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To: dayglored

Editors need to start being held accountable for their lying editorials.


15 posted on 09/25/2016 7:15:58 AM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a Momma Deuce)
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To: going hot
Editors need to start being held accountable for their lying editorials.
Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I know that journalism is a biased. But there are reasons for the mess “the media” is and makes which do not implicate the Constitution. Least of all should we want to denigrate the First Amendment.

Why is journalism “a bias?” Simple. Journalism has to claim that “all journalists are objective,” for the simple reason that it needs to trust - needs you to trust - reports transmitted over long distances and originated by people you nor I - nor even the editor of the paper printing the story - even knows. It’s not for any moral reason that there is some obligation on the part of any member of the public to believe journalism; it is strictly a business proposition to them. The AP newswire - any newswire - would be nearly worthless without the trust of the reader, promoted by the editor and all other journalists.

Membership in the AP is expensive, on the one hand, and a huge source of stories, on the other. It has to be promoted and exploited. In sum, journalism is united by the newswires (all of them; competition among news services does not change this fact). The AP “wire” is a continuous virtual meeting of all major journalists in America and, according to Adam Smith, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

So journalism is united around the conceit of its own objectivity, and yet journalists all know (“If it bleeds, it leads) that journalism is negative. Is negativity objective? If you think so, you are a cynic. And socialism is cynicism about society, and naivete about government:

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

So our problem with respect to journalism is that
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. 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.

The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors . . .

The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

Very humanly, journalists want to be our “leaders and directors” - and yet their profession is profoundly corrupted by cynicism which inheres in it. We are Cassandra, seeing corruption in a predominant source of information while “The natural disposition” of our neighbors “is always to believe.”

If we can get an honest SCOTUS back, theoretically the Associated Press could be sued into oblivion. Because it is a monopoly - SCOTUS even held so in 1945 - and because the mission which made the AP “too big to fail” is no longer a significant issue. From its inception until the Internet era, the conservation of scarce and expensive news transmission bandwidth always seemed to justify the monopolistic implications of the AP. Now, such a suggestion would risk mockery.

And I have not even addressed the unconstitutional effects of the FCC and the FEC . . .


54 posted on 09/25/2016 12:34:02 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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