To Be News or Not To Be News
No reason to get your jockstraps all tangled up in knots upon hearing (or seeing) the news that neither Rachel Maddow at MSNBC nor Jake Tapper on CNN ran former president Donald Trump’s victory speech after winning the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses with over 50% of the vote. Maddow refused to run any of the speech, babbling on with some bullpoop about MSNBC being a “real” news station and couldn’t (Oh my!) possibly transmit false or misinformation on such a credible news source as her station (Russia collusion and Hunter Biden’s laptop being the exception).
Tapper ran with the president’s speech until Trump segued into his litany of complaints and accomplishments. Tapper chose then to cut the sound and to talk over Trump, explaining that he just couldn’t countenance being party to broadcasting falsehoods.
Harumph.
In any case, if you are wearing panties (and there’s nothing wrong with that), don’t get them in a twist. Because, you see, none of these stations (MSNBC, CNN, Fox Cable News, NewsMax, et al) are “news” stations at all. MSNBC and CNN serve as the broadcasting arm of the Democrat Party. Fox and NewsMax serve the same role for either the Republican Party or the conservative cause.
And that’s okay.
That is, in fact, the way it should be.
It’s the way it must be.
There was once a “fairness doctrine” (with “fairness” being defined by governmental entities) that oversaw political conversation on the airways.
Then, along came cable and its stations that were completely unconcerned about fairness. Their messages were sent by privately owned cable systems and received by paying customers.
They didn’t need to be fair.
Let the customer decide.
Mercifully, the FCC put an end to the use of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.
To the left-wing’s horror, Rush Limbaugh launched his radio show the very next year and turned the dead and dying AM radio frequencies into a money pot.
And that was a good thing.
But, for the record, what exactly is news and who determines it?
Let’s examine, for example, The New York Times, which proudly boasts under its logo that it reports “All the news fit to print.”
The Times took it upon itself more than a century ago (the late 1800s) to develop a niche for the paper proclaiming itself an “objective” observer and reporter of news. At the time, there was stiff competition among the 15 or so other New York City newspapers vying for paying readership for their one- or two-cent broadsheets or tabloids.
Subsequently, if the editors at The New York Times didn’t think it was news – that it was not worthy of putting into print – then it wasn’t news. If New York Times editors (or founder Adolph Ochs or his successors) determined that the latest scandal wasn’t worth his readers’ attention, they would tell their readers to move on. Nothing to see here.
Down a nearby avenue, Joseph Pulitzer at his Evening World and William Randolph Hearst at the New York Evening Journal, were battling head-to-head for the same audience.
Compiling news was always a business first. The New York Times got away with pretending it was an objective arbiter for over a century. It’s editors proudly proclaimed that they wouldn’t dirty their hands in covering some of the garbage their competitors were into. And that ploy worked for them well into the 1990s, until they finally fessed up that they were always pretty much a left-wing paper.
We recall The Times’ positive coverage of the Soviet Union from its onset in 1917 (“I have seen the future, and it works,” Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times Moscow correspondent [and communist sympathizer] Walter Duranty proclaimed). The Nation, a forever left-leaning magazine, gushed that Duranty’s reports for The New York Times were “the most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world.”
Wow.
If one thinks of American cable tv stations as individual newspapers, one should then examine the newspaper world in France.
Le Figaro offers a mostly conservative view of politics and events, though, according to my Google sources, its politics has recently shifted to a more centric stance.
Le Monde, on the other hand, is the premier left-wing newspaper in France.
Readers make their newspaper-reading decisions based upon the editorial stances of both newspapers.
In England, as in most European countries, there are “liberal” and “conservative” newspapers, and their readers know which is which. They can choose from among the Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Express, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, and The Guardian.
Here in America, no one outside New York City or Washington, D.C. reads any longer. They watch TV. Mainly because there are no more newspapers to read. The Internet has killed them. To make matters worse, the traditional broadcast channels (ABC, NBC, CBS) lean left, so there isn’t anything different to choose from.
However, cable-tv viewers do have choices.
We know which way these stations tilt.
It’s no secret.
MSNBC is filled with left-leaning former intelligence department heads (former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan), along with left-leaning race hustlers such as Al Sharpton and Joy Reid; all its talking heads are decidedly left-wing.
