Posted on 09/14/2001 7:02:19 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
It's clear that, if there's a story which truly shocks, then people will leap to the TVs and the ratings will skyrocket. Ted Turner earned a lot of dimes with this basic rule of TV ratings.
But these profitable blips are clearly windfallish in nature. Randolph Hearst may have proved to have a raw talent in "making news," but this clearly can't be put into a managment textbook in a communicable way: his flair cannot be passed along through business school.
So any promotion-seeking executive would have to come up with some substitute because they know that the shock-and-huddle makes for better ratings.
What better way than by using a clique of reporters with an us-against-America attitude? Or a bunch of hysterics making much ado about ephemera? Or people that combine both?
The anti-Vietnam bias in the late 1960s got ratings. For all we know, the inspiration for the confrontational mode was far less Ramparts than Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In - a show with 40+ ratings.
As far as their wooden-headedness is concerned, another durable source of ratings is a fan base. Narcissistic arrogance, as displayed in verbal behaviour, actually leads to such a journalist being idolized and even worshipped. This implies (counterintuitively) that a queen bee - whose style of interviewing essentially is "see thing my way or all you'll hear is 'when did you stop beating your wife'" - makes strategic sense as a hire.
The fact is that extreme liberalism and moderate anti-Americanism is an optimal choice for a television reporter. The average American will be induced to watch regularly, because of the mild shocks administered and (quite possibly) the hunger-for-seeing-notoreity factor, which will raise news ratings higher than they otherwise would have been.
The fact is that liberalism of the New Dork type in television journalism seems to be as conducive to a successful corporation as don't-offend-anyone Republicanism is in the regular kind of big corporation.
"What's bad for America is good for the media - and Vice Versa!"
The home video of the arrest of Rodney King made sensational news. But the entire tape, as commentated on by defense lawyers, shows behavior on the part of Mr. King which--the first Sgt. Stacy Koon jury held--explained the behavior of the police sufficently to make the police not criminally liable for what Mr. King endured. But the interesting fact is that the videotape made even more sensational news after editing than it did initially--for the very understandable reason that all portions of the tape having any bearing on the reason for the police behavior were edited out.
Endlessly rebroadcasting the remainder of that tape is exactly what I would have done if I had wanted to see a riot in Los Angeles. That is exactly what broadcast journalism did after the initial Stacy Koon verdict of "Not Guilty" came down. Not only so, but reporters broadcast interviews of the "No justice, No peace" activists. And to top it off broadcasters reported, in real time, where looting without police interference was ocurring.
In sum, if journalists had any other thought than to exacerbate the situation and cause the nation to watch in horrified fascination, they had a remarkably strange way of showing it. And were I a business owner who had been burned out in that riot, I would have wanted to sue the broadcasters for their very underwear.
I agree with you that breaking ranks with other journalists is very dangerous. All you can hope to do is get into a shouting match with the other journalist, and your "objectivity" as well as the other's objectivity will be called into question. And if that weren't enough, all the other journalists will see your critique as being out-of-bounds, and your own credibiliy will be questioned by journalism at large, not just your target.
So even though non-journalists fear getting into an argument with you as a journalist who "buys ink by the barrel," you as an individual journalist must fear the pack as a whole, which collectively "buys ink by the truckload." And that IMHO deters journalists from competing on the basis of credibility. National Enquirer and Star excepted, of course. Journalists will not deign to be compared in veracity to them.
. . . and everyone knows that posing as a voice to protect seniors--and essentially everyone else--from "rich" Republicans, is the Democrats' entire franchise.The irony, of course, is that the Republican Party is middle class--those who do not accept, or desire to assign to others, the designation "poor."The Democratic Party is primarily the rich and powerful patronizing those who accept the designation "poor."The main tool of power in the Democratic Party is journalism. Journalists boast of the power to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" (they don't of course call it power, but what else describes the ability to decide who the "afflicted" and "comfortable" are, and to reverse their conditions?).
All Americans believe in progress.Conservatism is a long term view of progress--a vision of progress over a multigenerational span of time. This viewpoint necessarily looks at all past history worldwide in the hope of discerning long-term threats to ourselves or even to posterity.
