My interest is in the relation between Homogeneous JournalismTM - 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 JournalismTM 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.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?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 JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM without substantial exception. And web sites have been dedicated to that same task. And although Homogeneous JournalismTM'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 JournalismTM 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:
But where in that logic is there a proof of the starting premise? It is a planted axiom. A begged question, whenever Homogeneous JournalismTM calls itself "the press."
- the business interest of the Homogeneous JournalismTM is identical to the public interest.
- therefore, whatever promotes the interest of Homogeneous JournalismTM is in the public interest.
- therefore, one-sided coverage of the effects of a public policy is in the public interest.
And the same argument would apply to the very deadline structure of journalism, which starts from the premise that the interest of Homogeneous JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM - and would thereby insulate itself from criticism from Homogeneous JournalismTM.
Homogeneous JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM. And the opponents of that party are consistently the target of the brickbats of Homogeneous JournalismTM.
The effect of the claim that Homogeneous JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM.
- over and above the difference in funding, Homogeneous JournalismTM 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 JournalismTM prefers than to the credentials and associations of its preferred presidential candidate. This is indicative of the modus operandi of Homogeneous JournalismTM; 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 JournalismTM makes to objectivity.
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?
An excellent article on the MSM Free fall...and as I shared with you on a previous thread, I've already taken the first step in putting a huge dent in the MSM's purse in canceling my cable subscription and that of my local newspaper, whose publisher is openly Gay and extremely hostile to Evangelicals.
...Also, my latest Tag line succinctly describes my contempt for and distrust of the MSM.
Is that needed? McCain-Feingold was rendered moot by Hussein by his credit-card overseas fundraising plot and his switch from public limits to unlimited private without losing a stroke. Perhaps our best tactic is to assume it never was a law, which is what our opposition does. Whenever we engage in a fight with the opposition and agree to use logic and the rule of law, we start out handicapped. The old Soviet Union was notorious for that tactics: "What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."
As far as the threat of the fairness doctrine, a similar tactic may be our best strategy. Simply ignore it. We have the technology and the expertise to go around them. Offshore servers, satellite radio, etc. They can't put us all in jail. With respect to the internet, a recent survey showed more people would prefer to give up their TV's than their internet connections. Government may have waited too late to try and control the internet. It's now Too Big to Fail.
Just a couple of thoughts while waiting for the coffee to brew early on a Saturday morning...
BTTT
Should it come about count me in.