It's real news.
Isn't it?
Posted on 09/14/2001 7:02:19 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
Yes, you can "objectively" report a particular thing. But what you cannot do is decide to report some things, and not report other things, objectively. What is your lead article, and what doesn't get reported at all reflects human judgment - and rules like "if it bleeds, it leads" are no answer at all to that issue.The reporter can say that "we always do that" - but the reporter is not objective in following that rule, no matter how consistently. The rule is not objective because it is in the reporter's interest to follow it - any more than picking up a lost purse and keeping it is "honest" because it is in your interest to pocket the money.
And since you can't be objective, it cannot be objective to claim that you are objective. You might objectively report on a vote on a bill, for the sake of argument - but how can you possibly be objective about yourself? How could you actually think that you were objective about your own objectivity?
That's true, and that's what the MSM does and that's why the don't practice journalism.
Also, I don't want you think that perfection exists, but there can be standards, that if followed, will provide accurate, reliable information that will be of use to one regardless of one' particular politics.
The problem is the MSM no longer follows standards (and this may be due to the lessening of competition that occurred in the 70s & 80s that kept many papers somewhat honest.)
"The right to keep and bear arms" is described by the Second Amendment as "being necessary to the security of a free state." But freedom of speech and press are not instrumental.Freedom of the press is freedom for its own sake, freedom of the people. Freedom to be objective or to be tendentious; freedom to listen or read, and freedom to ignore whoever does not attract and hold our attention. We-the-people will decide for ourselves what we think is important or otherwise interesting, and we will not be bullied into saluting Big Journalism's agenda.
Emperor "objective journalism" has no clothes.
Podcasts, blogs and Dave Barry
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 1/31/6 | C.W. Nevius
"The press" doen't exist apart from the people but is of the people."The press" doesn't have rights or responsibilities distinct from the people.
It follows from that that journalists don't have to be objective - and it follows from that that I don't have to believe journalists.
And I certainly don't have to agree with their priorities. The most important story of the day may not be above the fold on the front page, and may not even be in the paper at all. Or it may appear in the paper as "news" days after we knew about it on FR.
Since journalists do not have rights apart from we-the-people, "shield laws" are not constitutional - and licensing of broadcast journalists is constitutionally suspect.
If you can make that statement, you don't take your "responsibility under the First Amendment" seriously.The First Amendment assigns only protection from responsibility to speakers and printers. That protection allows printers of newspapers to claim that they are objective, and to claim that they exist for a noble purpose and that the fate of the Republic depends on their doing their job. But it does not require that the printer of the newspaper actually do the wonderful, "essential" job of which it boasts.
The more protection you have, the less you can be held to account, the less actual responsibility you have. And (Management 101), the less responsibility you have, the less authority you deserve. So if you print a newspaper, and I know that you cannot be held to account if you are wrong or even wrongheaded, my responsibility to myself is to be skeptical of your newspaper.
Thus, my point: if you think newspapers have responsibilities under the First Amendment, you have turned the First Amendment on its head. The First Amendment assigns the responsibility to the reader and not to the printer. The first responsibility of the reader is to cut through the cant and understand that the owner of a newspaper prints his newspaper for fun and profit. He has no responsibility under the First Amendment.
Iraqis Angered Over Bush's Speech (AP SLANT BARF ALERT)
AP ^ | 2/1/06 | AP
Very interesting info about not only the flip flop of the NYT, but about the Chicago Tribune:
One of the most pertinent precedents is a newspaper story that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on June 7, 1942, immediately following the American victory in the battle of Midway in World War II. In a front-page article under the headline, “Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea,” the Tribune disclosed that the strength and disposition of the Japanese fleet had been “well known in American naval circles several days before the battle began.” The paper then presented an exact description of the imperial armada, complete with the names of specific Japanese ships and the larger assemblies of vessels to which they were deployed. All of this information was attributed to “reliable sources in . . . naval intelligence.”I really was under the illusion that FDR had the lid on pretty tight. After all, he was able to keep the lid on the fact that the German U-boats sank 500 merchant vessels off the American coast in the first six months of the war, without losing a single U-boat!The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the Tribune article was that the United States had broken Japanese naval codes and was reading the enemy’s encrypted communications. Indeed, cracking JN-25, as it was called, had been one of the major Allied triumphs of the Pacific war, laying bare the operational plans of the Japanese Navy almost in real time and bearing fruit not only at Midway—a great turning point of the war—but in immediately previous confrontations, and promising significant advantages in the terrible struggles that still lay ahead. Its exposure, a devastating breach of security, thus threatened to extend the war indefinitely and cost the lives of thousands of American servicemen.
Has the New York Times Violated the Espionage Act?
