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.
My take is that since journalism is not censored, its various organs are free to operate for fun and profit. If journalism were censored, you would see only good news reported. And the fact that journalism was being censored would be part of the bad news that would be censored.That is, if you were a journalist in Saddam's Iraq who wished to keep out of the plastic shredder you would not criticize Saddam and you would report that things were going well in Iraq - and you would not suggest that anyone might want to say otherwise by saying that nobody was allowed to say otherwise.
So the way you can actually tell that journalism is not censored in America is the fact that American journalism, far from limiting itself to good news, focuses itself unremittingly on bad news. And in the fact that people love to talk about being censored. In Treason, Ann Coulter quotes a contemporaneous critique of the brouhaha over Senator Joseph McCarthy's charges of Communist influence in the State Department and in the government generally. From memory, the quote goes about like this:
From coast to coast, people are standing up and shouting, "I am being cowed. I am afraid to speak out." And from border to border, even louder voice respond, "Look, he is being cowed. He is afraid to speak out."The point being, of course, that people who are afraid to speak do not speak - they certainly do not loudly criticize the people they are afraid of. And people who, for genuine cause, are afraid to speak would not have their complaints heard and broadcast nationwide - otherwise what were they afraid of in the first place?So I guess I think that the conceit that journalism is the mouthpiece of the government is silly. It makes far more sense, IMHO, to consider that journalists are journalists because they believe more strongly than most people do in the power of publicity. They think that PR controls the vote and therefore controls the government, and they reject the idea that facts matter if those facts do not appear in the newspaper.
IOW, their worldview is that NOTHING actually matters except PR. And they reward anyone, whether journalist or other, who promotes that idea. And what reward would such a person hope for from journalism? Why, naturally, good PR. In the form of positive labeling as being "progressive" or "moderate" or, the old favorite, "liberal." The exception journalists make for other journalists is that their favorable label of choice is not "liberal" but the even more favorable label "objective."
And if journalism rewards those who promote their artificial reality, they punish those who promote action over talk. Businesses, the police and the military do things, and their "reward" from journalism is unremitting scrutiny, second-guessing, and even calumny.
"Conservatism" is respect for action and for decisions made in the face of uncertainty and risk. "Liberalism" is merely criticism of those who actually try to get things done. That is why "liberal" politicians are not effective leaders. They gain their reputations by second-guessing others, and in power they themselves are averse to taking action in the face of risk. And good only for shifting blame.
Media bias bump.
M.O. of Carter and Clinton, among others of their stripe.
IOW, Fox has chosen not to "go along and get along" but to compete on the basis of its perspective.As a result, there's not a reservoir of kinship or good will with Fox on the part of the rest of the news media. You can't keep insulting people and then expect friendship when you need it.
Fox doesn't project the idea that all journalists are objective. It takes a certain arrogance to make that your criterion for respecting someone's humanity. But I doubt Mr. Lawrence is capable of seeing that . . .TV Critic:Kidnapping Not Covered Because Fox News "Set Itself Apart" (they die who cares)
NRO ^
The one good thing about Fox News is it doesn't present Bill Clinton's viewpoints as representing neutrality like CNN and the big three do.
BTW, Fox news is celebrating 10 years on the air.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY FOX NEWS!!!!!!! HERE'S TO MANY MORE DECADES OF FAIR AND BALANCED REPORTING!!!!!!!
The Press as Hezb’allah’s Tool
Almost no notice, however, has been paid to the large numbers of these hospitals and schools which were built over its military bunkers and rocket launching sites. This was perhaps both the most cynical and barbaric disregard for innocent civilian lives of all of Hezb’allah’s and Iran’s strategic choices. It was also the most successful. The decision was predicated not on its knowledge of its enemy (Israel) but its true genius lay in its knowledge of the press. The calculus was simple: launch a rocket from within a civilian population; if you kill Jews that’s a victory. If the Jews hit back and in so doing kill Lebanese civilians, that’s a victory. If they don’t hit back because they’re afraid to hit civilians, that’s a victory. Now repeat the process until you kill so many Jews they have to hit back and in so doing kill more Lebanese civilians. That’s the ultimate victory, because they know that in striking just those chords exactly what music the press will play.
