Posted on 02/03/2015 6:46:36 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
We in America have a problem with media bias. Who or where does it come from? What did those people say, write, or do? Did it evolve by multiple steps, or by one step? When did the use of narrative get introduced?
In an attempt to answer some of these questions and others, the result is a paper that I have recently written, here. I put it up online for all to read and examine, and I hope there will be those who will take the time to follow the footnotes back and read the original source material. These are things we need to know.
I personally have done a lot of research into some of the early pioneers of modern journalism, because of their relation to progressivism. The historian Richard Hofstadter once wrote: (page 186)
"It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind, and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer."
It is clear to anybody that thinks about it that a "reporter-reformer" simply cannot exist. At best a "reporter-reformer" is an advocate, an activist. At worst, they're a malcontent with ill designs. But the link between the early progressives and the journalists of that era is what's so important here, and it is what I tried to focus in on the most in the paper.
Walter Lippmann is considered the father of modern journalism, because he is arguably the biggest reason why we have "objective journalism" today. Take the time to read Walter Lippmann, you would see that the only thing journalism today is about is (in Lippmann's own words) the "Manufacture of Consent". Walter Lippmann was a socialist, and also was a co-founder to The New Republic.
The journalist William Thomas Stead once wrote about his ideology called "Government by Journalism"(text) in which he described the power that journalists have. He wrote:
They decide what their readers shall know, or what they shall not know.
Coming out of the era of Yellow Journalism, Stead's ideal became compounded when Lippmann wrote: (page 355)
It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler form the reader enters into the news. In order that he shall enter he must find a familiar foothold in the story, and this is supplied to him by the use of stereotypes. They tell him that if an association of plumbers is called a "combine" it is appropriate to develop his hostility; if it is called a "group of leading business men" the cue is for a favorable reaction.It is in a combination of these elements that the power to create opinion resides. Editorials reinforce.
This is the basis of modern journalism. Using key words to describe some groups favorably, others unfavorably, and the editorials reinforce. We see it every day, don't we? On the surface we see claims of objectivity, but in reality we have nothing but supplied stereotypes and narratives from modern reporter-reformers. After 100 years, they're still at it.
Walter Lippmann's most important book, "Public Opinion" is the book you should read, and is in the public domain. You can find the text here, here, and here. If you do not have the time to read it, then I would like to read it to you. Download the MP3s from here. Its that important. Stead's essay "Government by Journalism" is also an hour well spent.
Here is the paper.
Journalists refer to the Dark Ages, to the Inquisition, to the Salem Witch Trials, and to the Nazis, but rarely to the French Revolution, Bolshevism, or to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. So, for them, the Left is virtually without historical guilt, and its excesses need not be warned against.
“This is the basis of modern journalism. Using key words to describe some groups favorably, others unfavorably, and the editorials reinforce. “
There is something to be said for banning all adjectives in reporting, thus making the writer’s value judgements harder to poke through. It forces him to select nouns that will rise like a boil on the skin as his bias, should it be acute, emerges.
An interesting and satisfying history.
But you leave out any comprehension of media’s motivation to advance progressivism.
The media isn't "biased" toward the DNC. They *are* the DNC, part and parcel.
You are not going to get a fair shake from these people, they are the opposing party. And really, that isn't the problem. Depending on your ideological enemies to tell your story is the problem, and after decades of complaining about "bias" in the DNC press, we still have Repubs kissing up to these people, letting them organize our debates, reading about ourselves in their eyes and then spending our energy trying to convince that, no, we're not like that, honest.
When the answer is to create our own media outlets. We've done that to some degree, with talk radio and internet. But for the most part we've abdicated the most important battlefields.
The war of ideas is fought mostly on three fields: the schools and universities, the news media, and the entertainment media, and we have abandoned all three to our ideological enemies. Let your enemy decide what is true, what is important, what is good, what is beautiful, and let your enemy define you to you, and you have no chance. You will have what you have, generation after generation growing up with no idea of the principles that motivate us, and those who do dimly understand them suffering from an embarrassing battered-wife-syndrome as they search for ways to make the media stop hating them.
Thank you for taking the time to bring what you have to light.
Very few would make that type of effort.
Sincerely, Shadow
Bookmark
There are two theories of history: the “forces of history” argument and the “great man” argument.A Winston Churchill changes history, when “the forces of history” said he couldn’t. But then, there are the people you cite in this article. Those people had the forces of history squarely behind them, and they rode them for all they were worth.
The forces of history I have in mind are the insatiable desire of the public to know what is going on, and the telegraph wire news service. The telegraph made it possible to receive news reports from thousands of miles away, in virtual real time. The wire service made it economically practical for the public to have yesterday’s news from across the continent in the newspaper today. But the wire service, constituting a virtual meeting of all major journalists, inherently tended to unify journalism. Any motive common to journalists as a group would in the long run be forwarded by the unifying tendency of the continual virtual meeting.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of NationsTheodore Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts” - but journalists are by their nature not “the man in the arena” but the critic. And if the journalist is to count, then the critic must count and not “the man in the arena.” The opposite of “the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena” is, “you didn’t build that.” Which is pure cynicism. And also, obviously, leftism. IMHO, cynicism of “the man in the arena” - the person who works to a bottom line - is the very definition of leftism. To be cynical about performance is to be a sycophant to the critic.There is no difference between the leftist politician criticizing “the man in the arena” and the journalist doing the same. They are utterly simpatico, and the only criticism a leftist politician can expect from a journalist is that he is not leftist enough. Which, when the choice is between that politician and one who is less cynical, is merely a backhanded form of praise.
Greetings ProgressingAmerica:
Thank you once again for uncovering more on the hidden agendas of Progressivism.
Cheers,
OLA
Got it - Thanks.
Yes, it certainly deserves a wider audience.
Good research.
5.56mm
Thanks for the BEEP!
At the end of the day, the MSM is in the business of “Selling”.
They are not selling their audience a product or service. They are selling a mindset, a way of thinking about things that ultimately advances their agenda. Their agenda is to create uncertainty in ones self while promoting an ever increasing reliance on Government.
There are many tried and true sales tactics/concepts that the MSM uses to sell their socialist goals.
1. Know your audience. (they know that most of their viewers will not take the time to fact check them). Low info voters.
2. Speak from a position of authority. (experts say you should do this or believe that ......)
3. Facts tell, stories SELL !!!!
This is the hook.
Conservatives are great at writing and understanding “white papers” and the facts that surround every issue, but it is the progressive that weaves a story around those facts which sets the emotional hooks into their audience.
Conservatives have a habit of considering their audience as intelligent and thoughtful, and address them with respect. We think that if people are provided with the facts they will come to the same conclusions as us.
Progressives, on the other hand, consider their audience as malleable fools that will believe virtually anything they tell them.
The progressive tells people that they are stupid if they don’t fall in line with what they claim is the mainstream thinking.
The progressive tells people that people can overcome their guilt for thinking differently by adopting “group think”.
The progressive is on a mission to destroy the individual.
There is an unseen relationship between journalists and professors that affects us all. I plan on addressing it in the future.
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