Conservatives recognize that there are always short-term negatives going on--our own individual mortality not least--but insist on the multigenerational viewpoint nontheless. Journalism seeks those negatives out and publicizes them. "Liberalism" exploits those negatives by using them as occasions to change the rules in ways that gain political credit--with minimal regard to, and generally to the detrement of, the welfare of posterity.
No commentator or columnist who takes account of the welfare of posterity--no conservative--is accepted by any liberal as a journalist.
And they have very little say over cable TV, and zilch over the web. What does it really matter if we could order "NBC Nightly News" to be "just the facts," when MSNBC cable and MSNBC.com could go on just like they always have?
IMHO the issue is preferential addresses. FR can tell the world--the part of it that finds "freerepublic.com", and reads it--why conservatism is virtue and "liberalism" is vice. But who finds FR, compared to the multitudes who find channel 2?And, tho Fox News rules as cable news stations go, VHF broadcast TV channels are highly preferred addresses and get much higher ratings.
So, IMHO, broadcast--and, in TV, VHF broadcast in particular--is the linchpin of the problem which is journalism.
Consider the following two news stories:
I don't dispute that some form of government regulation over the EMF spectrum is necessary; if there were no such regulation, radio transmission of any form would be just about useless for any purpose. On the other hand, the fact that legislation may be a good idea (or even "necessary") does not make it constitutional. What should have happened prior to the creation of the FCC would have been passage of a constitutional amendment explicitly authorizing its existence and defining its powers. Unfortunately, courts find it much easier to let such statutes 'slide' than to insist that legislators follow the Constitution.
I don't dispute that some form of government regulation over the EMF spectrum is necessary; if there were no such regulation, radio transmission of any form would be just about useless for any purpose. On the other hand, the fact that legislation may be a good idea (or even "necessary") does not make it constitutional. What should have happened prior to the creation of the FCC would have been passage of a constitutional amendment explicitly authorizing its existence and defining its powers. Unfortunately, courts find it much easier to let such statutes 'slide' than to insist that legislators follow the Constitution.
You can see by this thread that I prefer a non-conspiratorial explanation for journalism's liberalism. However, this is IMHO a case where the story would interest and please the public. The trouble with that story is exactly that the journalists, being lefties by self-selection, prefer to patronize the audience than to indicate that the common person is competent to use deadly force.And, BTW, cops aren't noted for being pointy-headed intellectuals . . . and much as liberals dislike self defense they sure are easy to rile up about the alternative as well--i.e., "police brutality."I see it as resembling the Hollywierd tendency to make an R-rated flop when they know perfectly well that G-rated movies tend to make more money. Hollywood makes the R-movie because it's the one they want to make.Liberals are really only happy when affecting superiority over the necessity for controling the power of the sword.
I agree completely.
People who could pass the 17th Amendment without blinking an eye would almost inevitably have gotten it wrong, so I'm glad that they didn't. At least we have the principle on our side, as things stand.Unfortunately, courts find it much easier to let such statutes 'slide' than to insist that legislators follow the Constitution.
Aye, there's the rub, beyond peradventure. We have one SCOTUS justice who doesn't imbibe broadcast journalism's bile. And the FCC et al would be demanding that he recuse himself! I'd almost like to see them try it; the argument that all the others should do so is sounder. Imagine a 1-0 Supreme Court ruling!! LOL!
. . . We can all choose to "not watch" -- journalists or the media in general. But . . .
I think that bleudevil's analysis is incomplete, and that MarkWar's #19 is much more representative of reality.
C-Span thinks to consciously be fair, and I don't doubt their good faith (at least, not very much). But the Fairness Doctrine was disasterous for conservatives; it was the reason talk radio was suppressed until Reagan arranged for or allowed the FD to lapse.The conceit of enforced objectivity is directly at odds with the philosophy of the First Amendment. The fundamental problem of the Fairness Doctrine is that "fairness" is really "absence of bias"--an unprovable negative. Since it can never be proven, defending against bias charges (such as Slander itself) is a Sisyphusian task; each new charge must be independently taken on. (and of course, often the charges are actually true, which makes disproving them even harder!)
