The Separation of Press and State

1440 KEYS AM Radio ^ | June 23, 2006 | Jenni Vinson Trejo

[jennivinson]

The Separation of Press and State By Jenni Vinson May 21, 2005

America was premised on the rule of law. America was also premised on the idea that the nation would fair well with an open, honest and unfettered Press. The nation would have an Executive, Legislative and Judicial branch of government at the National, State and local level and a Press that would bear witness to how these entities carried out their jobs.

What the Founding Fathers envisioned was a Press that was completely independent of politics and not beholden to such interests. For the most part, the Press has been a pain in the butt to the carriage of our government in America’s history. Even on various battlefields as they walked through events in them—but not of them. Our Founding Fathers drew a distinct line as they established a separation between Press and State. That line has been breached for decades now.

The national elite media could once deny that an alliance existed between them and the Democrat Party, but the kid gloves came off during the 2000 Presidential election. Too much was at stake to allow for George W. Bush to take the White House from Al Gore. The kid gloves have been off since then but the 2004 election found the media quite willing to put on other gloves—as they entered into the political ring ready to fight for John Kerry’s right to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue along with all of them.

The Press was supposed to archive events as they happened. They were supposed to bear witness to events and inform the public. They are called before the Court of Public Opinion to testify—to bear witness. We have trusted them to adhere to a standard of ethics and morals that dictated that they stick to facts and keep their own ambitions out of the Who What Where When and Why of things.

They are American citizens and as such they are subject to having individuals rights, but just as when one joins the military, when one joins the Press, they are also held to a collective standard of rules that apply to that group. They were supposed to keep themselves unfettered by politics and yet over 80% of Journalists ally themselves with the Democrat Party. They violated the separation of Press and State as they have long wanted to BE THE STATE—to govern this nation through their own power and influence.

Now, we see that the Press willingly enters into the Court of Public Opinion and they offer testimony based on faulty, flimsy facts or sometimes testimony that is outright false. Dan Rather and his crew at 60 Minutes mired into a single story for five years. They went before the Court of Public Opinion days before a Presidential election in hopes that the story would stick and alter the election. Even though it was discovered that they relied on falsified documents for their grand story, the good folks at CBS insisted that it didn’t matter that they documents were fake—the story COULD BE REAL. In 1998, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek had a story about then President Bill Clinton’s illegal affair with an intern young enough to be his daughter. Isakoff had the story nailed, but Newsweek sat on the story because even though the story was fully documented, the story might NOT be REAL. So Matt Drudge of the Drudgereport took the story right out from under Newsweek.

Isikoff was the first get the story on Bill Clinton’s problems with both Paula Jones and then with Kathleen Willey, but again, Newsweek opted to sit on both these stories and again Matt Drudge took the stories right out from under them. Poor Michael Isikoff had been graced with so many accounts of historical importance, but he and his editors took such pains to ensure they would not harm their man and their party—that they lost out on credits.

But, Newsweek did not hesitate to run with a recent story about Qurans being flushed down toilets at Guantanamo as a horrifying insult to Muslim detainees. It was another Isikoff story, but this time, no one held back even though isikoff’s anonymous source simply said he had heard of this incident.

Even though the military account is that it was a Muslim detainee that attempted to flush the Quran to clog up his toilet and keep the guards busy, the Press was sure it was American soldiers who were insensitive, oppressive bruts. The Muslim world believed the American Press, rioted violently and 17 human beings lost their lives. After causing these deaths, Newsweek and their Press associates still insist that even though their source was wrong that they story is still TRUE because the American military behaved badly at Abu Gharib and were therefore capable of flushing a Quran down a toilet.

And so, Newsweek entered into the Court of Public Opinion and bore false testimony. It is indeed a slippery slope when lines are crossed and the separation of Press and State has been breached. It is not a Court of Judicial law, so we cannot hold the Press in Contempt of Court, but I put forth that we can clearly see that our elite media is in Contempt of Country.

In a transparent attempt to harm the Bush Administration and the American Military, Newsweek was all too willing to bear the brunt of serious consequences. Even after it was known that people had died, no one in the elite media seemed sorry. No one seemed altered and no one stepped up to take responsibility.