Liberalism is just the promotion of talk and the denigration of deeds. The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters except PR. The UN is a political organization which is part of liberalism. It is all second guessing and hypocrisy all the time. Israel made facts on the ground placing Hezbollah squarely in the wrong - they the aggressors and they the intentional violators of the Geneva Conventions - but liberalism sets actual fact at nothing when set against the arrogant, cowardly, bullying posture of "objective" journalism.Hezbollah's only offensive capability was targeted solely on Israeli civilians, and its primary defense against air attack was Lebanonese civilians. Like all terrorists, it is a parody of the Geneva Conventions. And anyone who defends terrorists by reference to the Geneva Conventions - including, it pains me to say, the Supreme Court of the United States - subverts the Geneva Conventions.
The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . . It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam SmithHalf the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin FranklinPrelude to Apocalypse
The American Thinker ^ | August 27th, 2006 | Dan Gordon
Fellow Americans...I am not an unbiased observer of the USA political landscape. As a journalist, my views are shaped by the other journalists I hang with. We think middle America is a little odd, The second Amendment is wrong, religion is a little quirky and homosexuality is very normal. Still, I feel compelled to write my whackadoo dogma or I won't get paid and the other members of the pundit class won't invite me to their cocktail parties.
As a journalist I belong to a guild along with all the rest of journalism. I don't question the objectivity of any other journalist, and no other journalist questions my objectivity on pain of expulsion from the guild. That prevents flame wars among journalists which would destroy the image of journalism as being not merely important but the one important thing in American political life. So long as we maintain the guild, no journalist ever suffers negative PR. That positions us all as being superior to everyone who is not a journalist.Of course that does not mean that you have to become an actual journalist to get the PR benefit of membership - not at all. Without becoming a journalist you cannot have access to unquestioned status of being considered objective, but you can have assurance that you will never be labeled "extreme" or part of a "wing," either left or right. To have that assurance it is only necessary that you restrict your public speech to topics which are congenial to journalism and to the idea that journalism and its topics are preeminently important, and you will be labeled with any positive label you want, other than "objective."
The label "liberal" is yours if you want it, and it served many such people well over many generations going back so long that the memory of man probably does not run to the contrary. Precisely for that reason, however, the term "liberal" is now associated not with its original meaning of supporting liberty but with the perspective that talk is superior to action which is congenial to the industry of nothing but talk, journalism.
But of course we journalists can never run out of words, and there are plenty of other labels you may like. "Moderate" is an excellent choice; in fact moderation is a classical virtue. And "Progressive" is another favorite since like liberty all Americans favor progress (and any disagreements as to what constitutes progress need not be discussed).
And of course if you are reliably in favor of the primacy of talk over action, nothing prevents you from electing to find a position in journalism and acquire the label "objective" (while shedding your "liberal"/"moderate"/"progressive" positioning for the duration of your journalism gig. No one who refuses the requirements for "liberal"/"moderate"/"progressive" labeling, of course, can ever be anything but a peripheral player in journalism and can never acquire the label "objective."
What Bush Should Have Said
Time/CNN ^ | Sunday, Sep. 03, 2006 | Joe Klein
I watched it, which is a "Man Bites Dog" story in its own right. Friedman remarks on some cringe-making moments, and in retrospect that's what they were. But I confess I hardly noticed since, to me at this point, the entire experience of watching broadcast journalism is just one big cringe.When watching a play one suspends disbelief and pretends along with the actors that what is being portrayed is real. If the actors step out of character the suspension of disbelief is broken and the audience laughs. And when one watches a performance of the news, one pretends that the reporters are knowledgeable and objective. But in fact the reporters are "reporting" things FReepers already know, and they are consistently, predictably tendentious.
The fundamental fallacy of broadcast journalism is the assumption that broadcast journalism is important. The republic went on for a long time before broadcasting was instituted and even before radio transmission/reception was invented. And the fundamental fallacy of journalism in general is the conceit that journalists are objective when in fact the are full of themselves. We all are fullof ourselves, of course - but some of us make a serious effort to actually do useful things instead of merely second guessing those who do.
And the selective reporting of only the things which went wrong in particular ways is nothing but a second guess. Twenty times as many Americans are killed in traffic accidents as are killed in Iraq; the selection of the deaths in Iraq to the virtual exclusion of the routine slaughter on our highways is an obvious bias. There being no obvious way to spin those traffic deaths as an indictment of the Bush Administration.
