Congressman Billybob
A Dispatch from the Front, Plus Some Comments on Norwegian Charisma
Lots of you folkses aren't paying attention this morning. This grievous error by the author doesn't help his case, as I'm sure Bernie Goldberg, the author of "Bias" would agree.
The real root of the problem, as Goldberg and this author hint at, is the social elitism the media aspires to. Their model is the old USSR, where the media IS a powerful branch of the government - an entitled class that gets all the perks of office with few of the responsibilities. They get to shop in the Dollar stores. They get the Black Sea dachas. They feel self-righteous and smugly superior, an attitude carefully cultivated by the authoritarians they admire.
Over the last 30 years, the Dems have played the media MUCH better than the GOP, courting them, wining them, getting them virtually anything they could want - in return for their blind allegiance. Now we have an entire generation of newsies who have spent their entire lives in that atmosphere of creeping socialism - which has been crafted as a person benefits package for THEM. Members of the media don't exist in the same economic world the rest of us do. They have their compensation structured by corporate tax attorneys so as to virtually eliminate personal income taxes - which is why high taxes on the public don't bother them - they're NOT members of "the public." (I used to have one of those guys, so I know the drill).
The media has been tacitly promised a democratic socialist Oligarchy, with they themselves as oligarchs. That explains EVERYTHING about their behavior. And dishonest reporting is the easiest way to achieve it.
Michael
Before I read the article, I was going to respond, "Liberal", as the cause. This is certainly the root cause and encompasses all the ills he lists.
Prescribing for a cure is not so easy. The rot is institutionalized here, just as in most of academia. One cannot build a house on a rotten foundation, one can only destroy the foundation and start anew.
Most of the journalism schools have turned out generations of Liberal sychophants to write and report. Obviously, none of these people are willingly going away or changing their world-view. We need brand new, conservative journalism schools, honest professors and students, and jobs for them when they graduate. But, the biggest thing needed by them is a moral anchor, and that is not a quick process.
It will be years before this can be turned around, if it can. Economic pressure can help. But, in the end, it is what is in the hearts of the Media people, their bosses and the demands of the American People that will prevail in what we get in the Media. We all reap what we sow.
Only a conservative and religious revival of great and long-lasting magnitude can do the job of reviving the heart on a large scale. Otherwise, it will be the same-old-same-old.
I think I can add some further clarity too the dishonesty, hypocrisy and arrogance that's prevalent throughout America's news media.
First, mysticism is when a person creates problems that don't exist. Often believing in non-reality as though it is reality. For example, real, valid power is achieved by working honestly and rationally in a productive or creative job that adds value to the worker himself or herself, others and society via free-market competition. With it comes healthy self-esteem and earned respect.
Most people in the higher ranks of America's news media -- reporters, journalists, editors and publishers -- believe the non-reality that power comes from 1) peer group (fundamentally and in general equally or more dishonest than him or herself) or 2) being able to sway his or her audience toward the news reporter's bias. Often a combination of the two. For example, the irrational bias perpetrated by the news media that guns are the problem rather than violent criminals. Violent criminals are dishonest and irrational in their motives which they then carry out in their actions. Most mainstream news-media "personalities" are dishonest and irrational in their motives which they carry out in reporting the news.
Second, irrationality. It's irrational to put forth via the news media that a person can assign or give to a person, group of persons or government a right he doesn't himself possess.
For example, no person has the right to barge onto another person's property uninvited. Nor does a person have the right to "camp" or take up a seat on another person's property once the property owner has asked the person -- whom the property owner invited in the first place -- to leave. Who is to say when a person is uninvited? The property owner. Who is to say when an invited guest has overstayed their welcome? The property owner.
That law, if you will, is universal. It's objective law. Objective laws exist beyond the reach of man-made law or political-agenda law or media agenda or media bias. That is, objective law regarding access to property and who holds the right is valid on all property at the property owner's discretion.
The American news media proclaims from on high that the individual belonging to this group of people and that group of people and all manner or segments of individuals that can be corralled into a group have, as an individual member of said group, the right to barge in uninvited, and when invited, the right to overstay his or her welcome.
That agenda, communitarian notion is proclaimed form on high to protect the little guy. The little guy being an individual of any special interest group. Special interest groups that self-proclaim to have rights that as separate individuals no person in the group has the right to impose on another individual.
Quite frankly, it is the rule of tribalism -- tyranny of a majority over the individual. It's a form of terror inflicted on the individual that if the individual doesn't bow to the tribe's irrationality, dishonesty and mysticism he or she will become the tribe's next victim. There in lies the underlying motive and cause of almost all politicians, bureaucrats, mainstream news media "personalities" and many academics: to undermine honesty.
Dishonesty, mysticism and irrationality are the problem/cancer that terrorizes the little guy.
These observers have done a good job of identifying many of the symptoms afflicting the news media; unfortunately, they have failed to diagnose the disease that is causing them or to offer a cure for it.
Yes, and this article is no better. The fundamental problem with journalism is that people sucker for the con that it is or should be "objective."The business of journalism is attracting attention so people will see/hear commercial advertisements. That is, journalism is entertainment. The journalist's deadline is simply "the show must go on" (translated to print originally). "Man Bites Dog" is simply a mandate to be entertaining. And "No news is good news" is true because good news is seldom exciting enough to be news.
The consequences of the entertainment nature of journalism make a mockery of journalism's self-hyped "objectivity." Journalism's short deadlines make journalism superficial. Journalism's negativity combines with its superficiality to constitute anticonservatism.
What journalism calls "objective" is merely its own PC concensus. That consensus exists not only because of the aforementioned incentives to anticonservatism but because of the incentive to avoid flame wars with (other) people who "buy ink by the barrel."
Print journalism is part of the press, but then so are books and magazines. Broadcast journalism is regulated by the FCC and cannot be called part of the press.
Good post...I believe alot of it has to do with education. Liberalism is best suited for intellectual simpletons where the sense of guilt, emotion and feelings guide their choices and idealology; Conservatism is best suited for people who can still think; based on logic, reason and sound (Constitutional) principles.