How Mainstream Media Destroys Democracy, What To Do About It

One of the most powerful media figures has blamed the newspapers downward plunge in circulation and profits on the fact that they have forfeited the trust and loyalty of their readers. But I think his basis for saying this is misplaced or incomplete.

According to Rupert Murdoch, who offered this diagnosis of newspaper troubles, the problem lies in the "complacency and condescension" in some newsrooms. He says, "The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly - and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception."

I'd say the problem runs far deeper than that. The problem is that the mainstream media has now become a lapdog and bootlicker of the Obama administration and during the campaign, and now during the transition, have demonstrated they are simply cheerleaders and propagandists for President-elect Barack Obama and have totally abandoned journalistic standards calling for fair and balanced reporting on Mr. Obama and on other national issues. In my view, the mainstream media pulled off a virtual coup by defrauding the voters into accepting an unqualified candidate who was never vetted properly.

The mainstream media continues to amaze even its most critical observers by going ever deeper into the journalistic sewer. I keep thinking the mainstream media can't get any worse, but it continues to prove I'm wrong.

Mr. Obama is now in the early stages of his transition period, and already the front-page of Newsweek portrays him as Lincoln, Time magazine shows him as FDR, The New York Times calls the young voters the "O-generation," and ABC is putting out a DVD called "Yes, We Can: the Barack Obama Story." Howard Kurtz, media writer of the Washington Post, described this all as a "giddy sense of boosterism." He should have added an unprofessional and biased slant on the news. Perhaps he might have also said the mainstream media have been drinking too much Obama Kool-Aid, leading to the Obamania Derangement Syndrome.

Charles Krauthammer, the great columnist, said after reading one Newsweek cover story on Mr. Obama, that it would not have any adjectives left over to describe the Second Coming. During the campaign and transition the mainstream media have done everything but officially declare Mr. Obama a Messiah, Savior and the Second Coming. They only imply that, and their coverage has come close to canonizing and deifying the Great One. There is no limit to the extent the mainstream media will now go to push their Chosen One, and if the present trend continues he will be declared a saint for his inaugural address.

Worse than all that is the mainstream media makes no pretense of being fair and balanced. As they wallow in their journalistic malpractice, they have no shame. Even literature prepared by the Obama campaign or the Obama administration would not be so over the edge in selling Mr. Obama, as they would fear readers might suspect that what is too good to be true probably is - a fraud. The mainstream media has abandoned all journalistic principles and shows no shame while they produce an endless flow of biased, dishonest and fraudulent journalism.

In my view, it's not the mainstream newspapers' complacency and condescension that caused the loss of trust and confidence; it's their fundamental dishonesty and failure to deliver the fair and balanced reporting and information the public wants. The public doesn't want to read Pravda or the writing, raving and ranting of a Joseph Goebbels-type that tells the big lie to make his points. That's where we are, and that's what is dooming the mainstream media.

I would say the public has moved even beyond a position of distrust toward the mainstream media. I for one see it as a force more dangerous to democracy than terrorism. We have been successful in fighting terrorism and keeping the homeland secure. But the mainstream media is not under control and in fact is getting worse by the day and consequently more damaging to democracy by the day. So there is not only distrust of the mainstream media but also positive and intense hatred for what it is and what it is doing.

The bottom line is that readers simply don't trust the mainstream media, and that's fatal to any media outlet. Mr. Murdoch got both sides of the trust issue right. First, he said the public has loss trust in the media. Second, he also mentions the other half of the trust issue, when he said the editors and reporters don't trust their readers. Mr. Murdoch wrote, "A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves."

Mr. Murdoch does make one critically important point by explaining some of the impact of all the new technology and sources of news that we now have. Mr. Murdoch said, "It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news - and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today, editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren't satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven't always responded well when the public calls them to account."

I know how arrogant and indifferent to criticism the mainstream media can be. I've been involved in several conferences with Philadelphia Inquirer editors about its anti-Israel bias, and afterward, I found I would have been better off talking to the wall, which might have been more receptive and I know would have had more sense. This was under the Knight-Ridder management teams, but from the new owner's product I see only marginal improvement. This means that the public can avoid the toxic journalism of the mainstream media simply by avoiding it, boycotting it and finding alternatives they can trust.