Journalism is simply a particular lens through which an image of part of reality (and part fantasy) can be viewed. Journalism overemphasizes the importance of the recent and of the atypical and the negative. On any given day the predominant living human reality is that most of us get up in good health, work or do whatever else we planned to do, eat 3 square meals, and sleep in a comfortable bed. And on any given day our ancestors are still dead. That is the big picture - none of which makes the news.
RICHARD ROEPER is under the delusion that we don't know that story selection controls the impression projected by "the news." There are no rules which can require a certain story to be on the front page above the fold, or to be on page 2, or even to be reported at all. People decide those things, and they have motives for deciding the way they do.Mr. Roeper says "delivering, you know, the news" as if there were only one way to report, and as if reporting were inherently important. But if the various news outlets are independent and competitive, exactly what is reported and what emphasis is laid on which story is not in principle a given. And if it is in fact a given, then we only have one journalism and no competition - no freedom - in journalism. Is that a case Mr. Roeper wishes to make?
Rules like "If it bleeds, it leads" and "'Man Bites Dog' rather than 'Dog Bites Man'" predict quite well what an editor will do, because headlining negative and unusual stories grabs attention. And that is good for the news reporting business.
But that begs the question of whether what is good for the news reporting business is good for America. It is true that the Constitution protects freedom of the press. But the Republican Party is free, too - does Mr. Roeper consider that that gives it a constitutional guarantee that what is good for the Republican Party is good for the country?
And to understand the limits on the importance of the news, consider the events of 9/11/01. News reporting was significant on that day as perhaps none other in history - the fact that the kamakazee crashes into the two WTC towers and into the Pentagon was broadly known publicly had a salutory effect on the effects of the hijacking of United Flight 93 on that day. But that is a rare event. Generally the news is not anything which we the people can do anything about in real time, and it will not matter if we learn about it now or a day or even a week from now. Facts which were known about Osama bin Laden and his operatives, although not new, would have in retrospect been much more significant to publish on 9/10/01 than anything you are likely to find in any paper on that day.
The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters except PR. That is, liberalism is pure spin. As such liberalism treats newspapers and other publicity organs as a deity. That would be quite impossible if the "various publicity organs" were actually "various" - but their interest lies in going along and getting along with each other and so they quite self-consciously limit their competition.Above all journalism sells the idea that journalism is
anthe important thing. In that sense journalism is a single entity, "the news" (rather than what each individual news report legitimately is, "some news").It is superficial vainglory to suppose that journalism - which is after all a limited view of reality which systematically averts its gaze from the mundane 99.99% of reality which is neither unusual nor especially exciting or unsettling - is the important thing. Tradition doesn't change every day; how can it merit the attention of the "important" journalist who is busy trying to grab our attention today? Disrespecting tradition gets attention, and attention of the public is the journalist's stock in trade.
Journalism is arrogant to promote the conceit of its own preeminent importance, and to presume to define objectivity, and to presume to define "moderation" as agreement with its own limited and self-interested perspective.
On Bainbridge, Reciting Pledge Makes Some Edgy
kitsapsun.com | September 9, 2006 | Rachel PreticketThe wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . . It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam Smith
You will learn that that is so heavily documented that it is absurd to speak about proving it to someone who doesn't already know it.
"A man convinced against his will
is of the same opinion still."I consider myself to be an expert on the subject. I wasn't the first to figure out that "the media" were "biased," and I wasn't the first to be conned into assuming that it was "unbiased." But what I have done is to think long and hard about the issue since I first was convinced of the fact of "media bias" by the AIM ("Accuracy In Media) Reports put out by Reed Irvine back in the middle of the Carter Administration.
Not the whether issue, that was perfectly clear to me from AIM. My interest has been in why there is "bias in the media." My conclusions are that:
- "The media" includes movies and other fiction which is remarkably tendentious against conservatism. However, those fictional media are under no obligation to be "fair" or "balanced" or "objective." Their authors have rights under the First Amendment (and the framers of the body of the Constitution thought the Bill of Rights was unnecessary, so they would have argued that any violation of the First Amendment was a violation of the body of the Constitution). Just as you and I have free speech rights which we are presently exercising. If you would argue about "bias in the media," therefore, you are best advised to restrict your attention specifically to nonfiction in general and journalism in particular.
