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.

Barrett’s report is the last chapter in the controversial history of the independent counsel law, which Congress refused to renew. The investigations caused serious political damage to both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Like the even more deleterious McCain-Feingold, the Independent Counsel law had at its heart the planted axiom that "objective journalism" actually is objective.
That is absurd:

the criteria for story selection ("Man Bits Dog" rather than "Dog Bites Man"; "If it bleeds, it leads") are not perspective-free.

Worse, journalism which claims to be objective and (as demonstrated above) is not, is arrogant.

And worse yet, one of the political parties simply adopts the arrogant "liberal" perspective of journalism, yet "objective" journalism claims independence of the Democratic Party. If someone adopts the same perspective that you project, how would it be possible for you to be neutral between that person and his opponent?
Naturally enough, there is a chronic complaint of the "bias" of journalism - punctuated periodically with embarassments like the calling of Florida for Gore while some polls in Florida were still open, and Bush was actually ahead in the raw vote count. Or the 60 Minutes hit piece on Bush which used fraudulent forged "documents."
The AP on the Barrett Report
Rathergate ^ | 1/90/2006 | Mark Kilmer

"The framers of our Constitution gave carte blance protection to “speech” and “the press”."

Not true. It has simply been twisted and maligned by special interest groups. All must be taken in context. The framers of our constitution were not, nut cases... Freedom of the press & speech were never designed to include infringing upon someone else's rights. I'm thinking this has happened because people have been lured into thinking it's okay to be rude, mean, nasty, slandering, and on and on and on...We have slipped, pretty far away, from freedom of speech & press. Currently, freedom of speech & press means, freedom to slander anyone, at any time, for any reason. I mean, come on...That's just lawlessness!

I wrote this piece to argue that the First Amendment protection of free political speech is undermined by the FCC. In the sense that the FCC licenses broadcasters to broadcast "in the public interest," and a government which is limited by the First Amendment has no business defining what political speech is in the public interest and what is not.
I do not mean to argue that there can be no cause of action in libel cases, but I do argue that the First Amendment needs to be honored more rather than less. I do not believe that the government can legitimately restrict a newspaper from claiming to be objective - but ultimately the problem we have with "the media" is that journalism claims to be objective, and too many people sucker for that con.
But since it is a con (even if some journalists are naive enough to believe it), government which licenses broadcasters should have no part of endorsing it. That is, government should disadvantage the broadcasting of journalism which claims to be objective.
The First Amendment charters Americans to be, by the government's lights (or yours, or mine) wrong at the top of their voices. Whatever else that is, it is certainly not a guarantee that journalism will be objective - it is a guarantee that the government will not assay to assure objectivity. Consequently the mimicing of The New York Times by broadcast journalism logically cannot be a guarantee of objectivity - and that is IMHO the con that the broadcasters implicitly are perpetrating.

I love the news

It is leftwing propaganda and agitation that is his true love.

Most do not understand that the two naturally go together:

leftwing propaganda is actually nothing but cheap talk - arrogance parading as wisdom. The cheapest talk is the second guess, and socialism always takes "the means of production" - which also implies what is produced - as a given. The second-guesser can make a case that he (with the help of his planning board) coulda woulda shoulda developed the product and the means of production; it is an unimaginative soul indeed who cannot envision a cleaner development of anything once they see the entrepreneurial innovator's to the problem. Ignoring, of course, the fact that the entrepreneur had to think outside the box to even identify the opportunity which his success makes so obvious in retrospect. And had to take risk to prove what the second-guesser is so proud of calling "obvious" in hindsight.
If you read old socialist literature you will find arguments which strain a gnats and swallow camels in order to "prove" that a socialist planning board could figure out whether or not to switch from steam to diesel locomotives. Nothing is plainer than that if that planning board had had the authority, hell would have frozen over before anyone ever built an iPod: Steve Jobs would have been an aparatchick instead of an entrepreneur.
Likewise journalism is nothing but cheap talk, literally. What, you expect profundity every day for 75 cents? Journalism is arrogant to claim the virtue of objectivity when in fact its prime incentive is to be entertaining. Being objective before 911 would have entailed discussions of Osamma ben Laden which would have been excruciatingly boring.
Far more exciting and self-aggrandizing to proclaim that the actual doers of deeds need to shape up to prevent "global warming." If your stock-in-trade is cheap talk, good intentions are all that can matter - so liberal politicians follow journalism's forrays against the doers, and kill the wounded. They take no risk, because second guessers never have to deliver themselves, they only point fingers at others.
Dan Rather on news, himself and even Seattle
Seattle Times ^ | January 20, 2006 | Kay McFadden

