Posted on 09/14/2001 7:02:19 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
The framers of our Constitution gave carte blance protection to “speech” and “the press”. They did not grant that anyone was then in possession of complete and unalloyed truth, and it was impossible that they should be able to a priori institutionalize the truth of a future such human paragon even if she/he/it were to arrive.
At the time of the framing, the 1830s advent of mass marketing was in the distant future. Since that era, journalism has positioned itself as the embodiment of nonpartisan truth-telling, and used its enormous propaganda power to make the burden of proof of any “bias” essentially infinite. If somehow you nail them dead to rights in consistent tendentiousness, they will merely shrug and change the subject. And the press is protected by the First Amendment. That is where conservatives have always been stuck.
And make no mistake, conservatives are right to think that journalism is their opponent. Examples abound so that any conservative must scratch his/her head and ask “Why?” Why do those whose job it is to tell the truth tell it so tendentiously, and even lie? The answer is bound and gagged, and lying on your doorstep in plain sight. The money in the business of journalism is in entertainment, not truth. It is that imperative to entertain which produces the perspective of journalism.
And that journalism does indeed have a perspective is demonstrated every day in what it considers a good news story, and what is no news story at all. Part of that perspective is that news must be new--fresh today--as if the events of every new day were of equal importance with the events of all other days. So journalism is superficial. Journalism is negative as well, because the bad news is best suited to keep the audience from daring to ignore the news. Those two characteristics predominate in the perspective of journalism.
But how is that related to political bias? Since superficiality and negativity are anthema to conservatives there is inherent conflict between journalism and conservatism.. By contrast, and whatever pious intentions the journalist might have, political liberalism simply aligns itself with whatever journalism deems a “good story.” Journalists would have to work to create differences between journalism and liberalism, and simply lack any motive to do so. Indeed, the echo chamber of political “liberalism” aids the journalist--and since liberalism consistently exacerbates the issues it addresses, successful liberal politicians make plenty of bad news to report.
The First Amendment which protects the expression of opinion must also be understood to protect claims by people of infallibility--and to forbid claims of infallibility to be made by the government. What, after all, is the point of elections if the government is infallible? Clearly the free criticism of the government is at the heart of freedom of speech and press. Freedom, that is, of communication.
By formatting the bands and standardizing the bandwiths the government actually created broadcasting as we know it. The FCC regulates broadcasting--licensing a handful of priveledged people to broadcast at different frequency bands in particular locations. That is something not contemplated in the First Amendment, and which should never pass constitutional muster if applied to the literal press. Not only so, but the FCC requires application for renewal on the basis that a licensee broadcaster is “operating in the public interest as a public trustee.” That is a breathtaking departure from the First Amendment.
No one questions the political power of broadcasting; the broadcasters themselves obviously sell that viewpoint when they are taking money for political advertising. What does it mean, therefore, when the government (FCC) creates a political venue which transcends the literal press? And what does it mean when the government excludes you and me--and almost everyone else--from that venue in favor of a few priviledged licensees? And what does it mean when the government maintains the right to pull the license of anyone it does allow to participate in that venue? It means a government far outside its First Amendment limits. When it comes to broadcasting and the FCC, clearly the First Amendment has nothing to do with the case.
The problem of journalism’s control of the venue of argument would be ameliorated if we could get them into court. In front of SCOTUS they would not be permitted to use their mighty megaphones. And to get to court all it takes is the filing of a civil suit. A lawsuit must be filed against broadcast journalism, naming not only the broadcast licensees, but the FCC.
We saw the tendency of broadcast journalism in the past election, when the delay in calling any given State for Bush was out of all proportion to the delay in calling a state for Gore, the margin of victory being similar--and, most notoriously, the state of Florida was wrongly called for Gore in time to suppress legal voting in the Central Time Zone portion of the state, to the detriment of Bush and very nearly turning the election. That was electioneering over the regulated airwaves on election day, quite on a par with the impact that illegal electioneering inside a polling place would have. It was an enormous tort.