- Even in critiquing tendentiousness in journalism, you face the First Amendment issue. And IMHO most (though hardly all) of the tendentiousness in journalism lies in "story selection" - what is on the front page above the fold, what is in the middle of the paper, and what is not reported at all. You can't sue for something the paper does not say. Yet,
Half the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin FranklinPrecisely because what they don't say may be extremely tendentious, there wouldn't have been any way for the framers of the Constitution to have required journalists to make their reports balanced. It was impossible, and they didn't try it.Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton waged their partisan battles by sponsoring competing newspapers. That is something which is very embarrassing to people who claim that journalism is objective. If it was OK for Hamilton and Jefferson not to be objective, how is it not OK for The New York Times to not be objective? And - here is the conclusion - what justification is there for anyone to claim that you or I have to believe The New York Times about anything?
The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . . It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam SmithWhen your teacher challenges you to prove that journalism is tendentious, your proper answer is that you are trying to gain wisdom (do not claim to be wise!). And that you are trying to learn, but you are trying not to be the credulous naif which, Adam Smith warned, it is only too easy to fall into being. If s/he has evidence that journalism is objective you are very interested to study it.The answer s/he will give is to cite codes of ethics of journalism. And/or, circular references to claims of objectivity where A says B is objective, and we know that's true because C says A is objective, and we know that is true because B says C is objective. What you will not get, IMHO, is any reference which you are obliged to respect. The Bible will not tell you to be a naif about journalism. Thomas Jefferson will tell you not to believe anything in a newspaper but the advertisements.
If the teacher harps on the codes of ethics, ask what is the principle on which you should understand that the journalists even know what is objective and what is not. Because a journalist who was a Republican could have a different perspective on what is objective than a journalist who is a Democrat might have (Note: IMHO there are essentially no Republican journalists - but for argument's sake . . .).
Ultimately you will have to support the case that there is tendentiousness in journalism by actual examples. There are many. The first I would cite is the 60 Minutes "Texas Air National Guard memos," a.k.a. the "Killian memos." Those "memos" were crude forgeries. They were crude not in the sense that the equipment they were made on was crude, but exactly because that equipment manifestly was too sophisticated. That is what is known as an "anachronism" - something which was supposedly written by Thomas Jefferson but was obviously typed on a typewriter would certainly be a fraud. And the "Killian memos" were not created by a typewriter in about 1972 but by a computer running Microsoft Word in 2004. We can be sure of that because:
- The "memos" putatively were created in 1972 but not "found" until 2004; some of them would embarrass the author if he were not dead. And yet the "copy" was of poor quality. Exactly as if someone had gotten a copy of the original and copied it, and then someone else took one of the copies and copied that, and so on. But of course if that had occurred, the Democrats would have inevitably gotten their hands on it and used it against Mr. Bush in his race for Governor of Texas, never mind in the 2000 presidential contest. And there is no chain of custody; nobody admits typing it and yet Col. Killian didn't type either, and the family denied that it was in Col. Killian's effects.
- The "memos" had centered text which was perfectly centered, just as Microsoft Word would do - and as cannot be done on a 1972 vintage monospace typewriter. "Monospace" just means that no matter what letter you type the carriage shifts the paper the same distance to prepare for the next character. A "w" or an "i" takes up the same space on the line, and there are no half space options. If you centered a line on such a machine, you did so by locating the center point of the line you intended to type, and then hit the backspace key once for every two characters in the intended line. But what if the line had an odd number of characters? You just had to decide to be half a space off, one way or the other. And there were centered lines of both odd and even number of characters in at least one of the "memos" and yet the lines were perfectly centered in both cases.
That's what you get by default in Microsoft Word - but you can't do it at all on a 1972 typewriter.
- The famous superscript "th". Microsoft word automatically superscripts a "th" immediately following a number: type "5th" and Word will display "5th." If however you type "5 th" then Word will display exactly that. And there are examples of both in the "memos" - but why would they exist in a typewritten document? Furthermore superscripts are difficult on a typewriter. If you are going to put a superscript on the next line, you have to shift the paper up more than usual to allow clearance for superscript above the line. Microsoft Word does it automatically, because all the text is specified before it is ever printed. But you couldn't get the superscript of a typewriter to be smaller than the text of the rest of the line, as in the "memos," unless you had an unusual typewriter with a built-in superscript "th" key. And the top of that kind of "superscript" stays in line with the top rest of the text. If you had that sort of "superscript" key you might use it, but you wouldn't go to the trouble of anticipating the need for superscript, shifting the height of the next line lower than usual, then shifting the line to normal height for the superscript, then shifting back down for the remainder of the line.