it makes no difference if any of these “predictions” come true, since the fears being appealed to are not based on facts, anyway.

If you have the ability to change the subject whenever the issue of the accuracy of your past predictions comes up, there is no such thing as accountability.
Thus the cardinal principle of liberalism: NOTHING actually matters but PR. It is impossible that a poltical party which holds to that principle should be at all independent of "objective journalism." And how can "objective journalism" be said to be independent of a party which clings to it like a tick?
Fundraising Foolishness: Fanning the Flames of Fear
Breakpoint with Charles Colson ^ | January 24, 2006 | Charles

The superficiality of journalism inheres in its business model - journalism exists not to preach ancient gospel but to entertain you by telling you something new. And it telling you something you couldn't have predicted yesterday, journalism finds that good news is seldom as dramatically unexpected as bad - you knew a long time ago that a baby would be born, or that a child would graduate from school, or construction of a house would be completed. But you didn't know that a particular house would burn down last night.

Around New Year's there is traditionally a spate of review articles about the past year, so you may see how many houses were built and might compare that with the number which were accidentally destroyed; only then would you see in print the fact that a city was being built even as, day by day, the newspaper was full of little but disaster.

In the artificial reality of journalism, all is doom and gloom - except for one bright, shining light. And that light is the journalist himself. The journalist is your font of wisdom. The journalist will tell you what the government should do, and if the government agrees with him why then, all will be well. Whatever is inconvenient to the worldview of the journalist is simply a tree in a forrest which falls to the ground unheard - it makes no sound.

In that artificial reality, there are "moderate" politicians who project the same worldview as journalists do, and "extreme" ones who do not. In the real world, arrogant and superficial ideas do not prove out in the long run. In the real world courage is a high virtue. In the real world time has shown that Ronald Reagan was not an extremist but a visionary realist.

NBC News aired an "exclusive" story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda "switchboard" inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar's brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, "The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn't deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying."

Back then, the NBC script didn't describe it as "spying on Americans." Instead, it was called one of the "missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives."

Our Right to Security Al Qaeda, not the FBI, is the greater threat to America.
Opinion Journal (WSJ) ^ | January 30, 2006 | BY DEBRA BURLINGAME

the function of juornalism IS objective truth-telling.

So journalists say. But what is the proof?

journalists have been failing to function for many, many years.

If they haven't been doing it, what is the proof that they are even trying? Do you buy the paper because you expect the truth, or because you are bored?
Suppose absolutely nothing newsworthy happens today. Will they just skip an edition of the paper? Certainly not. Why? Because "the show must go on."
And that pretty much proves that journalism is in the entertainment business.

By definition, IMO, journalism is supposed to be the presentation of unvarnished (and unbiased) truth. But journalists have long since discarded any pretense of integrity.

Most of them have stopped even trying, IMO. They are worthless for gathering information, except when used as one-of-many sources for a well-read and discerning news consumer (like most here on FR). Just my $.02.

BTW - We get the Sunday paper for the comics (primarily Dilbert and Zits), and watch the TV for news about 1x/week (Usually Special Report on FNC). I personally get 95% of my non-local news from FR.

By definition, IMO, journalism is supposed to be the presentation of unvarnished (and unbiased) truth. But journalists have long since discarded any pretense of integrity.