The mainstream media malpractice during and after the election represents the greatest malfeasance and media failure in history and if not counteracted has the potential to inflict grievous and even fatal damage to the greatest democracy in the history of the world.

If that's not bad enough, it gets worse. The public doesn't seem to care. Sen. McCain tried to make media malpractice into a campaign issue, but that had no traction. Here's the way Stephen Spruiell explained it, writing in the National Review (Dec. 1) in an article entitled "Going Mainstream: The Right Faces New Media Realities":

"The McCain campaign complained mightily about these and other instances of media malpractice, and the public shrugged. In perhaps the most blatant case of overt bias against McCain, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said that each complaint from the McCain campaign made him want to 'find the toughest McCain story we've got and put it on the front page, just to show them they can't get away with it.'

"When the top newspaper editor in the country is openly discussing his strategy to attack the Republican nominee through the news pages and almost no one cares, complaining about bias just isn't going to accomplish much.

"The mainstream media have staked their future on Obama; that was evident in the way they conducted themselves during the campaign. Economic and political forces are driving notionally objective news organizations toward overt partisanship. Now is the time to invest in conservative alternatives and work to secure mainstream reception for conservative voices. The media game has changed and have to get better at playing it."

As long as so many people rely on the mainstream media for their news and information, Republicans and conservatives are going to operate under a serious handicap. So there are some remedies.

First, the Republicans have to do more to directly communicate news and information to supporters, potential supporters and everyone else. This is much more practicable with the advent of the Internet, e-mail, blogs and all the rest. In an interesting article, Patrick Ruffini of the National Review (Dec. 1), in an article titled "Roots of Defeat: Let Us Study And Emulate The Left's Online Tactics," there is an explanation of how the Democrats used the Internet, how they have done a better job of using the new technology, and how the Republicans have to catch up and surpass them in the use of the Internet and the new technology.

The Republicans don't do a good job of getting the word out. I don't think I received one good document or e-mail from the Republican National Committee setting forth material designed to help sell their view and refute their opponent's arguments.

Second, the pubic has to be mobilized to effectively criticize mainstream media bias by all means available, such as letters-to-the-editor, calls to talk shows and support of groups that fight media bias.

Third, the public has to start inflicting economic damage on the dishonest, fraudulent, and biased mainstream media. That means individual and organized boycotts of the mainstream media, canceling subscriptions and discontinuing advertising in them.

Fourth, the public has to start going to alternative media outlets that can be trusted to give the whole picture. There are hundreds of such sites and here are some good places to start:

* Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, The Washington Times, The New York Post, and The Philadelphia Bulletin. One of the best conservative papers, The New York Sun, recently folded. So if you want these alternative voices to survive, you better support them.

* Broadcasters: Fox News Network and WNTP-AM (990) both around the clock. The 990 lineup includes Bill Bennett, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Savage, Mark Levine, and Mike Gallagher, many of which have excellent Web sites of their own. Also Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh on WPHT-AM (1210).

Fifth, support the Republican Party and other voices of opposition that provide the kind of information that the mainstream media ignores. You have to put your money where your mouth is to assure that the public gets both sides of the ongoing political controversies.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@ thebulletin.us.

there should be fundamental truths regarding the party and one of those should ALWAYS be fiscal conservatism and responsibly, less government in our lives, and upholding the traditional interpretation of the constitution as opposed to changing as one sees fit to fit their new degrading morals

Excellent thoughts and an even better job of putting them to words! This is the one line, though, that most resonated with me. I could not agree with it more. Your comments on Bush ring so true. Personally, I love the guy because of his war on terror. He tried to hold the rate of spending growth down and did increase tax revenues with tax cuts, but the last several months showed that he sold out his principles.

I see two problems. First is within Washington. There are way too many special interest groups that want their entitlements and favors. Trying to beat back the hand of special interest welfare (or entitlements) is a daunting task and one that can easily burn out a group. Let's face it, change requires not only courage, but perseverence. As politicians desire longevity, the will to go against the stream can fade.

Secondly, the people themselves tend to vote in their self interests. Who does not like to vote themselves free goodies? The more problems we have as a nation, the more we tend to rely on gov't for the solution. As you know, that may make the situation better in the short term, but it certainly has severe long term ramifications.

