Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate

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.

McCain-Feingold is IMHO unconstitutional root and branch - but the very worst aspect of it is that in which it presumes to censor political discussion (right before an election, when people are most interested in political discussion!) but not censor "news." And yet we saw (again) in '04 that what was "news" and what was not patently fit a political agenda. On one hand,

the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" - consisting of essentially all of Kerry's comrade and superior officers in Vietnam, all living, flesh-and-blood people available for interview and debate - came out actively against Kerry's candidacy for POTUS and were almost completely frozen out of "the news." Even a published book by Senator Kerry wasn't deemed important enough to be discussed as "news." OTOH

mere faxes of copies of putative documents, putatively made in 1972 but distinct in telling ways from all documents to which they were putatively similar, and bearing many hallmarks of much more recent provenance, were brought forward as evidence that Mr. Bush had not been in full compliance with the requirements of his Air National Guard obligations. "Documents" which had no chain of custody back to their putative author, who was long deceased and unavailable for discussion of the putative documents.
Not only did CBS promote fraudulent documents against Mr. Bush, they stonewalled when evidences of fraud were pointed out and, after the election, "investigated" themselves and found that they had not been politically tendentious - and all the rest of "objective" journalism went along with that fraudulent "investigation." The fact that the independence of CBS News was a patent fraud was of no interest to CBS's "competitors. For the simple reason that none of CBS's "competitors are independent, either.
CBS News and all the rest of "objective" journalism depend on mutual support for "evidence" of their own objectivity. So far as poltical perspective is concerned, big journalism is all one big go-along-and-get-along propaganda organ. But that's OK - or would be, if the government were not censoring competition. Which the FCC has strongly tended to do, and which the FEC exists to do.
Suing the FEC and the FCC and its licensees is admittedly a slender reed, because the justices of SCOTUS - Mr. Justice Thomas excepted - are subject to the flattery and calumny of "objective" journalism. Just like the politicians who enacted and signed into law the McCain-Feingold partial birth abortion. They certainly are not to be relied on to straighten their own mess out! They are now in the middle of the Abramoff "lobbying" scandal, and as Rush predicts they will undoubtedly pile even more of this stuff on in order to cover their own tracks.
With the colllusion of "objective" journalism, of course . . .

What we keep seeing, is the Democrats unmasking some action of the President or Republican party, throwing extreme charges of criminality and totalitarianism at it, and the media picking it up and running with it for a month or so. Once it comes out that it is actually an intelligent and prudent thing to do, the Dems move on to a different issue, the media lets the problem drift away, and it just becomes another one of those terrible things Bush/Republicans have done. They don't seem willing to wait (or really want) for a thorough evaluation of the information to take place, to understand if the action is really necessary, and whether or not they should support the President/Republicans on any of these issues.

Commanders speak of "the fog of war" - they must make life-and-death decisions on the basis of early reports. But that is actually just an accute case of what I call "the fog of breaking news."
Look at the reporting of the recent WVa coal mine disaster. Despite the best efforts of the authorities to hold information back until it was confirmed, "word" leaked out and spread like wildfire, so that locally essentially everyone "knew." And the "breaking news" media could not but report it. The report of "one dead, ten surviving" was about the best possible news; it was made credible by the report of one dead - but if you're a family member your odds are no longer extremely long but now suddenly are ten-to-one in your favor.
In that case the miners' families were the only victims of the misinformation which seemed "official" coming from "objective" broadcast journalism. But then there is the case of election coverage, which is a classic quadrennial "breaking news" operation. I am not aware of any statistics for any other election but the classic journalistic runaway of 2000, but Florida's famous squeaker was not the only election for which the discipline of "objecivity" broke down under the imperative of breaking news. With one outlier (one state atypically called early for Bush) discounted, the breaking news of the 2000 presidential election was presented exactly as if broadcast journalism overestimated the strength of the Gore vote by several percentage points.
Liberalism is the idea that not only is the pen mightier than the sword, the pen is the only thing that really matters. Naturally, that idea is powerfully appealing to journalists - and optimism leads journalists to overestimate the electoral strength of Democratic politicans.
Has the Washington Post been living in Washington too long? [CRS Report On NSA Program]
Powerline ^ | Jan. 8, 2006 | Paul Mirengoff

On news coverage in Vietnam.