Commentary Magazine ^ | March 2006 | Gabriel Schoenfeld
It’s now official: The Democrats who infest our nation’s capitol are no longer a political party. As of Tuesday night, when California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey snuck the insufferably vapid Cindy Sheehan into the House Chamber in order to cause a scene during the President’s State of the Union message, the Democrats at the national level must now officially be classified as nothing more than a protest group.The Democrats have not had anything resembling a defined legislative agenda at any point during this century. Their leaders, recognizing this deficiency as one of the reasons why they suffered another horrible showing at the polls in the 2004 elections, have promised to deliver such an agenda for more than a year now, a promise that remains empty and unfulfilled. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer promised again on Wednesday that he and his cohorts would unveil a detailed legislative agenda “soon”, but no one really believes they will actually do so. It has in fact been so long since the Democrats made any effort to enact legislation into law that one wonders if they even remember how.
Media bias bump.
They call it "synergy", I call it prostituting my trust.
They lost me so long ago that I wouldn't be likely to have seen what you're talking about.They call it "synergy", I call it prostituting my trust.
I'd call it planting a commercial for their fiction entertainment in their nonfiction entertainment.Sounds pretty gauche all right.
Actually what it is is having the star of their nonfiction entertainment step out of character. While putatively giving you important information, the actor inserts purely commercial information into the show. It is still nonfiction, to the extent that the outcome of "survivor" was not predetermined - but the mask of objectivity in story selection is discarded.The issue of story selection - what is the lead, what is below the fold, what doesn't get in the paper at all - is actually, IMHO, the sticking point on any attempt to prove your own objectivity. Even granting that all your reports are true, how can you know that you are emphasizing the important things, and not ignoring the most important ones?
The answer to that seems to be that you can only believe yourself capable of that if you assume that you are wise. Arguing from that assumption is arrogant, and is called "sophistry." The opposite - refusing to argue from that assumption - is called "philosophy." And it would seem that anyone with the propaganda power of journalism would have prevented 911 if they had been as wise in that regard as, for example, Rick Rescola (the security chief who saved many lives in the WTC on 911 because he was expecting an attack).
Many other examples would serve to prove that journalists are not uniquely, nor even particularly, wise. Their pretensions to objectivity are pure arrogance.
It's real news.
Isn't it?
As I mentioned, I don't watch MSM journalism unless I'm somehow a captive audience. So you'll forgive me if I do not so much as know the names of those worthies, let alone what they may have said.
In a failing bid to save the, now defunct, NBC show "Commander and Chief", NBC wrote into the show a campaign between Jimmy Smits and Alan Alada.
The writers spent more than a few shows in the series talking about negotiating the terms of the fictional debate, and decided to air "the debate" 'live' with the NBC News logo in the corner, with the LIVE graphic.
They even had Forest Sawyer as a scripted questioner in the debate.
I tivoed the show, and took these 2 screen shots of thier "Live Debate" between 2 fictional characters reading their script from telepromters.
It was, IMHO, the most egregious piece of MSM electioneering in television history.
It's real news.
Isn't it?
When I started the thread I hadn't hit on the implication that journalism's claim of objectivity was provably arrogant, though I knew there was something wrong about it.
When I started the thread I hadn't hit on the implication that journalism's claim of objectivity was provably arrogant, though I knew there was something wrong about it.
My original analysis of journalism described that as "negativity," but I had difficulty trying to answer the question, "Negativity toward what?" The answer is, I think, that the negativity is actually arrogance which looks to promote itself by putting everyone else down. Everyone, that is, who does not help the journalist - as the "liberal" politician does. The "liberal" Democratic politician effectively promotes journalism by criticizing anyone/anything which journalism criticizes. And by promising to cure whatever journalism suggests is wrong.Journalists now have the reputation they deserve. One level beneath used car salesmen and lawyers.The con, of course, is that if the "liberal" is in power he is not held to account for results by journalism as the "conservative" would be.
At least among "conservative" (there is of course scarcely any such thing as a truly conservative American, all believe in progress) Americans.
Arrogance.
Definitely. But what are its roots? The knowledge there's no oversight and no one to hold them accountable for their bad behaviour, the deliberate rudeness?
And the editing. That drives me crazy. Let me provide an example:
Described as retarded, a youth of some 15 years of age, approached a checkpoint in Israel wearing an explosive device. The guards were able to assist the youth in the removal of the explosives by sending toward him a robot carrying a pair of scissors, which he used to cut the straps holding the device to his chest.
The explosives were then detonated at a distance and no one was harmed.
The youth, obviously terrified, was taken away in an ambulance.
On SBS, (in Australia) our public service broadcaster, the robot device and its role was eliminated from the film entirely. The segment that included the ambulance and the youth being placed into it, was presented by a female with a microphone who must have been superimposed over the scene as she was nowhere present in the original film.
Her commentary was to the effect the youth was being taken away for interrogation...(poor poor 'palestinian' youth - the IDF would surely beat him up terribly, was the impression conveyed.)
The difference between the original, unadulterated film and the SBS version, shown on the same evening on two different channels made me furious. I wrote to Media Watch - they did not acknowledge my letter.
And on and on it goes.
Ultimately, there is only one answer. I do not turn to SBS any longer.
And if no one had bothered to write up the cartoon story, it would never have existed, would it? No one can hear a handclap in the forest if the forest is empty.
999...
1000!
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