin FranklinThe Barker and the Shill: The Fraud of the Fairness Doctrine
AmericanThinker.com | January 24, 2007 | Selwyn Duke
Rush mentioned this article on his show today.Radio hosts are the talkers; they wear their banners openly as they proclaim who and what they are. Sure, they may be brash and hyperbolic, loud and oft-sardonic, but there is no pretense, little guile, and you know what they want you to believe. You know what they're sellin' and if you're buyin'.
The mainstream media, however, is a shill. Oh, not shills working with talk radio, of course, as their talkers are entities such as MoveOn.org and Media Matters, but they are shills nonetheless. They masquerade as impartial purveyors of information, almost-automatons who, like Joe Friday, are just interested in the facts, ma'am. They flutter their eyes and read their Teleprompters, and we are to believe God graced them with a singular ability to render facts uncolored by personal perspective
It's true, except are we actually talking about anything other than journalism here? Movies? Fictional dramas on TV? No, it is journalism we are actually talking about - and specifically, Big Journalism - The New York Times and a bunch of other institutions which wouldn't be caught dead suggesting that The New York Times is anything other than objective. The various institutions of Big Journalism shill for each other.their talkers are entities such as MoveOn.org and Media MattersFirst and foremost, Big Journalism is out for the interests of Big Journalism. Not merely their own institution within Big Journalism - because of the mutually assured destruction principle. Everyone in Big Journalism knows that their continued employment within Big Journalism is contingent on going along and getting along with all the rest of Big Journalism.
MoveOn.org is a creature of the Internet, while Big Journalism functioned the same way when it persecuted Joe McCarthy back in the 1950s as it does today. No, the interests Big Journalism shills for are its own. It is only necessary to understand Big Journalism's economic interest to understand "liberalism." Big Journalism's interest is to be important, and thereby to attract an audience for fun and profit (i.e., advertisers). Big Journalism promotes its own importance by subverting the reputations of everyone who tries to be important by providing necessities to the public. Is food important? Alar is poisoning your children when they eat an apple! Is security important? The police (and the military) are incompetent and brutal. Does everyone depend on automobiles? The oil companies don't provide enough fuel, and they pollute too much.No, Big Journalism doesn't shill for others, it shills on its own account. The reason it seems to shill for the Democratic Party is simply that the Republican Party represents the people whom Big Journalism trashes for its own benefit - and Democrats do not. Big Journalism assigns positive labels to those who denigrate the producers of goods and services, and derogatory labels to those who stand up for the producers. Unionists, plaintiff lawyers, and Democratic politicians fit the former category, and are called "liberals" or "progressives."