And it is on that basis that someone should sue the socks off the FCC and all of broadcast journalism.
Journalism has a simbiotic relation with liberal Democrat politicians, journalists and liberal politicians are interchangable parts. Print journalism is only part of the press (which also includes books and magazines and, it should be argued, the internet), and broadcast journalism is no part of the press at all. Liberals never take issue with the perspective of journalism, so liberal politicians and journalists are interchangable parts. The FCC compromises my ability to compete in the marketplace of ideas by giving preferential access addresses to broadcasters, thus advantaging its licensees over me. And broadcast journalism, with the imprimatur of the government, casts a long shadow over elections. Its role in our political life is illegitimate.
The First Amendment, far from guaranteeing that journalism will be the truth, protects your right to speak and print your fallible opinion. Appeal to the First Amendment is appeal to the right to be, by the government or anyone else’s lights, wrong. A claim of objectivity has nothing to do with the case; we all think our own opinions are right.
When the Constitution was written communication from one end of the country to the othe could take weeks. Our republic is designed to work admirably if most of the electorate is not up to date on every cause celebre. Leave aside traffic and weather, and broadcast journalism essentially never tells you anything that you need to know on a real-time basis.
. . . and that is exactly correct. Republicans' vision of "America the Beautiful" is an entire continental nation in which all people peacefully cooperate to their mutual benefit, and of a stock market which never crashes but still increases at an annual rate of about 10%.
Journalism--all socialism--lives and dies by deviations of reality from that Republican vision, real or imaginary. For example, the "lowest quintile of the income distribution" is a perennial favorite. No socialist likes to discuss or admit that that quintile is loaded with young people who are just getting started--and even no few who have a quite respectable salary rate but, having only graduated in June, have only six months' salary to show at the end of the year.
Not everything for which there is public demand is good; there are notable cases of such things being illegal.
Consider the case of election-day journalism here. There are laws against my talking politics with my neighbor while we are standing in line ("queued up") waiting to vote. Is that fair and reasonable? Yes, in principle--even tho it bans something we'd do without a moment's hesitation at most other times and places. It is part of the right to a secret ballot, and that is deemed important enough that it is supported despite the fact that it greatly enhances opportunity for fraud in the count. In order to get those early indications of election results journalists must intrude on that privacy. In his book (At Any Cost) on the 2000 election, Bill Sammon points out that the "scientifically selected" precincts from which journalism gets its early data are in practice simply those precincts from which they are able to thus intrude enough to get data.
So in the first instance our election-night reports are based on data the very collection of which is subject to moral/legal challenge. Laying that aside, there is the issue of influence involved. All voters west of the Eastern Time Zone are given reports from the Eastern Zone before the polls close, and I know no one who thinks that has no effect on the results. Democrats were furious, for example, when in 1980 Mr. Carter conceded to Mr. Reagan so early that it affected turnout for other candidates in the Pacific Time Zone.
Money is styled "the mother's milk of politics" in this country, and that money goes largely for broadcast advertising. It was expected in advance that the decision in Florida could easily tip the balance in the 2000 election, as it ultimately did. Just as a thought experiment, imagine that time is frozen just before journalism began announcing that "Gore has won Florida." Imagine that Jeb and GW Bush, knowing only what they knew then, suddenly had a few days to fundraise to buy off that erroneous call until the polls closed in the Pacific Zone. How much money would they have been able and willing to raise, assuming while we're at it that there are no limits on individual contributions?
Without that early and erroneous call of Florida for Gore, Bush would have won Florida in a (comparative) walk because of greater turnout in conservative precincts of Florida which are in the Central Time Zone. All Mr. Gore's fatuous challenges would have been mooted, and the decision would, ironically, have been known almost a month sooner without broadcast journalism than in fact was the case. Furthermore, although the in the actual event the final Electoral College result depended on Mr. Bush's winning Florida, he lost so many states by so little that we will never know if that would have been the case without broadcast journalism's pernicious effects on that election.