Yet the charges are disposed of: they are assaulted with the propaganda power of journalism. Ridiculed, sidestepped, distorted into straw men and destroyed. In operational terms, they are ignored.
Under the First Amendment, which assumes free access to printing by any interested citizen, that tactic has no legal consequence. However, that legal situation is modified by the acceptance of the FCC, which created broadcasting by censoring competition in radio transmission. In so doing the government logically has exactly the task that the First Amendment banned Congress from--deciding "fairness" in publishing.
How then has the FCC decided the issue of fairness? By reference to the consensus of print journalism. But as we have seen, print journalism is legally unregulated; print journalism does not even have the authority of a witness under oath, subject to the laws of perjury. Yet the FCC and the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold law assay, de facto, to assign journalism the authoritative voice of a jury.
All its vaunted legal independence notwithstanding, journalism (print and broadcast) manifests a patent herd instinct. Even those who buy ink by the barrel, it seems, fear to pick fights with others who buy ink by the barrel. So the media outlets compete on the quickest delivery of the most gripping telling of the hardest-to-ignore reports, but they do not compete on the basis of telling the whole story, and telling it accurately.
The whole truth, in context, takes time. The whole truth, in context, is usually less dramatic than the first breathless accounts. The whole story may, in fact, prove to be a tempest in a teapot. Consequently it is the conservative who is more inclined to take the time to get to the bottom of things--and write a nonfiction book. The journalist has moved on by then to other stories, and if new information on an old news story comes out in a nonfiction book, maybe the journalist will discuss the book. But if so, the journalist assumes that journalists are the objective ones--and the writer either confirms journalistic prejudice (the negative angle which made a profitable news story) or is presented as a conservative wingnut.
Or, in the case of the Stacy Koon verdict, the jury was presented as the wingnuts. The first jury saw the entire video of the arrest of Rodney King, and heard an explanation of everything. Journalists, OTOH, edited the tape down to the best case to be made for police brutality, and asked how anyone could justify that. Essentially propagandizing for the riot that followed the verdict.
Slander points out many well-documented examples of anticonservatism; I propose a non-conspiratorial explanation for the reality Coulter describes. The Fairness Doctrine assumes Slander away. C-Span basically operates under a self-imposed Fairness Doctrine--and wonders why unregulated callers ran 5-to-1 conservative.
Thank you for directing me to the previously posted[this] thread. It was very enlightening, and as you pointed out, post 50 was great, and I agree totally with the poster.
I studied journalism before the tabloid era, and I see everything I ever learned is not applied to what passes for journalism today. I had never been able to make myself realize that it is considered entertainment today until now. You have convinced me, and it makes me sad.
153 posted on 8/19/02 1:11 AM Eastern by ladyinredfrom
As soon as more people wake up to the fact that these enterprises are a business, not a Constitutionally protected enterprise, and that they are subject to economic pressures, we will start to see changes, viz., the Politically Incorrect/Bill Maher situation. Don't call, email, fax or Pony Express the newspaper or teevee station about their air-heads blatant liberal bias. They already know that and encourage it, and they ain't about to change unless there is an economic incentive to do so. Like one of Maher's ex-sponsors said: He has every right to say what he wants, but we have every right to put our advertising dollars where we want. Peter Jennings would be on a bus, train or plane back to Canada in a second if every business that had a commercial on any of his snooze shows were to receive cogent, coherent, non-ranting letters stating that the writer would no longer purchase their product if they continue to advertise on his show. Granted, there are millions of sheeple watching him, but very few will actually make the effort to put a coherent message down on paper, research the highest executive in charge, mail it with a "return receipt", and then follow up with either a response to their response or just a follow up later on, to let them know you are serious.I'll bump that.
me too. as i meander through life, i realize that the pursuit of money (not just making a living) pervades many, many fields. the romantic altruism of many studies that we may have been taught in school simply does not apply because the overarching goal is to make (more and more) money.
it just seems that journalism has hit the lowest in all the fields, perhaps because it is most visible. it is so sad because altruistic journalism is about truth, and truth is something we all want. being consistently lied to for decades can really make one feel duped, if not violated.
Had a chance to see Slander yet?
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