It was as if they were saying to us—“look—we stood in a crowded building and yelled fire because we felt we had a responsibility to do so. The building was made of stuff that COULD burn—so obviously—there was a danger and we reported it. It isn’t OUR fault that people panicked, stampeded and killed one another as they exited this obviously flammable building.

Therein lies the real story to all of this. People died and the elite Press knows they cannot be held accountable. It’s up to the Court of Public Opinion. It’s up to us to withhold our support from such magazines and newspapers and to send them a clear message— you are supposed to be the American Press, not simply an extension of the Democratic Party. You have violated the Separation of Press and State and you must step back or be replaced.

The Constitution lays out sketchy rights for the Press. When it comes to the release of Classified information during a time of war, the NY Times and their associates within the elite media are about to hauled before the Supreme Court. At that point, they'll find their rights refined and greatly curtailed. A reporter does have to devulge a source in certain cases and a reporter may well be tried for espionage in the near future.

I’m Jenni Vinson. The Separation of Press and State is My Opinion. Thank you for listening.

[ForGod'sSake]

See post # 65. Read that book.

The Bolsheviks did it? I don't suppose a Cliff's Notes version from you would work here would it??? May be asking a bit much.

Gotta run for a while, so I'll check back in later.

[jennivinson]

YOU WRITE::"Attacking print journalism is IMHO a grievious error on constitutional grounds; we want to assert that if anyone can speak, we can speak, if anyone can print, we can print - and if anyone can post their opinions on the Internet, we can post our opinions on the Internet.

Otherwise, what's the point?"

Well-- IMHO as well, if you wrote racial rhetoric the government would find you and you would be prosecuted.

If you wrote about murderous intentions the government would find you and you would be prosecuted.

If you wrote about having sex with minors the government would find you and you would be prosecuted.

If you wrote fake stories that riled the public into a murderous frenzy the government would find you and you would be prosecuted.

Now-- why shouldn't the media be held up to the standard?

[jennivinson]

Sorry you had a problem. The link is correct: http://www.jvteditorials.com


Jenni

[Paperdoll]

>...the conservative pitcher has the ball and is ready to send a little 'heat'to the plate, right under the batter's chin ....... or right in his left ear.<

A knock out pitch sends the batter to first and a run in!
So, let the batter strike out, or make a line hit to first so the baseman can get that ball back to home plate in time!
Incidentally, did you catch the Giants-A's game yesterday?
The Giants won with three batted in in the bottom of the ninth! :o)

[beyond the sea]

The Bolsheviks did it?

Close.

[beyond the sea]

....... I missed the Giants game.

It's good to see a baseball fan out there.

:-)

[Paperdoll]

Thank you, jenni. Unfortunately the MSM is owned by the enemy of a free and sovereign America. And the rule of law now means we are playing by THEIR rules.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

First that quote: ““What the Founding Fathers envisioned was a Press that was completely independent of politics and not beholden to such interests… ” is the author's, not jennivinson's, and I'm taking issue with the author, not the poster.

Perhaps the author just doesn't write well, and meant to say something like “What the Founding Fathers envisioned was a Press that was completely independent of governmental control.” - which would still be incorrect (for example the Founders never envisioned a rack of Hustlers behind every convince store counter) but at least would be coherent. In fact what they expected – and what they got – was a highly partisan press often closely aligned with “party” interests; this after all was a country and a press that had just experienced a period which valorized the person and works of wildly read Revolutionary Propagandists such as Thomas Paine.

Personally, I'd enjoy lining in a country with a lively and politically diverse mass media of the sort which thrived in print shops of the post Revolutionary America, and perhaps given the “Internet” I'll live to see it.

As for what “happened” to the “Conservative” media, it appears to me that public assess to conservative opinion in the “professional” media has greatly increased in the the last 25 years, to take one example Fox News is clearly well to the “right” of any US Mass Media existent in 1970, another is that political talk radio – which has expanded greatly in influence during this periods – remains on a total listener-ship basis primarily the province of conservative opinion.

This of course begs the question of how it is that we find ourselves in a position where large numbers of both Liberals and Conservatives are convinced that the media distorts reporting in favor of the other's opinions.

The answer, I'd say, is that US mass media primarily represents the interests, concerns and goals of it's corporate ownership, and this ownership while certainly “conservative”” represents only one faction of “conservative opinion”, and that while this opinion is not monolithic, neither is it representative of political opinion at a place like FR. Rupert Murdoch is quite willing to present viewers of Fox's English language news programming with a range of opinion including quite vehement anti-immigration commentary – while at the same time Fox Sports en Espanol continues it's aggressive efforts to expand viewer ship of it's Spanish Language outlets in US markets.