As you so aptly pointed out, the party is bigger than any one person, including the president. Fighting against the tsunami of liberalism does burn people out. That is why there is a great need to have the core principles, or fundamental truths, ingrained in the party and its platform. The party needs to function regardless of who holds what positions.

Fortunately, most Americans are not stupid. If things get bad economically under a socialist Obama regime, then I suspect that people will vote the bum, and hopefully the political dogma, out of office. It will take a core set of fundamental truths and the courage to point out how these truths will fix economic malaise to put the GOP back in power.

Have a great weekend! I have greatly enjoyed reading your well thought out comments!

My interest is in the relation between Homogeneous Journalism^TM - what calls itself "the press," (as if the Constitution uniquely referred to journalism, even though journalism as we know it may scarcely be said to have existed in the founding era) - the First Amendment, and the various laws which touch on the ability of individual people outside of the Homogeneous Journalism^TM axis to influence public opinion. The "Campaign Finance Reform" laws - McCain-Feingold and its predecessors - fall into this category. But so also do rules of the FCC promoting journalism as a public service - and once, and possibly future, FCC rules of what it has styled "fairness."

The newspapers of the founding era were typically weeklies not dailies, and some even had no deadline and just went to press when the printer thought he was good and ready. Few newspapers were dailies because, in general, newspaper printers didn't have news sources to which the general public was in principle not privy. So "newspapers" at the time of the ratification of the First Amendment were more similar to opinion journals like the National Review or The Nation than they were like The New York Times or The Washington Post of today.
What changed between then and now? The telegraph. The telegraph, and the Associated Press. The AP was founded in 1848 as the New York Associated Press, and went national a few years later. But the AP was an aggressive monopolizer of the use of the telegraph to transmit news. According to Steve Boris,
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1945 . . . found the AP in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act . . .
The book News Over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 discusses some of the AP's monopolistic efforts. The AP was obviously a concentration of public influence, and it was challenged on that basis. The AP's response was to claim that its member newspapers famously were fractiously independent, and so the Associated Press itself was objective.
But the reality is that the Associated Press transformed the newspaper business from a fractious bunch of independent printers publishing their own opinions to the Homogeneous Journalism^TM news business with which we are familiar - in which, far from being fractious, journalists studiously avoid criticizing each other but instead claim that all journalists are "objective!" The AP made that transformation inevitable by changing the business model of the newspaper business to one in which reports from reporters not directly associated with a given newspaper make up much of that newspaper's most interesting content. So the "fractious membership" defense is no defense at all. Indeed, since nobody can print everything and since "Half the truth is often a great lie," it should be apparent that it is not possible to prove the negative that journalism is unbiased.
The Homogeneous Journalism^TM establishment exploits the very impossibility of proving its claim as a way of begging the question, "How do you expect us to prove that?" But with constitutional principle and the freedom and equality before the law which is the very raison d' etre of the Constitution at stake, there is no justification for allowing them to deflect the burden of proof back onto the people who plead for relief from a monopolistic establishment. Even so, it is a burden which the plaintiff can easily bear. Whole books have of course been written which document instances of egregious bias in, not just a single newspaper, but in a consensus of Homogeneous Journalism^TM without substantial exception. And web sites have been dedicated to that same task. And although Homogeneous Journalism^TM's "anecdotal evidence" defense gets tedious as more and more "anecdotes" are piled up, plaintiff need not appeal to anecdotal evidence at all, other than to note that the "anecdotes" do in fact exist.
But in fact the perspective of Homogeneous Journalism^TM is openly self-documented. Criticize a report for one-sidedness in reporting only the bad and not the good about the results of a particular policy, and the reporter will instantly reply that "bad news sells" and "If it bleeds, it leads" - all to the point the "No news is good news." Which is all very well from the point of view of the business interests of the newspaper - but which begs the question of whether the business interest of the newspaper is identical to the public interest. The result is following argument:

the business interest of the Homogeneous Journalism^TM is identical to the public interest.

therefore, whatever promotes the interest of Homogeneous Journalism^TM is in the public interest.

