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More than thirty years ago University of Rochester economists William
Meckling and Michael Jensen authored a thought-provoking article on the
sources of "liberal bias" in the media. Being Chicago School-style
economists, their thesis was based, naturally, on a rigorous exploration of
how the media best pursue their own self-interest, coupled with an analysis
of the role of government in shaping that self-interest. In short, their
thesis was that government had by that time become so big and pervasive that
your average journalist even local news reporters relied on government
itself and all of its politicians and bureaucrats for most of the information
that they "report." If one is an environmental reporter, for
example, one must cultivate relationships with EPA bureaucrats who are the
source of the latest news about environmental policy. If one is a labor
reporter, one must cultivate relationships with U.S. Department of Labor
bureaucrats who are the source of the latest news about labor policy, and so
on.
Consequently, any news reporter who is too critical of the government
agencies that he is reporting about risks being cut off from his information
sources, the lifeblood of his career, which will then be ruined. (A glaring
example of this phenomenon is how former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich
ordered all of his appointees to refuse to talk to anyone associated with the
Baltimore Sun, which had been hyper-critical of him and his administration).
Thus, according to Jensen and Meckling, career self-preservation among
journalists requires that they essentially become lapdogs and mouthpieces for
the state. They will tolerate and occasionally report about inconsequential
and marginal criticisms of the state, such as those made by some of the D.C.
"libertarian" think tanks, in order to delude the public into
believing that there is actually a public policy debate in Washington. But
whenever someone with the views of Congressman Ron Paul appears who
challenges the very propriety and existence of any statist central planning
institution (such as the Fed), the media will ignore and/or demonize him and
everyone associated with his views.
I believe that the Jensen/Meckling theory is correct as far as it goes,
but it omits some other important elements of the sources of the statist bias
of the media. Murray Rothbard filled in these gaps in his two essays entitled
"The Nature of the State" and "Anatomy of the State." All
governments, Rothbard wrote, rely crucially on a set of myths and
superstitions about its alleged greatness and benevolence, coupled with
accompanying lies, myths and superstitions about the "evils" of
freedom, voluntarism, private enterprise, and the civil society. These myths
and superstitions are not spread by government bureaucrats as much as by
various intellectual prostitutes in academe and in the media. The "court
historians" of academe spin tall tale after tall tale about the alleged
need for more and more government (Keynesian economics would be a good
example), while these ideas are spread about to the general public by pundits
and journalists.
This, too, is why the media ignore Ron Paul. There are a few exceptions,
but for the most part they have invested many years of schooling and work as
propaganda mouthpieces for the state. They are as much a part of the state
apparatus as is any government bureaucrat or any politician. They are the
essential tool of the state in dumbing down the general population so that it
will peacefully acquiesce in the never-ending expansion of the state and the
financial enrichment of all its functionaries, while losing their own freedom
and prosperity at the same time. They are the paid professional liars who
repeat, over and over, such absurdities as: "Higher taxes and more
government spending will make us prosperous;" "taking naked x-ray
photographs of everyone passing through airports is constitutional;"
"the Constitution gives the president the right to bomb any country on
the planet without consulting with anyone else, especially the
Congress"; "the founding fathers thought it would be a good idea to
place everyones freedom in the hands of five government lawyers with
lifetime tenure (i.e., supreme court justices)"; "healthcare
socialism will cause health care costs to decline"; "recessions and
depressions are caused by sudden outbursts of greed and animal spirits"
(according to John Maynard Keynes); "capitalists get rich by selling
people products that harm or even kill them"; and on and on and on.
Having spent their entire careers spreading such absurd lies, the
appearance of an educated, articulate truth teller like Congressman Ron Paul
absolutely terrifies the media, for Ron Paul threatens to expose them, once
and for all, as the frauds and enemies of the free society that they are.
That is why it is imperative that the media do everything in its power to
ignore and demonize Ron Paul and his millions of freedom-loving supporters.
So far, the biggest stumbling block in the way of the old media is the new
media and Web sites like LewRockwell.com, which one can only hope will
someday soon cause the demise of the gang of liars, deceivers, and
propagandists known as "the mainstream media."
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