In such a situation a lot of people, both liberal and conservative, start to experience a pretty serious disconnect between their own experience and opinion and the underlying message conveyed by Corporate Media.

As for efforts to suppress political opinion in the mass media, at the moment almost all serious call for such efforts come from the conservatives – for example many commentators here on FR would clearly prefer that the US press operate under something much like Great Britain's Official Secrets Act.

To a certain extent this reflects that fact that with a Republican Administration in office it's mostly Republican Oxes that are getting gored, but to some extent IMO it reflects the fact that many “conservatives”, despite an aversion and distrust toward “big government”, are a bit too ready to let partisan fever blind them to the fact that they may like these powers less when they are vested in a Democratic administration.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Now-- why shouldn't the media be held up to the standard?

I am not for a seperate criterion - either advantageous or discriminatory - for journalists than for anyone else. If you would be jailed for revealing a state secret, a journalist should face the same discipline.

But let's not kid ourselves that that is the way the world works. Journalists posture as underdogs and lots of sheeple buy the con. So we have to undermine that imposture of authority. The place where that imposture is most unjustifiable is in broadcast journalism - because broadcasting licenses treat some people more equally than other.

[Joan Kerrey]

Even if no conviction, the hell it would cause and the exposing of the leakers would be a worth the effort.

I agree, Gonzales should give 200% effort to countering these leaks and make life miserable for those involved. Once the government leaker is exposed go for the maximum punishment. There are many outlets a leaker could use if he/she is truly concerned about government's legality in an disputed operation. A leak to the press however is partisan politics and therefore selfish at the very least and very damaging to our country, not heroic as MSM would have us believe. Somebody needs to be jailed and jailed soon to stop these leaks.

[Joan Kerrey]

I’m Jenni Vinson. The Separation of Press and State is My Opinion. Thank you for listening. Thanks Jenni, Great Article

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

it is that we find ourselves in a position where large numbers of both Liberals and Conservatives are convinced that the media distorts reporting in favor of the other's opinions.

The answer, I'd say, is that US mass media primarily represents the interests, concerns and goals of it's corporate ownership, and this ownership while certainly “conservative”” represents only one faction of “conservative opinion”, and that while this opinion is not monolithic, neither is it representative of political opinion at a place like FR.

No. The answer is that journalism is "conservative" only in the sense that it predictably follows the rules of its own industry. But the rules of that industry are radical, not conservative. As well say that a bank robber is conservative when he follows all the tips he picked up in prison on how to not get caught.

Journalism, with its superficiality, unrepresentativeness, and negativity towards all other businesses, is not at all conservative in the political sense. The only way to have a conservative journalism is to impose censorship. Then all the negativity would vanish, and you would see stories about the abundance of the harvest and how wonderful the government was. Just as we understood to be the case in the USSR.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

[Think Tank Citations as] A Measure of Media Bias

Pardon my cynicism, but I don't see how anything will change the fact that journalism has the propaganda power and the motive to declare itself "ojective," and also has the power and the motive to declare all other institutions to be potentially or actually corrupt in comparison with journalism.

Nor do I see any end to the tendency of opportunists to become politicians, call themselves "liberals" or "progressives," and simply say things to please negative, superficial, unrepresenative journalists.

[LS]

You are substantially right that the appearance of a conservative media is a relatively new phenomena. That is largely due to a) the end of the "fairness" doctrine, which required every single newscast to be "balanced," allowing the entrenched stations to "balance" the liberal with someone only slightly less liberal. (BTW, studies have shown that the deregulation of TV/radio in the late 1960s also had an interesting effect on religious programming that was almost identical to that of political programming, namely the rapidly growing evangelical/fundamentalist groups suddenly were all over the place, and the dying "mainstream" religious denominations couldn't get on, because they had no money. Once the market takes over---except in politics---you usually see programming the people want.) b) Obviously, technology in the form of the Internet but also Rush's remarkable restoration of AM radio, which had been abandoned as a venue.