I could not resist putting this in. CBC, Canadian National television has on an "in depth" report on Viet Nam. In retrospect,of course. An old face appears- much younger though. Hallo Morley Safer.

He had done a hit piece on the raising of a village. He, Safer, said LBJ wanted him fired. Quoth Safer: I was more worried about the marines. A marine told me, "You come back here and show your face, you are dead".

More naysaying, more semi gloating on the television. Now, as I write, they,CBC are tying Vietnam in with Iraq.

So it goes.

I have two comments:

No discussion of Vietnam should fail to reference FReeper marron's superb Mom, Apple Pie, and the Ghost of Quagmires Past.
Consider it required reading, even though it is long. Marron told me that every time he tried to shorten it it got longer instead, and he finally decided to post it before it took over his entire disk drive!
The fury of that Marine was entirely understandable; journalists back then had an even more dominant role in our national discourse then than they do now - which is saying something. Back then you had Walter Cronkite filing multiple reports standing in front of the same destroyed cargo plane, making it look like we were losing one of them every day. It was the heyday of the "liberal" notion that nothing matters but PR - that is, of the idea that reality is what is in the pictures and the newspapers. And if it isn't in the papers it isn't real. So no matter how many South Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian anticommunists were tortured and killed by the Communists after their takeover, and how many people assayed to escape in the least seaworthy craft, falling victim to drowning, pirates, etc, it doesn't matter because it only made the paper briefly and is now "old news." Unlike all the bad PR against the military from Vietnam, which journalists consider the good old days. Nothing would please them better than to reprise that overturning of the government which they achieved back then; think of the power rush!
But of course in that event, that same Marine that warned, "You come back here and show your face, you are dead" might make good on his threat here. My proposal to sue broadcast journalism into oblivion is far more moderate than that.

One thing for sure: our media won't like it, think it's good enough or accept that anything we achieve is good.

"The media" - specifically journalism - is in thrall to the idea of their own importance. In thrall to the idea that is, that not only is the pen mightier than the sword, the sword and everything else is irrelevant compared to the glories of PR. I think that is the only way to explain the media's antipathy towards the military, the police, and business. Everything which we rely on in the real world is, inside the virtual reality of his newspaper, seen by the journalist as a mere pretender.
The conceit of the journalist is that only the journalist keeps anyone honest.
Descarte's famous dictum, cognito ergo sum - "I think therefore I am" - has been called the lunatic fringe of philosophy because it suggests that nothing else but "I" can be proven to exist. But how is that different from a philosophy which denies that reality even exists if it doesn't show up in the newspapers?
It’s the demography, stupid
The New Criterion ^ | Jan 2, 2006 | Mark Steyn

Is it asking too much that journalists be at least minimally competent in the original intent of the U.S. Constitution?

Yes. Journalists function to sustain an artificial reality in which journalists alone keep society honest and functional.

In that "reality" soldiers and police are threats and it is journalists who keep us safe.

In that "reality" oil companies are mere exploiters who pollute and try to charge too much, and it is journalists who assure that gasoline is available at a reasonable price.

In that "reality" Republicans are fat cats and Senators Corzine, Kennedy, Rockefeller, and Kerry look out for the little guy.

In that "reality" Republicans are racists and Robert KKK Byrd is a man of all the people.
In that "reality" the Constitution as written is irrelevant.
Lauer on Alito: "Let's Face it - He is an Ultra-Conservative"
Today Show/NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt quotes (American 26th US President (1901-09), 1858-1919)

Jason Salzman, Rocky Mountain News media commentator, rejected my claims of liberal bias on the news pages of Denver's dailies, especially The Denver Post, because I failed to cite a study proving it. He dismissed scores of incidents I've documented during the past 25 years as "anecdotal," with a glib assertion that "anecdotes are meaningless."