Don’t expect any of them to help us out.
Fox and NewsMax on the other hand, feature more-or-less right-wing, or at least conservative, commentators. Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld are Fox’s big draws.
It’s good they exist.
As founder and editor-publisher of the Montecito Journal (from 1995 to 2019), I was often taken to task by various readers who scolded me for not covering some event or bit of news that they believed was “fit to print.” My response was nearly always one form or another of explaining that if it had nothing to do with Montecito, we really were not interested. That was true then and perhaps it remains true today under its new leadership.
One thing readers and viewers must be aware of is that every newspaper, magazine, newsletter, and media outlet is its own censor and arbiter of what constitutes “news” for its readership. As editors and publishers, we can exclude, include, omit, or promote what we wish.
News is only news if we say it is.
And we get to choose.
That so many in the media today seem to relish – and wish to make permanent – their new-found “partnership” with government and with the intelligence community is indeed worrisome.
This nation’s founders and writers of the U.S. Constitution included freedom of the press as one of the cornerstones of governance, along with the separation of powers among the three branches of government.
Media (the Press) was meant to act as the fourth branch of government.
Collusion between media outlets and governmental entities is the easiest way to slide into tyranny.
So, let’s have no more whining about what MSNBC, CNN, or anyone else omitted or included in its coverage.
Yes, it’s terrible that they have no respect for us or our opinions.
Nevertheless.
We’ve got choices.
Let’s make them.
I see that James Fenker is here on Jim Buckely's substack. He has been with Russian's as long as I
have. Mr. Fenker also knows at least some of the problems here in Santa Barbara with Russian's but I doubt that most have the Intelligence Background to really put it all together and to understand how the Santa Barbara So-Called-Leaders have really let their community down and in fact concealed major Security Problems. As they in Government F----Up , Cover-Up and Move-Up. Seems this is Santa Barbara's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) As they say in the US Navy "Boondoggle" all way here in Santa Barbara. Boondoggle Definition - a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving the governments graft, greed and kickbacks. That just about explains almost every leader here in Good Ole Boy Santa Barbara. I just and sitting back waiting for the next Santa Barbara Executive Head to be lopped off. Howard Walther member of a Military - I had 11 of my family members serve in WWII and to-a-person they would be flat-out-disgusted on what has gone down here and how the So-Called-Leaders have destroyed this town.
Jim, in reply to your comment .... "How do you explain the lies of the 51 "intelligence experts" who claimed Hunter's laptop had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation?"
I do not condone that misconduct in Washington one bit and those that do make a mockery of those that served. Right out of University, with an Engineering Degree in 1982, because of my background, I was placed at Submarine Base Bangor on the Ohio Class Submarine>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Submarine_Base_Bangor
I am stating Mr. Clappers background because with his 32 years of Air Force service he obviously has real contradictions which is even worse in light of the Corruption in Washington and the Corruption here in Santa Barbara and frankly the Corruption in our system.
I was over in Russian in early 1990s and saw first hand the Corruption there which was hard to get your head around it all. The murders, the utter ruthlessness of criminals there taking over Russia.
I spent half of my life with Russians and I know exactly how they operate and they are very good which now reminds me alot of the people who operate in the US and right here in Good Ole Santa Barbara. I cannot fix the world, Washington, but I can address the serious problems here. Read carefully again Tom Parkers article Perceptions of Political Corruption
Too Often the Harbingers of Stark Reality By Tom Parker Sat Feb 22, 2020 | 3:23pm>>>
https://www.independent.com/2020/02/22/perceptions-of-political-corruption/
Read further in Mr. Parker's article and I quote "conceal their being symbiotically joined at their hip pockets. In today’s electronic-world-of emails and high-speed research, such concealment rarely lasts"
They have wire-tapped and brought in Satellite for all the Good Ole Boys and Good Ole Gals here in Santa Barbara who are all being extracted one by one and also in entire groups like the SBPD.
If I had communications with Clapper, I would tell him directly his statements about the Laptop and other statements he has made in the Press are utter BS and a dishonor to his service.
Howard Walther member of a Military Family