Once, I expedited setting up an email address and was congratulated for "striking a blow for the first amendment." Seriously.
The First Amendment says nothing about journalism, it speaks of "the press." The difference?
- "The press" includes book and magazine printing as well as newspapers. And,
- the First Amendment doesn't apply to broadcast journalism - if it does, that would be news to everyone who has been arrested for broadcasting without a license.
The reality is that journalists (and fellow travelers whom journalists label "liberals" or "progressives") systematically promote the idea that journalism is identical with the public interest. The rules of journalism - "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man,'" and "Always make your deadline," have nothing to do with what is or is not "the public interest," and everything to do with interesting the public, which is a different (and frequently contradictory) matter entirely.
Journalism interesting the public is in the business interest of journalism, so equating "interesting the public" with "the public interest" amounts to identifying the public interest with the business interest of journalism. And that is pretty much the sum of the historical reason for the Spanish American War - to say nothing of sundry other aspects of American history.
An Investment in Failure (Thomas Sowell)
Townhall.com| August 21, 2007 | Thomas Sowell
Quite.The great problem being the extent to which, pace Theodore Roosevelt, at present it is "the critic who counts," and emphatically not than "the man who is actually in the arena."
That is the natural narrative of journalists accustomed to successfully employing a mutual admiration society "proof" of their own heroic "objectivity."
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena - Theodore RooseveltTeenage Dream ... Mark Steyn
Steyn Online ^ | 21 August 2007 | Mark Steyn