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.

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.

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?

But what you cannot do is decide to report some things, and not report other things, objectively.

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 second problem is: We can no longer compel people to pay attention. We used to be able to say, there's this really important story in Poland. You should read this. Now people say, I just look up what I'm interested in on the Internet."

"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.

I don't think the media takes their responsibility under the first amendment seriously.

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

On reflection, I'm bookmarking this puppy.

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.”
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.

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!

Has the New York Times Violated the Espionage Act?
Commentary Magazine ^ | March 2006 | Gabriel Schoenfeld

Item: Democrats - A Political Party No More
Weekly Diatribe ^ | February 3rd, 2006 | Unknown

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.

The big 3 lost me when the latest cast off from Big Brother or Survivor became 'NEWS'.

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.

They call it "synergy", I call it prostituting my trust.

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.

Then allow me to explain.

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?

Glad the thread interests you . . . you'll see that I have used it to collect my thoughts on journalism which have been inspired by various other threads over the years since September of 2001.

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.

It's the 'and when did you stop beating your wife' aspect of interviews that bothers me the most, the in your face rudeness, the insulting attitude, the lack of any semblance of good manners; I often ask myself just Who What Where When Why and How did an otherwise useless piece of humanity get the impression or permission to act like an interogator...with all the power of a despot simply because they hold a pen, a microphone or camera.

Journalists now have the reputation they deserve. One level beneath used car salesmen and lawyers.

It's the 'and when did you stop beating your wife' aspect of interviews that bothers me the most, the in your face rudeness, the insulting attitude, the lack of any semblance of good manners; I often ask myself just Who What Where When Why and How did an otherwise useless piece of humanity get the impression or permission to act like an interrogator...with all the power of a despot simply because they hold a pen, a microphone or camera.

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.
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.

Journalists now have the reputation they deserve. One level beneath used car salesmen and lawyers.

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.

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