Thank you for your clear and concise analysis of ist amendment broadcasting. I know that at present we do not have a "right to truth." That is the problem. With the advent of hi tech since the days of pamphleteering, the
MSM conglomerate has manipulated the masses in America
toward specific outcomes in politics. This is a form of mind control which is distinctly contagion to the well informed public necessary to maintain a democratic republic.
The evidence of this situation is all over the broadcast world. The most singular"created news" has happened simply to forward the seizure of power by the minority left in the USA. Note the truth of this in the conduct of Dims in the house on the 18th of Nov. , having one stated position for the broadcast media, AND then voting competely opposite on the floor of the House of Representatives!
There is an assumption of impunity. The American voter is simply a maleable entity!
With 1st ammendment protection of the press there needs to be a concommitant responsibility. Soon there must be a professional board established where reporters need to be liscensed. A blatant creation of news , or propagandizing of ANY public policy not based on facts, should be cause for censorship or "disbarment " from the reporting profession. It is an individual, not a corporate responsibility. Dan Rather resigned. He should have been prosecuted.
Reporters have a fiduciary duty to the public in exchange
for protection under the 1st ammendment, a responsibility that must be discharged, if we are to avoid the evolution of our grand democratic "experiment" towards being a bananna republic.
Will this cast a chill on reporting? At first maybe, BUT
any reporter who says for example, that there are people shooting each other in the streets when this is untrue, causing citizens to panic, injure themselves, or alter voting patterns, need to be prosecuted according to the standards expected of them by the people.The American people cannot be ruled and tyrannized by Urban mythology and jingoism.
Well you see, we already have what you think you want. Broadcasters are licensed, and they are supposed to tell the truth objectively. So if your idea were going to work, broadcast journalism would be ideal. But what in fact happens? As in any other regulated industry, the regulatory body ends up in the pocket of the industry it's supposed to regulate . . . and you end up with no competition (the regulation is supposed to make that unnecessary) and also no effective regulation.In fact, if your idea were going to work, broadcasting should have been even better back in the days of the Fairness Doctrine. That was an FCC rule which said that if you gave one side of an argument you had to give equal time to the other side. Who could argue with that? Ronald Reagan. Reagan pulled the plug on that rule, which had the effect of eliminating honest partisanship in favor of the exclusive broadcasting of arrogance under the banner of self-proclaimed "objectivity."
The key point to understand is that, under the First Amendment, The New York Times and The Washington Post are free of government regulation. They are free to write an editorial and put it on the front page and call it "objective journalism." They are and OUGHT TO BE free to do that, just like I am free to write this post and claim it is the truth. But appealing to the First Amendment is the very opposite to proving that you are objective.
That is, if I appeal to the First Amendment I am appealing to my right to be wrong - at the top of my voice. What the Times and the Post - and the rest of the liberal rags - do is basically a shell game. They claim to be "the press" - as if only the genre of nonfiction known as "journalism" fit that description (and as if book publishers do not). Having done so, they then want you to believe that they have special rights under the First Amendment because you need someone like them to tell you what is going on when the government is lying to you. They thereby beg the question of whether they are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Viola! "Proof" that the newspaper is objective.
It is proof of no such thing. But the broadcast journalist, who's legally obligated to be objective, latches onto that fallacy as if it were pure Socratic logic. The broadcast journalist goes along and gets along with the print journalist, and together they constitute an amazing propaganda establishment dedicated to preventing you from clearly seeing that their "emperor" has no clothes on.
In fact the use of their propaganda power to promote that fallacy is proof that they are not objective. It is far less problematic for a government licensee to broadcast Rush Limbaugh or Air America than it is for that licensee to broadcast the putatively "objective" but factually tendentious "CBS News."