"Anecdotes are meaningless" if you logically have the burden of proof. Inside the artificial reality of journalism, if a tree falls and The New York Times doesn't report it, the tree didn't fall. Thus if CBS 60 Minutes gets caught red-handed with one hand in the cookie jar and a smoking gun in the other (smearing Bush's TANG service record), and The New York Times doesn't report it, in journalism's artificial reality CBS did nothing wrong. In that "reality," journalism sets the burden of proof to infinity; no mountain of evidence could possibly be high enough to induce journalism to convict its own self of "bias". Journalists rejecting allegations of journalistic bias is strictly a dog-bites-man proposition.
In the real world there is no necessity for nonjournalists to accept the journalist's standard of proof. Each person decides for himself what standard and burden of proof s/he assigns to a given question. I can argue for the standard and burden of proof that makes sense to me, and perhaps persuade some - but ultimately you decide for your own self who has to prove what to you.
For my part I take note of the fact that freedom of religion/speech/press is codified as a right of the people in its own right not, as in the Second Amendment, instrumental to some element of good government. You have a right to speak and print because you are free, not with any associated duty of anyone else to pay attention to you and certainly not because of any imperative that your fellows have "objective" information from you to help the government to function as intended.
I am able to find, outside the artificial reality of journalism, no authority to the effect that owning a printing press or a broadcast license makes you public-spirited, objective, wise, or in any other wise virtuous. Not in the Constitution, not in the Declaration of Independence, not in the writings of any sage and certainly not in the Bible. There is only the writings and utterances of journalists who assert their own objectivity - and assert that since they are objective you and I have to take their word for the fact that they are objective. And that any level of contrary evidence is "anecdotal," insufficient to overturn their objective judgement of their own objectivity.
You decide for yourself. I say it's spinach, and I say the heck with it.
Rosen: Bias can't be ignored
Rocky Mountain News ^ | 6 January 2006 | Mike Rosen

I have seen newspapers go through two big, wrenching transformations. Today, we take for granted that newspapers print lovely color pictures and tight, sharp type. That's a product of the first transformation, a technical one, from letterpress printing to offset. In letterpress, ink is applied to a raised lead surface and applied to paper by presses as big and heavy as locomotives. In offset, a mixture of ink and water is applied to a far more delicate engraved surface, then transferred to a rubber blanket, thence applied to paper.

That change, an enormously expensive one involving a big new capital investment, drove marginal newspapers out of business in the late '50s and early '60s.

IOW, money that might have gone into good reporting and analysis went instead into production values - just like no party has nominated a bald-headed candidate for POTUS or VP (except Ford, who got to be POTUS without first being elected to national office) since the Eisenhower/Stevenson 1950s. Certainly a person with hair can be a fine POTUS - but it does no credit to the Republic that it now excludes from any consideration men who may have high qualifications but happen to be "folically challenged." Imagine being saddled with a President Edwards because of his hairstylist!! For that matter, might it no be that the narrow loss of Ford to Carter had to do with hairline??

The second transforming influence came from national TV network news. When the latest news could be obtained from the tube at dinner time, the afternoon daily paper became obsolete. Seemingly overnight, cities with two newspapers were reduced to one, and big cities with half a dozen or more papers fell to three or two or one.

More production values stuff, primarily. The key thing to understand is that it rarely matters to the Republic whether you and I learn about something a day sooner or later. TV crowded out the evening newspaper because it was free and because it got you the news on a shorter deadline. But the medium also affects what is news; a TV cameraman loves a fire, for example. Or a weeping victim or survivor of a victim.
Talk radio - which is simply journalism which does not claim to be objective, and therefore has less tendency to arrogance than "objective journalism" - has lower cost of production than TV. And the Internet has very small cost of production, which explains why you and I can make content for it. Broadcast journalism has been a powerful centralizing influence; the internet is a decentralizing influence which is why liberalism doesn't do well on it.
MSM Waterloo? (The mainstream media has nowhere to go but in retreat.)
The American Prowler ^ | 1/11/2006 | Lawrence Henry

"After the suit, I thought local editorial boards might rally around me, stressing the importance of protecting free political speech," he said.