The erroneous call of Florida was only the most egregious case; there were "dogs that didn't bark" all over the electoral map. The delay between poll closing and the calling of a state for a candidate should have depended only on the margin of victory in that state and not on the identity of the winning candidate. But had that been true, voters in western states with open polls would have treated to the intelligence that Mr. Gore had lost, among other states, both his home state of Tennessee and Mr. Clinton's home state of Arkansas.
The record of broadcast journalism on election day 2000 is thus indefensible, and the question of whether the tendentiousness was malice or incompetence is moot. If the FCC cannot tell the difference it is incompetent to perform its stated mission; if it can and has not done so, it is worse than that. The bottom line is that the FCC's stated mission is unconstitutional, and should always have been seen to be so.
"Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," by Jerry Mander.Just got the book, and scanned it. Interesting, tho I confess to less enthusiasm about its environmental extremism than less conservative people (like my daughter) would have. In fact I've submitted it to her attention, as it seems to reinforce my thesis from a quite different perspective.
[laughs] Yes, the author is a lefty. However, to my eyes, he approaches all the technical/social issues of media strictly from a cause & effect perspective. His personal politics emerge in the book mostly in examples of how he himself got started thinking about media & society (well, thinking other than as a professional ad man), and when he cites examples of people/groups attempting to use media for one agenda or another.
I didn't find him to be offensively lefty, and I didn't detect anything overtly political about his presentation of the technologies of meda. But he was definitely to the left as a person.
(For what it's worth, Amazon has a book credited to "Jerry Mander" -- I have no idea if it's the same Jerry Mander -- called The Wizard of "IS": The Short, Ugly Story of the Impeachment of Billy Jeff Clinton and His Trailer Park Presidency This is reviewed as being a _very_ right wing take on Clinton. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same Mander, however -- although he seemed like a lefty, he seemed like an honest lefty and I don't think an honest lefty could have liked Clinton any more than an honest conservative...)
Mark W.
Your sentiments echo mine, much like the screen name. :)
The internet rules. Big Media drools.
Remember, the founding fathers were religious, and expected that future politicians would be also. The never imagined that some politicians of today would be so lacking in morals and ethics, and prostitute themselves to the press. Nor did they imagine the presstitutes of today that would do anything for a story - partisan politics, subverting elections, dumbing down America, leaking national secrets, even attempting to disclose military information during a war.
Journalists once delivered the news, today they deliver the slant.
There is a direct analogy between the press freedom and the First Amendment, on the one hand, and gun rights and the Second Amendment on the other. It is no accident that the same people who think guns make people too dangerous, also proclaim that the format of a printed article makes the fallibility of human opinion too dangerous.
By that I mean that one might take an article printed on the Editorial Page to be flawed but constitutionally protected opinion and yet to take the same article printed on the front page to be irresponsible and dangerous. In either case the article is in the public domain, and if the idea is dangerous it isn't made harmless for being put on the editorial page.
Jefferson and Hamilton waged political war in sponsored newspapers back when there was no such thing as an editorial page--meaning not that there was no editorial opinion in a paper but that nothing in the paper was "positioned" as being anything but human opinion. My brief against broadcast journalism is that it is "positioned" by the government as being "in the public interest."
The government must never be accorded the authority to define truth. Ever grant the government that right, and eternal incumbent protection will be "truth." But what we have now is similar, in that herd journalism gathers around an opinion and protects consensus and calls it "truth." I played a trick by responding to #41 rather than to your actual post number; the "TO 41" button goes to my analysis of liberal herd journalism already in the thread.
And I agree - to an extent. Our founding fathers were quite understanding about the politics practiced by the media of the day, which is why the 1st Amendment recognizes a free press, AND the rights of all Americans to practice free "speech". The right to dissent vocally is not just a right reserved for the "talking heads" and pundits.
So we have 4 groups, government, the media, and the people, and one more I'll reach in a moment. How do we know what the news is?
For the very reasons you describe (herd mentality), the media attempts to distort the news - intentionally or unintentionally, he result is the same. Consider the 2000 election fiasco - every network abandoned ethics to be the 1st network with the results. It's the same with almost every major story - damn the truth and correctness, just be the 1st with the story (almost the same here on FR with Breaking News). FOX News is/was a breath of fresh air for many, and is succeeding because it is different than the other networks. But how long will it last?