If you believe that definition, you are inhibited from thinking clearly. Journalism is just a genre of nonfiction (in the sense of not admitedly being fiction) publishing - a way of using a printing press for fun and profit.
Even if everything in the newspaper is true - and that is a big if - you have to factor in the huge issue of story selection. What is given the top right of the front page, what is below the fold, what is on page two, what is on page A19 - and what is not in the paper at all.
When you actually think about that issue you realize that the issue of story selection is, for commercial reasons, driven by sensationalism and novelty. The artificial reality which journalism creates is a dark world in which the people and institutions upon which we all depend are unreliable. All but one - the newspaper in which that artificial reality exists. In the artificial reality of journalism, journalism is a beacon of truth and light - everything else is dross.
So the choice of what is emphasized in the news and what is not reported in the news is not an objective decision; "if it bleeds it leads" is not an objective criterion, and neither is "man bites dog" an objective criterion. Those rules are permanent fixtures of journalism, but they are objective only in the artificial reality within journalism.
That's why you repair to FR to get your non-local news: Freepers are as a class people who are out to expose "the man behind the curtain." We don't all have the same POV, but if some of us are off the reservation on a given issue, we don't get to shut down those of us who are right.
And so we expect to be able to decide for ourselves, given various takes from various people - and to then contribute our own perspective on topics which interest us. The establisment journalist depends on controling the publishing of information; you write letters to the editor, and if it is convenient it might get published. FR is edited too, by the moderators - but we accept that relatively happily because it helps serve the audience we want to participate in by suppressing the sort of obscenities which otherwise dominate a space for anonymous expression.

Any conservative who believes that the function of journalism is objective truth-telling . . .

The function of journalism is objective truth-telling. The point your trying to make is that just because someone or something claims to be practicing it, doesn't mean that he/she/it is.

Further, I would not call the alphabet news program either journalism or entertainment. What they practice is propaganda. ABCNNBCBS is no different that the Pravada or TASS during the Soviet era.

If you believe that definition, you are inhibited from thinking clearly.

Ah, no... You are completely missing my point, and trying to turn it into an argument that I suffer from muddled thinking. I don't, at least not in this case.

Journalism is supposed to be the recording of observations - the reporting of facts. In the ideal, there is absolutely no bias. This world is not, alas, ideal.

Therefore, we deal with a certain amount of bias in every single story.

However, that does not mean that journalism cannot be defined the way I have ascribed. It simply means that so-called journalists are, on the whole, manifestly ill suited (by design or happenstance) to fulfill the role demanded by journalism.

I prefer to measure according to the true yardstick, even if the measurements come up short. To redefine journalism because of the hacks who currently profess to practice it shortens the ruler, and eventually will undermine the recognition of the hacks' shortcomings.

The function of journalism is objective truth-telling.

If you notice the Second Amendment:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
you notice that the framers were entirely capable of assigning to a right a public purpose as justification. In the First Amendment, OTOH,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
you find nothing of the sort. Freedom of the press does not exist to give you objective truth; freedom of the press exists because it is freedom. The whole Constitution exists to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," and freedom of expression is simply one aspect of freedom.
The bottom line is that people are allowed to use printing presses for fun and profit. And so, naturally enough, that is just what they do. And part of that fun and profit comes from claiming to be objective. They do it because they can.
Actually being objective, of course, is a horse of a different color. They aren't objective because they don't have to be - and because it's too hard (in fact, it is impossible).

Journalism is a trade. When we criticize the MSM its for practicing it dishonestly. It's like someone claiming to be an accountant but making up numbers to make the books balance.

Sounds great. But then, a carnival barker's pitch sounds attrative, too - which is why he does it, and why it gets the suckers in the tent, less a little of their money.
Of course the freak show is not what the carnival barker suggested. You shoulda known that going in.
And of course the newspaper isn't objective. You shoulda known that going in, too. You should have known that because objectivity is impossible, and because claiming you are objective is itself the opposite of objectivity.

You should have known that because objectivity is impossible . . .

Actually, it's not in a lot of cases. A legislative body votes on a bill and one can describe the bill and the vote without opinion. One can report a budget stating the change from the year before and its effect on the tax rate, objectively.

The problem is a lot of newspapers no longer do things like this because they no longer practice journalism, and many reporters have been condition to believe truth to be relative rather than an absolute.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.