But that didn't happen. Instead, the Star Tribune's Blog House column dismissed partisan blogs such as Brodkorb's as unworthy of the name, while the newspaper's opinion page gave Olson prime, above-the-fold space on Sunday to tell his side of the story.

The idea that "objective" journalists favor freedom of speech and of the press is a misconception which "objective" journalists promote but actively denigrate where the rubber meets the road. Freedom of the press means competition - and nobody really likes competition.
"Objective" journalism is actually a cabal which exists to suppress competition; membership in that cabal simply means mutual protection from challenge. If somebody says you aren't objective but you are in the cabal, all fellow members rally to give you supportive PR and undermine the challenger. But if you conspicuously fail to rally around a fellow member who has been challenged, or still worse if you make such a challenge yourself, you are suddenly "not a journalist, not objective" - and never were.

Then turnabout would be fair play. Might I suggest that Americans sue every journalist who has been, let's say, less than honest about providing the truth in their reporting. Make every one of them declare themselves opinion writers or quit calling themselves journalists.

Political dispute has blogged down into a lawsuit
Minneapolis Star Tribune ^ | January 12, 2006 | Katherine Kersten

This thread was started shortly after 9/11/01; I wrote it to argue that there should be remedy in the courts for some of the evils of tendentious journalism. Say rather, the evils of some tendentious journalism.

A Conservative bases his politics on his morals....
A Liberal bases his morals on his politics...
Hence to a Liberal....the ends always justifies the means!
...A ship without a rudder, on a sea of pompous self justification..

Rush talks about the arrogant condescension of liberalism; I like to justify the label "arrogant" by reference to the nexus of political liberalism to journalism:

journalism claims the virtue of objectivity -
but anyone who claims superior virtue is arrogant.

journalism makes its money by attracting attention, and it attracts attention by promoting itself and deprecating:

the people who protect the republic (military),
the people who protect the rule of law (police and conservative judges) and
the people who limit prices by producing the goods and services we need or want.

political liberalism is simply the cynical adoption of the arrogant, hypercritical attitude of journalism as a political position for the purpose of sailing down the propaganda wind of commercial mass-market "objective" journalism. To be objective, journalism would have to actively dissociate itself from the type of arrogant, hypercritical liberal position which journalism's bread and butter. Naturally that never happens.

Rush Limbaugh LIVE Thread - Thursday January 12th Rush Limbaugh.com ^

With the proliferation of right-wing pundits on all-news cable channels, the American press constantly devours itself in accusations of bias and lack of patriotism.

It is only the "right-wing pundits on all-news cable channels" (and on talk radio and the Internet) who are the "problem;" without them "the American press" suppressed dissent. Without them "the American press" (which of course included many supposedly independent organizations) was actually a left-wing propaganda monolith. A monolith organized around the principle of using its propaganda power to suppress any public suggestion that any of its members were not objective.

Walter Cronkite has little time for tedious arguments. He believes in the old-fashioned virtues of fairness and balance in reporting.

That is a perfect example of using propaganda power to attempt to suppress the very possibility of thinking that journalism might not be objective.
At 90, Cronkite proves he's nobody's fool
Globe and Mail ^ | January 17, 2006 | JOHN DOYLE

Well, I haven't seen any Pubbies racing to release the report. I'm beginning to think the only answer is a third party.

I guess you didn't read my post. The Democratic Party is the party of "objective" journalism; journalists are not independent of the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party joins itself at the hip to establishment journalism. It does so by selecting its positions to take advantage of the propaganda wind which naturally emanates from commercial journalism:

Journalism is arrogant in claiming superior objectivity, and

Journalism is bullying in its negativity, attacking anyone who has a bottom line to criticize. Journalism claims that its talk can hold down prices better than producers of supply, and that it can protect us from threats by identifying negotiating points "root causes" which allow talk to ameliorate all conflict.
The Republicans cannot control journalism, and if they compete with Democrats to toady up to journalism they are RINOs. A third party merely fractures the opposition to the Party of Journalism.
BARRETT REPORT RELEASED
OIC David Barrett ^ | January 18, 2006 | David Barrett

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