- And then there is the issue of "kerning" - tucking letters closer together or further apart in a line according to how well adjacent letters nest together. Word does it, and it is clearly seen in the "memos" - but a monospace typewriter simply won't do it.
In sum, Microsoft Word is very sophisticated, and when used in its default settings it produces a sophisticated printed output. A lot of software went into making it behave that way, and that software can be overridden to produce a clunkier looking output much like what a 1970s typewriter would produce. But that was not done by the forgers of the "memos." And that is why those forgeries are "crude."
Contextual inconsistencies also exist in the "memos." They are a fraud.
OK, they are a fraud, so CBS wasn't objective to report them. Even if they were real, they would have borne only on what happened thirty years before, and we had four years experience on which to judge Mr. Bush actually in office as President of the United States. It is not obvious why whatever happened in 1972 is truly relevant in that context, but that was precisely the implication of Senator Kerry's nomination acceptance speech, in which he saluted and "reported for duty."
But even if you accept the premise that whatever happened in 1972 was relevant, CBS should explain why the opinion of Senator Kerry's fellow officers and superior officers - not on the basis of photocopies of some putative original "memos" but on their live, in-person testimony - was irrelevant. And why it did not matter that Mr. Bush had signed a release of all his military records to all of the press, nor that Senator Kerry talked a good game but never signed a release of his military records. Even though it was he, and not Mr. Bush, who claimed that the issue was important.
The "memos" provably were fraudulent. Even had that not have been provable, it was always impossible to validate them because they were not originals but putatively copies of originals. It is inherently impossible to validate copies, because it is impossible to prove that they were not Photoshopped. Anyone who was making even the slightest effort to be objective would have refused to run with those "memos." But CBS did. And CBS stood by its story when challenged. And finally, CBS created an "independent" commission for the purpose of drawing the absurd conclusion that all of the straining at gnats and swallowing of camels I have outlined above did not come about because of political motivation.
What of the rest of "objective journalism?" Well, I had to "saw sawdust" going over way after way in which the "Killian memos" should not have been taken as true and certainly would not have been broadcast if CBS had been objective. And the very fact that I had to saw that sawdust tells you one thing - that the rest of "objective journalism" refused to aggressively describe any of what I have just pointed out. They put priority on solidarity - on going along and getting along - rather than taking the opportunity to claim superiority of their editorial content over that of their competitor.
What do they mean when they call journalism "the news?" Doesn't the use of "the" contradict the presumption that our many journalism organs - how many networks, and how many separate newspapers? - behave as completely independent entities? "The" news? No matter how many newspapers or broadcast journalists, there is only one "news?" Seriously, why??
For a more academic, statistical approach to the issue, you could follow this link: [Think Tank Citations as] A Measure of Media Bias.
But I promised that I had not merely learned that journalism is tendentious, I have analyzed why it is so. Why is journalism tendentious as a general proposition, and why is it "liberal" in particular? The short answer to why individual journalism organs might be tendentious is because that is human nature, and freedom of the press means that they can get away with it legally. They are as a group all tendentious in the same direction because that way each of them gets the support of all the rest in upholding the conceit that journalism is "objective."
And the direction they tend toward is liberalism for the simple reason that they all overhype the importance of talk - their own talk in particular - and thereby they denigrate those who don't merely talk but who act. They second guess the police and the military as being either too "brutal" or not effective enough, and sometimes both at once. They look for any opportunity to criticize the corporations for "polluting too much" and/or failing to produce enough product (i.e., they "charge exorbitant prices").
In short, hyping talk above actual accomplishment which entails tradeoffs of risk and benefit, and whose very successes point the way for possible ways they could have done better. And if you simply become a politician who promotes second guessing above action - if you flatter journalism - journalism will reward you with the label "liberal" (at least, that was a reward until they ran the word into the ground this way) or "moderate" or "progressive." If you do not promote talk and second guessing over action, you yourself will be mercilessly second guessed.
And make no mistake, socialism - "government ownership of the means of production" involves second guessing. Some entrepreneur must first develop not only the "means of production" but, in general, the specific item to be produced as well. If his concept fails, he disappears and there is no issue. Only if he succeeds does his innovation suddenly result in a situation where he is second guessed about how expensive his product is and how little he pays his help. The answer of the socialist is to take the credit away from the entrepreneur and assign it to "society," meaning nothing other than the government.
