I am not sure you have any right to prevent “most people” from getting their news from the MSM.
I guess you can use the libel laws to sue for information that is false.
The better solution is to build your own communications tool to present “our” version of the truth.
What most people forget is the titles of their local papers (Independent, Democrat, Republican) draws from history where the papers were mouthpieces for their political parties.
The “independent” media that we have today started in the depression. There is no historical foundation for a fair media in this country. If you believe there is any obligation for ANY fair mindedness in our press, you are not aware of the history of the media in the US. (I address the generic ‘you’ not YOU specifically.)
If you don’t like the steam engines, you can blow them up. You can build your own. Either way, the trains were going west.
But to state they have a moral obligation to be truthful is extremely difficult to refute.
You can't start your own newspaper if I control all the ink and I won't sell you any.
You can't start your own newspaper if I control all the paper mills and I won't sell you any.
You can't start your own newspaper if I control all the printing presses and I won't sell you any.
The better solution is to build your own communications tool to present “our” version of the truth.
So conservatives should just build their own internet, wires and everything, from the ground up?
"The MSM” is, essentially, the Associated Press and its membership. The trouble with that is that the AP “wire” is a continuous virtual meeting of the membership of the AP, andI guess you can use the libel laws to sue for information that is false.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. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)You have to be “naive as a babe to believe” that, in all the many scores of years since the mid-Nineteenth Century formation of the AP, its members have never found any common interest which is not congruent with the public interest.In fact, since journalism is largely about bad news, journalism is prone to cynicism about society. And journalisms’ human motivation
The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors . . .motivates, IMHO, its claims of “journalistic objectivity” which is nothing more than a propagandistic attempt to deny what should be obvious. The reality is thatThe desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
- freedom of the press is not restricted to members of the AP, and that
- nobody is required to believe anything the AP and its membership says.
The AP and its membership constitutes a massive propaganda conspiracy, not just in the falsehoods which it perpetrates but especially in the truths which it systematically suppresses. It is cynical to claim that journalism’s negativity is objectivity; "the conceit that 'negativity is objectivity’ ” could be the very definition of cynicism.The Associated Press formed before the passage of the Sherman AntiTrust Act, and it conducted its business accordingly. When it was taken to court, ironically by another wire service, the AP was, in 1945, found by SCOTUS to be in violation of Sherman. Seventy years on, "the conservation of scarce, expensive bandwidth in the dissemination of news” is an obsolete rationale for being “too big to fail.” If you’re a wire service, you are in violation of Sherman - and if you’re in violation of Sherman and your nominal mission is obsolete and you are not too big to fail, you should fail.
The problem is not limited to the AP. Another huge problem is the FCC, which puts the imprimatur of the government on the idea that certain organizations which are licensees are “broadcasting in the public interest as public trustees.” The rationale for centralized radio/TV stations is dying; anyone can create youTube channels. The question is whether youTube has to be a common carrier, or if it is practical for “everyone” to make their own youTube and everyone else can make their on search engine to find it
Dennis Prager has trouble with youTube censoring his “Praeger University” videos. What’s up with that?
Fundamentally, tho, commercial, general-interest journalism is negative because the public can’t easily ignore bad news. Which is more attractive to the eyeball - word that all the bus drivers in a city are doing their jobs like they do every day, or word that they are on strike? Even if you don’t live near that city, the question answers itself. Because of that, there will never be “conservative journalism.” Conservative opinion, certainly - but not conservative news reporting. Journalism can’t help but be cynical toward society but, ironically, cynicism toward society and naiveté towards government are two sides of the same coin. The upshot is that journalism is gravitationally attracted to socialism.