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Preechr Preechr is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2003
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Old Oct 23rd, 2006, 10:18 PM       
THINGS i DID NOT RESPOND TO:

(not that it matters)

Quote:
Originally Posted by El Blanco
Quote:
Originally Posted by Preechr
The teeming masses want to be entertained, not informed, and the government we are supposed to be wary of would want that, too.
See why I am less and less fond of democracy?
Yes I do. I am totally opposed to democracy as a form of government. It is nothing more than mob-rule. If I didn't drink so much, my IQ would be well within the range of the kind of folk I like to refer to as "us," and we make up about 20% of the world. I am scared to death of the 80% of the rest of the world being able to control what we do.

That being said, I am currently re-reading "Atlas Shrugged" in order to discuss it with a friend of mine, so when I say "we," I am referring to the minority of the actual honest producers of the world, even if my drinking may leave the actual me out of that group.

America is not, as you know, of course, a democracy. It is, as you know, a representative republic. When I say the word "democracy," I am generally speaking of some sort of representative government, but I guess I would also include any lesser form of government where at least everybody gets an honest vote on what's going on.

Quote:
Originally Posted by El Blanco
Quote:
Maybe First Amendment protections need to be re-evalutated so as to apply only to actual principled journalists and not everybody even indirectly linked to the media.
No, the Constitution uses the phrase "right of the people", not "large newspapers" or "responsible media". It is our job to keep the media in check.
So, basically, you are saying that the media doesn't and shouldn't really have the freedom to say whatever it wants?

Your literal comment leads me to think of an America where the speach of any free individual is protected, but any other sort of speech is not actually prtected by the first.

I think that's interesting.

I have an objectivist work ethic. I believe that I sell some of my free time to an employer in exchange for money. I believe that money is a unit of time, not evil, so this sort of thing is a fair trade.

When a newspaper reporter, for instance... and from my point of view, is writing a story as a function of her job, I don't consider her to be free. Working is not actually freedom, though it is a function of freedom. The writing journalist is not functioning as a free individual. Is she, therefore, not necessarily protected by the first amendment?

Please, let me sketch this out for you guys: Pretend you are a left wing journalist, working for a right wing newspaper. You would know it is incumbent upon you to please your employers, in order to keep your job, by, if allowed by the marketplace (which it is,) filtering your telling of the story through some sort of ideological lens, right?

Simply put, if you want to keep your job, you do whatever it is you are asked to do for whatever reason. You are not free when you are acting like this, are you?

Biased journalism should, at leat in my opinion, be subject to no more protection than is advertising.

We can sue for false advertising.

Quote:
Originally Posted by El Blanco
Quote:
Is there possibly a measure of integrity we could come up with everyone could trust?
Nope, because you'd essentially have the government watch dogging its own watchdog. Somewhat a conflict of interests.
Think please, as I often do, of the German Beer Purity Laws. Is truth not an objective standard? Do we live by a standard of reason, or one of baseless conjecture? Geggy COULD be right, but yet you always require proof of him. You do not let him get away with what might be, demanding instead that he back up his statements.

Is it so hard to imagine a press constrained only it's ability to prove, concretely, what it prints? The worst that could happen is a newspaper full of quotes from random, but named, people. That would be subject to the laws of supply and demand, and I don't think most of us would be buying papers if that's allwe got for 50 cents.
__________________
mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?

How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!
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