Now, the reason money does NOT work in your model---the reason it is NOT "corporate" interests on every side---is that the "news" divisions pride themselves as a profession on being "objective" and unbiased. This dates back to the Civil War, when the partisan press was ditched because of the public's DEMAND for accuracy of battlefield reports, and also because several entrepreneurs figured out that by alienating half the consumers, they were losing money. So a very strict standard of "objectivity" came into play---breached, certainly, from time to time, but overall remaining in place until about 1960. I won't go into why that dissolved.

However, once those restraints (and they were methodological---how reporters gathered information---and structural---how they set up the stories) were lifted, it became fair game to again inject bias into stories through processes known as "framing" and through personalizing all stories with a victim. Again, I repeat, our research, which is not complete, is indicating the BIG SHIFT came well before Vietnam, and certainly before Watergate. In other words, something else in the early 1960s was eliminating the rules that governed journalism.

So here is why the "corporate" view doesn't hold up: if it was JUST about profits, then one would expect to see at least half the stations/newspapers as conservative, with some VERY conservative. We don't. We see, at best, 5-10% of the major media market conservative. Why, when there is so much profit to be made there? The answer is, there really isn't: the major media outlets, just like Hollywood, subsidize their liberalism through unpaid advertising in each other's papers and on each other's shows. Notice that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge FOX, even when it breaks news. That's because to say "ABC has reported," they are giving free advertising to ABC, but they won't help FOX.

This had always stymied me until I saw a column by Jason Apuzzo, of LibertyFilmFestival, on why, in fact, Hollywood is not defying the market with movies like "Brokeback Mountain" or "Syrianna." They DO make some money; they are very cheap to make; and they get pheonomenal amounts of free advertising in the MSM via "reviews" and on "ET," and so on. Annually, this comes to BILLIONS of dollars in advertising that Hollywood, and the MSM, do not have to shell out to sell their product. So they are somewhat insulated from the market through their own semi-monopoly of the airwavs and ink.

[LS]

Exactly, which is why we are better off returning to a Jacksonian type press in which the biases are obvious, acknowledged, and accepted, and where no one pretends to be "factual." We are getting there quickly, I think.

[Lancer_N3502A]

Nice work!

[CGVet58]

well, sir, I believe you make my point within your own. The original question was if the quality of journalism was directly proportional to the quality of government. I believe it is not. nor can true virtue be swayed by the media, though many others can.

Virtue, or rather its rarity, are like the parable of Jesus and the 10 lepers. Though all were cured, only one returned seeking truth and a change in his life. The others went about their merry, sinful ways. So also do I see echoes of virtue in Gideon's 300. Where, how can propaganda possibly sway these?

My point in the rest of that note was that I believe the Founding Fathers have set up a mechanism whereby each generation must respond to the timeless tests that civilizations have always faced. As we face our own defining threat - islamo-fascism - we no longer really need to be reminded via reflection on our past of what is needed to defeat it. Yes, we can and should look to our ancestors for inspiration, but how or why our fathers fought should not be sought after as to whether or not we should fight our own battles. Each generation has it's test. No tests = generations who forget what was fought and bled for. Freedom and virtue are precious, and are not free. It falls to us to not just know this in our heads, but in our very souls.

We either will have it in us to face down this threat, or we won't. Our Founding Fathers are betting on the former. That was my point.

I believe, sir, your line of thought opens another discussion, but don't see a strong link between your thoughts and mine.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

We are getting there quickly, I think.

From your lips to God's ears. But I wonder what supports that hope? We still have a plague of "objective" leftwing journalisms.

[CGVet58]

excellent. Like "DHIMMI-CRATS" - my favorite and it describes them to a T.

[CGVet58]

>" We are getting there quickly, I think.

>" From your lips to God's ears. But I wonder what supports that hope? We still have a plague of "objective" leftwing journalisms.

Gentlemen, I submit that it has already happened in the arena where information has the most impact, in our own minds.

Once we arrive here, then it matters not how many K. Olbermans the left has, it can't sway us. Yes, we may fret because so many others still fall prey to the lies, but what are the trends? They favor us, I believe.

Think of it this way; modern-day leftism is nihilist, God-less, is bookended by Death coming (abortion) and going (euthanasia/kevorkian-ism) and dies a slow demographic death from the Roe effect.

Seriously, I doubt the left will ever completely go away, but with each day that passes, they become ever-so-slightly more irrelevant. And that is just perfectly A-OK, F'in "A" with me.