Posted on 09/03/2012 9:01:44 AM PDT by TheZMan
There has been a rather endless list over the years of "things we can do to fix this mess". Some of it is obvious, some not so obvious, but the common theme is that it will take many years and a fair amount of luck.
I'd like to focus on one item in the list - our Activist Media. Whether to the right or the left it is a fact that the MSM is today largely damaging to the citizenry. The 24-hour news cycle, "opinion" news, and biased reporting (read: lying) is a daily problem that I believe is the greatest reason behind an uninformed, or worse, misinformed populace. I have friends that go vote based on what CNNABCCBSNBCMSNBC tells them.
In that vein I'm seeking Freeper input on things that can be done to fix our media. I miss the days of turning on the news and being presented with (God forbid) actual news, and not what the reporter *thought* about the news.
Keep in mind, of course:
"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."
It would be quite easy to say "the news media is no longer allowed to insert opinion into its reporting", but that isn't possible without also "abridging the freedom of the press".
It is this conundrum that brings me here today, asking for your input. Maybe we just wait for them to go out of business, but that tactic hasn't panned out like we hoped it would. At near sub-basement ratings they keep on trucking, spewing their garbage to a gullible audience.
So, thoughts?
There have been stabs at conservative media, and they almost invariably fail. The reason is that conservatives have a tendency to think that they are above the, “And today Jennifer Aniston appeared on the red carpet in a revealing dress” story, which when you get right down to it, is the story that draws in readers and viewers.
Compare circulations:
People Magazine: 3.5m
National Review: 150,000
Since 1 in 5 now work for government, any suggestions will be met with bottles and rocks.
BTTT
I'm not sure today's crop of newsreaders on TV knows the difference.
Longwinded, I’m afraid you’re right. And if it seemed pointless, I expect its length would contribute to its opacity. And it doesn’t go from point A to point B as smoothly as I’d like. Perhaps I can achieve a Cliff Notes version:
We all know the problem called “bias in the media;” what to do about it is the topic of this thread. TheZMan, perfectly on target IMHO, focuses on the bias in journalism, because you can’t actually insist on neutrality in fictional storytelling without absurd censorship. IMHO. And we do not, as TheZMan emphasizes, wish to “destroy the village in order to save it.” We want to keep the First Amendment intact. Full stop.I’m sorry, I’m long again. We live in a world of Newspeak, not English, and that means that it is difficult to be clear and concise. You may have thought that you would get a flame war response to your criticism - but I want criticism. I want to clarify my understanding of this exact issue, and promote thought in others as well. And you at least responded.The overarching problem is how to constrain government to be small enough, and humble enough, to allow for the maximum freedom consistent with public order. It is human nature for the people in any organization to want to make that organization more important. This applies to government, and it applies to journalism. In American polity, it takes big journalism to enable and justify big government. The bigger (more unified) the journalism, the bigger it will enable and justify the government in becoming.
Historically our journalistic institutions were small, and they didn’t agree on much of anything. There was freer ideological competition because the various journalistic institutions were independent. Then, along came the telegraph. The telegraph, and - hard on its heels - the Associated Press. The AP was aggressively monopolistic in nature - it cut exclusive deals with telegraph lines to preclude the existence of competitive wire services, and it insisted that journalists were “objective.”
Trying to be objective is of course a laudable pursuit. But ironically, when it comes to objectivity the situation is the opposite of what Star Wars’ Yoda declaimed. Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no ‘try.’” The situation with objectivity is, Try, or try not - there is no ‘do.’” Because you can never know that you have done it, that you have achieved full objectivity. Thus, when you claim to be objective, the claim denies itself - if you think you are objective, you do not understand yourself, and you are sure of something which is not true.
The result is that an organization which tries to - indeed, fabulously succeeds at - convincing the public that its reports are all objective not only is not actually objective but it is hypocritical about it. Logically, all objective reports would be non-contradictory, and the AP definitely achieves that. It achieves unity, but not objectivity. The unity it defaults to is, inevitably, self interest. Journalism’s interest is in simultaneously being perceived as representing the public interest, and at the same time interesting the public. How many times have you heard a journalist claim that journalism is objective in reporting the sensational story because doing so "follows the rules” - and yet those rules are designed to interest the public and have nothing to do with the public interest?
I am saying that journalism as such is inherently not conservative, even is inherently opposed to conservatism - and that is no cause for shame to conservatives. I am saying that you can hold the First Amendment as sacrosanct and still make a very legitimate case against the Associated Press. And when I say, “Associated Press” I do not merely mean the institution itself. I include in that, the members of the “Associated” Press. Membership in the AP corrupts the member news organization.
And I am saying that there are laws against that. Anti Trust Laws. Tort laws enabling civil suits against organizations conspiring against the rights of citizens to equality before the law. And there are laws which are unconstitutional because they conflict with equality under the law. McCain-Feingold, for example, abridges freedom of speech and press - unless of course you are a member of the AP. Journalistic “shield laws” give special rights to journalists.
I am saying that the FCC assigns a license to broadcast that you or I can’t get, and assigns the licensee with fiduciary responsibility which is never enforced. And the standard for a homogenized journalism should be impossibly high, which is another way of saying that the AP must be broken up. It would take a civil suit, appealed to SCOTUS, to accomplish that.
I am saying that an “objective” journalism will always be an anti conservative journalism, and that a conservative voice must be an explicitly, and can be unapologetically, conservative.
The trouble with that question, IMHO, is that Senator Joseph McCarthy was not railroaded by a “conservative media” but by the “objective” journalism of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Attempting objectivity - openly scrutinizing how "where you stand” might “depend on where you sit” is of course laudable. But claiming to actually be objective is the very opposite of that. And of course the establishment in America is all about that sort of faux “objectivity” - the appearance of objectivity with none of the substance of a serious attempt at objectivity. The appearance of objectivity and the reality of mere uniformity.
At one time newspapers were recognized for what they are...a vehicle to carry the owner/publishers opinion and the pseudo objectivity of the Journalism Schools unknown.
Can you imagine Hearst being “objective “ about his stories and competitors? hardly, but he did have a clarity of purpose that obvious to all....money.
Todays papers have no real idea why they exist, pretend to be objective and are going broke.
“We all know the problem called “bias in the media;” what to do about it is the topic of this thread”
Hence my suggestion that conservatives buy one of the failing papers. Make it a sort of Rush Limbaugh and FR in print. And it would be that “conservative voice must be an explicitly, and can be unapologetically, conservative”.
Hence my suggestion that conservatives buy one of the failing papers. Make it a sort of Rush Limbaugh and FR in print. And it would be that “conservative voice must be an explicitly, and can be unapologetically, conservative”.“We all know the problem called “bias in the media;” what to do about it is the topic of this thread”
Right. But, being conservative and thus minimizing superficiality, it could have a less urgent deadline - most of the early newspapers were weeklies. And some had no deadline at all, and just went to press when the printer was good and ready.But I’m just not sure you are then talking about a “news”paper. Do you buy a paper belonging to the AP? That’s how you get the cornucopia of news stories - but then, those stories have the pseudo-objective slant which is actually left wing.
On a more personal level...I just don’t read or buy the mags and papers. None. It seems enough other people feel the same way too.
I hear ya. We still get the Wall Street Journal. More for the editorial page, mostly. But we do look at other things, too.
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