So question is not, "How can I prove bias in the MSM?" The question is, "I don't have to believe these jerks. Why should I assume that people who do nothing but criticize everyone else except other people who also buy ink by the carload are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Why would I trust those guys? I was born at night - but it wasn't last night."
So there, relatively briefly, you have the benefit of my years of study of the issue. These and related ideas are developed over time, and a thousand posts, in this FR thread.
This is a extremely good post. I have a question for you concerning journalism and such. When did journalism actually start being taught as a profession, like lawyers and such? At what point did they - newspaper people - get together and say, what we do should be taught as a course? Before, didn't people who want to run a newspaper just buy the presses, type, and ink and get 'er done?
WHAT – a car accident.
WHEN – Tuesday, 09122006, 0720
WHERE – Wilson and Ft. Myer Drive, Arlington, Virginia.
WHY – car ran a red light.
HOW – a car travelling westbound ran a red light and struck a car going southbound.
If that was printed basically like that, you state it would be pretty boring. Probably so. So, where does the angle come in?
Hi 7th--
If I were looking for an angle for this car-crash story, I'd check to see if the person who ran the red light was drunk, had a pattern of driving drunk, had multiple moving violations, etc. Failing that, I'd check to see if the intersection was a "problem" intersection (i.e., had a history of accidents there), and if so, if the city knew about its history---and if so, the reason why they haven't done anything about it, etc.
In short, I'd run down each element of the story, looking for something to draw interest. Of course, it's perfectly possible I wouldn't find anything unusual at all. In that case, this story might not even make the paper, save for the police blotter or a local "in brief" section.
I don't think you should be under the impression that journalism school is a course of study similar to a school for professionals, like law school, or---heaven forbid---medical school. Law school, for example, is a rigorous course of study where you learn not only the law, but ways to think, to process information, to argue, etc. I found journalism school to be no more than an extended English writing program with a few courses on the history of journalism, the ethics of journalism (ha ha), and the First Amendment thrown in for good measure.
To change the question, "When did 'lawyers and such' start being taught in school?"And the answer to that will, IMHO, turn out to be in the late 1800s and early, yea unto mid, 1900s. Certainly the framers of the Constitution who were lawyers became lawyers by reading the library of law book which a practicing lawyer had. John Adams loved his tutor in the law, who charged Adams a fee for teaching him - but the agreement Adams signed made that fee payable at Adams' convenience.
Benjamin Franklin apprenticed to his older brother in a print shop (and ran away before his apprenticeship was completed), started his own print shop in Philadelphia, prospered, set up franchise operations in other colonies, and retired rich in his forties.
In my own field of engineering, Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel U.) and MIT and probably many other similar institutions were founded in the 1890s - yet apprenticeship was considered the normal means of attaining professional status as late as WWII. WWII produced a crisis in the engineering profession because the behaviors of things like radar microwaves were incomprehensible without the kind of mathematical background that scientists - but not apprenticeship-trained engineers - had.
So it was only after WWII that earning an engineering degree from an accredited college became the normal, accepted method of entering the profession. But with or without such degree, to be a licensed professional engineer still requires a resume signed by someone who already has that license. So apprenticeship or at least mentorship is still an issue today.
But there cannot be an issue of licensing in journalism; the First Amendment is your license to practice that profession.
Thank you. I asked the question because I remember reading Drudge wanted to work at the ComPost but was basically snubbed because he did not come from a journalistic school or have that background. Instead, he did what you stated in your post - he started his own "newspaper." I see and hear the disdain from the journalists when they discuss the blogs and internet sites. It seems these people are quite upset someone is horning in on their action.
IMHO it couldn't happen to nicer guys. They actually disdain the First Amendment in the process.They don't disdain CBS for running that excruciatingly tendentious 60 Minutes "TANG Memo" hit piece on Bush right before the '04 election. They thought that was vetted well enough to suit them. Which only proves that what they call "objectivity" is nothing more than nurturing a go-along-and-get-along consensus among journalists.
Whether it be a blogger or a talk radio host, anyone outside that consensus is rhetorically consigned to the outter darkness of being labeled "right wing."
Thought you might enjoy being pinged to this.
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