American_Jihad
Flaming Libs/Koranimals
Poor liberal media, they have a fit when you dig up the truth...
THE CURE FOR MEDIA BIAS
Breaking the monopoly of the progressive gospel.
February 3, 2016
Bruce Thornton
...
As for “bully,” after seven years of Obama’s bullying racialist demagoguery, bullying of the Constitution, bullying arrogant partisanship, and use of federal agencies like the IRS and EPA to bully political foes, to attack a mere candidate for his crude style is to strain out the Republican gnat after swallowing the Democrat camel. So too with Hillary, who has an extensive record of bullying state troopers, secret-service agents, and worst of all the victims of Bill’s sexual harassment and assaults. And don’t forget the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” which one of her minions resurrected recently to smear Charles McCullough III, the Intelligence Community Inspector and a man of impeccable reputation and bipartisan support. McCullough had the gall to tell Senators that some of the emails found on Hillary’s server contained material classified at the highest security levels. This sort of bullying, whose intent is to misdirect our attention from likely felonies, in its dire effects makes Trump’s crude taunts sound like the repartee in a Jane Austen novel.
Such hypocrisy and ideological biases are why the mainstream media no longer have any credibility beyond the most die-hard partisans seeking confirmation of their biases. So what’s the solution? Demand more “objectivity” and “fact”? Remember, progressives came up with the idea that newspapers, the major media of the early 20thcentury, should be staffed with an elite of objective professionals reporting only the facts. As progressive Walter Lippmann wrote in 1919, the social, political, and economic complexity of modern life required that newspapers be brought “under social control,” that is, subjected to trained technicians far above the petty prejudices and selfish interests of the masses. Professionalization of the news, Lippmann argued, would create a “common intellectual method and a common area of valid fact,” and result in “a form of cooperation” rather than an “irreconcilable antagonism.”
In other words, progressives like Lippmann didn’t acknowledge the “irreducible complexity” and diversity of the American people. Both of these were institutionalized in the Constitution’s structure, and reflected in the riotous mix of opinions found in the 11,000 daily newspapers of the day, each of which wore its political preferences and biases on its sleeve. Instead progressives wanted to homogenize opinion on the basis of “facts” discovered by journalistic “science.” Nearly a century later we now know that like all the other progressive schemes to reduce the people’s diverse opinions to one unified ideology, the idea of a professional media has failed. The news doesn’t just report facts, but reflects the incompatible opinions and values of the people on issues that cannot be resolved just intellectually, for they involve principles and beliefs that are not “scientific.”
The solution to media bias, then, is to be found in diversity. The worst era of media bias was the decades after World War II, when the rise of television drove many newspapers out of business, leaving public opinion in the hands of a few major papers and the “big three” television networks. We witnessed what mischief this liberal monopoly could make in its slanted reporting on Vietnam and Watergate, a minor political sandal that never endangered our security to the extent that Hillary’s Benghazi and email lies and cover-up have.
But starting in the 80s, the rise of talk radio, cable news, and the Internet has now restored that variety of opinion once expressed by the abundance of different newspapers that could be found in most cities before the 50s. That’s why progressives scheme to limit the First Amendment and attempt to silence opinions they don’t like, and that’s why they and their shills in the legacy media demonize Rush Limbaugh and Fox News––they have broken the monopoly and provided alternatives to the progressive gospel.
In the end, as free citizens armed with the vote and blessed with a First Amendment, we are responsible for searching out the truth and thinking for ourselves, just as we are responsible for voting. It’s our job, not the media’s, to protect our political freedom.
The Cure for Media Bias
THE CURE FOR MEDIA BIAS
Breaking the monopoly of the progressive gospel.
February 3, 2016
Bruce Thornton
...
As for “bully,” after seven years of Obama’s bullying racialist demagoguery, bullying of the Constitution, bullying arrogant partisanship, and use of federal agencies like the IRS and EPA to bully political foes, to attack a mere candidate for his crude style is to strain out the Republican gnat after swallowing the Democrat camel. So too with Hillary, who has an extensive record of bullying state troopers, secret-service agents, and worst of all the victims of Bill’s sexual harassment and assaults. And don’t forget the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” which one of her minions resurrected recently to smear Charles McCullough III, the Intelligence Community Inspector and a man of impeccable reputation and bipartisan support. McCullough had the gall to tell Senators that some of the emails found on Hillary’s server contained material classified at the highest security levels. This sort of bullying, whose intent is to misdirect our attention from likely felonies, in its dire effects makes Trump’s crude taunts sound like the repartee in a Jane Austen novel.
Such hypocrisy and ideological biases are why the mainstream media no longer have any credibility beyond the most die-hard partisans seeking confirmation of their biases. So what’s the solution? Demand more “objectivity” and “fact”? Remember, progressives came up with the idea that newspapers, the major media of the early 20thcentury, should be staffed with an elite of objective professionals reporting only the facts. As progressive Walter Lippmann wrote in 1919, the social, political, and economic complexity of modern life required that newspapers be brought “under social control,” that is, subjected to trained technicians far above the petty prejudices and selfish interests of the masses. Professionalization of the news, Lippmann argued, would create a “common intellectual method and a common area of valid fact,” and result in “a form of cooperation” rather than an “irreconcilable antagonism.”
In other words, progressives like Lippmann didn’t acknowledge the “irreducible complexity” and diversity of the American people. Both of these were institutionalized in the Constitution’s structure, and reflected in the riotous mix of opinions found in the 11,000 daily newspapers of the day, each of which wore its political preferences and biases on its sleeve. Instead progressives wanted to homogenize opinion on the basis of “facts” discovered by journalistic “science.” Nearly a century later we now know that like all the other progressive schemes to reduce the people’s diverse opinions to one unified ideology, the idea of a professional media has failed. The news doesn’t just report facts, but reflects the incompatible opinions and values of the people on issues that cannot be resolved just intellectually, for they involve principles and beliefs that are not “scientific.”
The solution to media bias, then, is to be found in diversity. The worst era of media bias was the decades after World War II, when the rise of television drove many newspapers out of business, leaving public opinion in the hands of a few major papers and the “big three” television networks. We witnessed what mischief this liberal monopoly could make in its slanted reporting on Vietnam and Watergate, a minor political sandal that never endangered our security to the extent that Hillary’s Benghazi and email lies and cover-up have.
But starting in the 80s, the rise of talk radio, cable news, and the Internet has now restored that variety of opinion once expressed by the abundance of different newspapers that could be found in most cities before the 50s. That’s why progressives scheme to limit the First Amendment and attempt to silence opinions they don’t like, and that’s why they and their shills in the legacy media demonize Rush Limbaugh and Fox News––they have broken the monopoly and provided alternatives to the progressive gospel.
In the end, as free citizens armed with the vote and blessed with a First Amendment, we are responsible for searching out the truth and thinking for ourselves, just as we are responsible for voting. It’s our job, not the media’s, to protect our political freedom.
The Cure for Media Bias
