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.

My understanding of the "free press" as outlined by the founding fathers is that the citizery as a whole IS the "free press." There was never intended to be a Washington Press Corps, or the requirement of "press credentials." If you winessed an event that you felt worthy of publication, or held an opinion as it pertained to elected officials; you were free to write and publish it.

As it is today (as it's always been) employees are loyal to the muckety-muck who signs the paycheck...they tow the company line or else lose that high-priced, high profile status; as well as those coveted "press credentials" and any semblance of prior access.

Of course, today (with all the mainsteam media mergers) those who sign the paychecks are an increasingly small, powerful cabal of men on the mountain who can dictate what they deem as newsworthy topics. Reporters and reporterettes (for lack of a more descriptive adjective) prostitute themselves for the check signer in leiu of objectivity, unbiased content and newsworthiness.

To put this into context, Thomas Jefferson referred to the running of a newspaper in 1791 as a "polluted enterprise"...and today he is surely spinning wildly in his grave.

It all makes me proud to be a free man, and ashamed to see a once proud profession, journalism, go straight down the toilet. When morals and eithics are replaced by bias, that's what happens.

The most important thing about journalism's "bias" (it is such, but for tactical reasons I prefer the word "perspective") is not that it has cropped into a pure and noble profession, but that bias is the natural product of the forces which created journalism.
Nothing is more natural than that people all have their own individual perspectives. You have one, I have one, adults take that for granted. So the interesting fact is not that journalists their own perspectives, but that they all have such similar perspectives--and that they claim to have no perspective at all.
Think about the conceit which claims not to have a perspective! It is that conceit which makes journalism's perspective truly a "bias" in my eyes. Apart from that conceit, I would just say that "One man's 'perspective' is the other man's 'bias'."
But of course the homogeniety of journalists' perspective is in part a consequence of their claim of being unbiased (which would have to imply that they have no perspective). If one journalist projected a markedly different perspective from all the rest, he would thereby imply that the others were "biased"--or else that he was. That would theoretically be an option, but think how much less work it is to just go with the flow! Accordingly projecting the homogeneous perspective which is the journalistic "bias" has a job-survival value to the individual journalist.
Bernard Goldberg's career is a case in point: he was a journalist until he pointed out that the emperor has no clothes; now he is a nuisance but certainly not a journalist. He has been drummed out of the club. Back in the Vietnam era, journalists loved to broadcast students' railing against "the Establishment." Well, guess what--journalism is the Establishment if such a thing exists in America.
Do I then rail against freedom of the press? On the contrary I think it would be a good idea, and we should try it sometime. Indeed with the Internet in general and FR in particular, I think we are trying it to a (so-far) limited extent. On the Internet there is no guarantee of accuracy, so runs the critique of journalism. It is the "guarantee of accuracy" which is journalism's homogenizing factor--the factor which subverts freedom of the press. The press was free when Hamilton and Jefferson were sponsoring competing newspapers with which to wage their political battles. It is far less so when, for marketing reasons, all position themselves as nonpartisan paragons of "objectivity."
But journalism is not, after all, the whole of "the press;" books and magazines have First Amendment protection, and books especially are not subject to the tyranny of "objectivity"--and are to that very extent far less biased.
It is one thing for print journalists to hew to a homogeneous perspective--"go along to get along"--but it is quite another for the government to create an amplifying system which aggressively "goes along to get along" with print journalism. Broadcasting is a creature of the FCC, and could not exist as we know it without it. And the FCC makes broadcasting as we know it possible by censoring the many and licensing the few in a way entirely inconsistent with First Amendment freedom. Broadcast journalism is journalism on government-issue steroids.
Why then is the particular bias we observe in print and other journalism anticonservative? That is to be understood by reference to the marketing techniques of the genre.
Journalism markets itself not only as "objective," but also as fast. Emphasis on being the first to tell you any given report tends to deemphasize reliability, most evidently in the twice-withdrawn "calls" of Florida and the national election within a few hours on election day 2000. Compared to the most topical book imaginable, then, journalism is by nature superficial.
"Man Bites Dog" is news; "Dog Bites Man" is not. That is, journalism emphasizes what is unusual. It makes mountains out of molehills. This is another source for the tendency toward superficiality in journalism.
"If It Bleeds, It Leads." That is, journalism emphasizes the negative as a way of scaring people into not ignoring its reports.
Conservatism is essentially faith in the institutions of society. Commercially successful journalism is negative and superficial, and that makes it border (at least) on cynicism. Journalism is essentially an acid test of those institutions, and thus of conservatism.
Commercial journalism should be understood to be inherently "liberal." So long as it has any perspective at all--and it would be dishwater-dull if it had none--journalism cannot assure that it is nonpartisan. In point of fact, liberal politicians systematically align themselves with journalism's cause celebre du jour, assuring themselves of a propaganda wind constantly at their back. Journalists would have to do the sort of heavy lifting--which, as we have seen, they normally abjure--in order to create space between themselves and liberals.
Each individual's right to print and profit from journalism is enshrined in the First Amendment. But journalism should not set the national agenda as it now does. Broadcast journalism should be abolished by eliminating broadcast licensee's ability to be topical. All broadcast programming except weather, sports, and traffic reports should be recorded a week in advance.
People who want fast news (including business news) should log on to the Internet. And (if they are conservative) they should log onto FR, exercise their own right to communicate nationally, and DONATE!

This critique of journalism can be considered, in economic terms, to be a model of limited competition. The self-imposed limit on competition does not relate so much to prices, nor to speed of reporting, nor distribution. The singular area in which journalists do not compete is credibility.

The New York Times claims "All the News that's Fit to Print", and no competing newspaper or broadcaster disputes the claim. Conservatives (e.g., the Media Research Center) critique journalism's tendentiousness on a daily basis but the signature of the journalist is a get-along-to-go-along posture with respect to the credibility of any other journalist.

The prospect of competitive advantage to be gained by undermining the credibility of a given member of the competition is outweighed by the prospect of defending against a reply in kind by all of the competition. It is a case of "mutually assured destruction." Any journalist (e.g. Bernard Goldberg) who breaks the tabu on discussing "Bias" is instantaneously "not objective . . . not a journalist." As Ann Coulter (Slander) clearly understands, journalists cannot start using that technique on a conservative; they would have to stop first to be able to do that.

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