therefore, one-sided coverage of the effects of a public policy is in the public interest.
But where in that logic is there a proof of the starting premise? It is a planted axiom. A begged question, whenever Homogeneous Journalism^TM calls itself "the press."
And the same argument would apply to the very deadline structure of journalism, which starts from the premise that the interest of Homogeneous Journalism^TM is identical to the public interest and leads to the conclusion that, simply because of the passage of a 24 hour period since the last "important" newspaper was published, the fate of the Republic depends on whether or not another newspaper" is published, irrespective of the events of the day or lack thereof, to promote the idea that it is important to read the newspaper.
The idea that it is important to read the newspaper is obviously the fundamental business interest of journalism. And an obvious way to promote that idea is to cast aspersions on people whose performance is important to the well being of society and who are not well situated, either to reciprocate in kind, or to help promote the idea that it is important to read the newspaper. The idea that the government should regulate business more closely, and that the US military and for that matter American law enforcement officers generally are inept and/or egregiously brutal, would imply that it is important to read the newspaper to read criticism of the transgressions of important people. Any political party which promoted those ideas, therefore, would promote the primary interest of Homogeneous Journalism^TM - and would thereby insulate itself from criticism from Homogeneous Journalism^TM.
Homogeneous Journalism^TM rejects the idea that it is associated with a political party. But its refusal to publicize such association cannot prove that no such association exists de facto. And in fact that is transparently the case. There is in fact a political party associated with criticism of businessmen, the police, and the military - and the representatives of that party are systematically accorded positive labels by Homogeneous Journalism^TM. And the opponents of that party are consistently the target of the brickbats of Homogeneous Journalism^TM.
The effect of the claim that Homogeneous Journalism^TM is objective, and of laws which take that claim as a given, is to position journalists as holders of an unconstitutional title of nobility. Journalists are not to be held to the same standard as the people at large. The consequences of that presumption on the part of Homogeneous Journalism^TM are that

the past election campaign was conducted with wildly unequal funding for the two parties. The one which goes along and gets along with Homogeneous Journalism^TM being by far the better funded. It is an artifact of this particular election that the underfunded candidate was personally instrumental in the enactment of the McCain-Feingold law, and arguably that candidate had only himself to blame for his plight - but that logic ignores the reality of the compromise of the rights of those among the people who supported him only for lack of any other realistic venue to express profound reservations on the candidate and the party preferred by Homogeneous Journalism^TM.

over and above the difference in funding, Homogeneous Journalism^TM found it to be "in the public interest" to give dramatically closer scrutiny to the credentials of the sitting governor who was the vice presidential candidate of the opponent of the party which Homogeneous Journalism^TM prefers than to the credentials and associations of its preferred presidential candidate. This is indicative of the modus operandi of Homogeneous Journalism^TM; it typically expresses its tendency far less in what it says than what it does not say. Criticism of any candidate would be unexceptionable if proportioned to the importance of the candidate and to the seriousness of the charges and the substance behind them. It is not the criticism of one candidate but the systematic aversion to criticism of the other candidate - without significant exception - which expresses the strong preference of so-called "objective" journalists. This is such a consistent trend that if an article reports on a politician caught up in scandal but the article does not mention the party association of the embarrassed politician, it is essentially certain that that politician is a member of the party which promotes criticism of businessmen, the military, and the police.

Broadcast licenses are given on the basis that broadcasters perform a public service when they broadcast "objective" journalism which is actually biased against anyone who takes responsibility to work to a bottom line, and in favor of anyone who criticizes and second guesses those who do take responsibility.

Talk Radio and, make no doubt, Free Republic and the rest of the internet is threatened with government sanction solely on the basis that it does not support the fatuous claim that Homogeneous Journalism^TM makes to objectivity.

With that background, I ask the question - "How can any law in which the (unproven, unprovable, and factually false) "objectivity" of journalism is a planted axiom be squared with a First Amendment which forbids the government to enforce its idea of objectivity on religion, speech, press, or political assembly among the people?" In the realm of socialist politics, a Senator Schumer can rhetorically link censorship of conservative politics with censorship of pornography. But in the realm of law, which facts and logic are supposed to control, the answer to my question should IMHO be that that is absurd. If the government is permitted to define and enforce its idea of objectivity, what does the First Amendment actually mean?
The Republican Party presently is mounting a renewed challenge to the McCain-Feingold law. Assuming that FR lacks the resources to mount its own Supreme Court case, can we not at least submit a "Friend of the Court" brief raising the above points? What expense would we have to incur to do that?

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