News organizations have a right to adopt whatever editorial positions they want, but NPR receives a chunk of its budget from the federal government, and more importantly wields the imprimatur of being an essential public resource, which anchors its other fundraising efforts.It is true of NPR, and it is true of all broadcast licensees.All of broadcast journalism is illegitimate because journalism as we have always known it actually makes no substantive effort at objectivity. They put on a show of it, but in the real world the very first thing you must do to attempt objectivity is to declare up front all the reasons you know of that you might not be objective. Journalism does in fact have interests other than the public interest; it is only necessary to allude to the fact that bad news - such as a war, for example - makes "great copy" and is good for journalism. So the interests of journalism and the public interest are not inherently aligned.
Yet journalism as we know it consists of multiple outlets (including NPR, The New York Times, and so forth which are unified by their interest in the credulity of the public for all of journalism. Journalists do not compete on "objectivity," instead they are in full "go along and get along" mode. That is the natural result of their dependence on wire services as news sources; they all have the same sources and they all need the public to trust those sources.
It is worth pondering Adam Smith's perspective on that:
Credulousness in the public is inimical to the public interest.The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity,
and they very seldom teach it enough.So journalism as such has interests different than the public interest - and yet no journalism outlet ever declares any reason why it might not be objective. To the contrary, all journalists claim that all journalists are objective - and that is the very opposite of declaring its interests. So journalism makes no effort to attempt actual objectivity, relying instead on journalism's unified propaganda power to prevent the public from actually thinking about the limits of the credibility of its information.
Remember that, Benjamin Franklin put it, "Half the truth is often a great lie." It is not necessary for a journalist to actually lie in order to mislead the public. There is no justice in having the government license, let alone own, broadcast journalism outlets. It is blatantly unconstitutional.Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate
What state legislators should do about Clinton Cash:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3367236/posts?page=8#8
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