Now for my opinion of who really controls the news - Advertisers. Consider the differences in advertisers on each network - how long will it be before more liberal companies begin to advertise on FOX to increase market share. And will FOX then bow to the demands (to change it's bias) placed upon it by those advertisers?
The media will continue to report/distort the major stories, but will still slant their reporting to "follow the money". The truth is not accorded a place in modern broadcast journalism.
IMHO advertisers pay protection money as much as anything else. You have these bigmouth journalists demanding that they say whether or not they have stopped beating their wives . . . and blowing up pickup trucks to make them look unsafe. If you can tell the difference between a journalist and a plaintiff's attorney and a liberal politician I think there is a distinction but not a difference. Anyone who can do one thing, can do the other.
The media will continue to report/distort the major stories, but will still slant their reporting to "follow the money". The truth is not accorded a place in modern broadcast journalism.Yes, by all means follow the money. If journalism fails as entertainment, it fails financially. Gripping the attention of an audience is the sine qua non of profitable journalism (and in the ideology of "the press" such profits as accrue to successfully entertaining journalism--or even investment in journalistic enterprise assembled from some other source--are in politics inherently cleaner than your "filthy lucre", or mine).
In competition with journalism which "accentuates the NEGATIVE," any attempt at "conservative journalism" would inevitably fail as mass-market entertainment. Besides, the deadlines of journalism focus it on the moment--if journalism is your only information source and if you do not heavily discount what you read/hear, you will at all times think that, in the famous words of Henny Penny, "The sky is falling!" If you have a conservative bone in your body, you can't write journalism (I'll post a link to confirmational testimony elsewhere on this same thread).
So journalism is anticonservative before it even has the circulation potential to talk to advertisers. The advertisers, having actual rather than merely theoretical competition, are divided and conquered by journalism's protection racket. Journalism herds together because there is safety and strength in numbers; the fact that constitutionally illicit broadcast journalism herds along with constitutionally protected print journalism is in that light hardly remarkable. Were it otherwise, the scales would fall from the eyes of the public and broadcast journalism would stand revealed as the naked emperor.
Note that I draw a distinction between journalism and commentary. Think of the conservative "news" programs--Paul Harvey's News and Comment and Fox News Channel. The distinction is that journalism will not recognize conservative comment as being journalism. Fox News' "conservative" reputation, IMHO, derives strictly from commentary which is at least balanced if not actually conservative. Rush Limbaugh makes the same distinction when he says "I am not a journalist."
Under the First Amendment there cannot be such thing as a journalism license (at least for print), so it is not necessary for Limbaugh to cede the point but it is tactically expedient to do so because then conservatives have the word "journalism" to kick around with no risk of "friendly fire" collateral damage.
I recently did a movie production, and for my "cameo", I played one of those teevee-teehee "reporters" from one of the local snooze stations. I wrote the "report" as strongly biased, over-the-top, sleazy newstype as I could to attempt to create as strong a parody as I could, and when I saw the finished tape, it was so tame that it couldn't hold a candle to the real snooze guys on the teevee than evening. Just shows to go ya that you have to work hard to get to be in-credible. And these guys do it daily, and make it look easy! Sheesh!As I promised in #73, here is testimony that a conservative can't be a journalist as the term is now defined; this post is a reply to the source of the quote so that the "to 50" button below takes you to the full text of the long and illuminating reply exerpted above in the blockquote.
Sensationalism of the real news. The ability and willingness of the media to present biased news. Biases favoring advertisers, and possible extortion/distortion or stories for media revenues and ratings.
What's missing?
Morals, ethics, integrity, courage and honesty.
You're right.
Haven't you heard? They've changed that.
Now it's....
"All the News that Fits OUR Agenda"
Bump back at you, and checking to see if John Robinson has locked out replies to old threads . . .
BTTT! and bookmark.
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