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What SHOULD the News Media Do?

By David Elmore

May 19, 2023

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Reading the daily offal from the news media is, well, awful.

That’s being too nice, of course. It’s like watching toddlers pretending to understand physics or demanding ice cream with the threat of tantrums.

The cluelessness and animus are ubiquitous—and an imminent threat to the freedom of human beings around the world. Unfortunately, those who run and work for media organizations know nothing—quite literally—of human rights, and nor do they really seem to care. They appear to be invested in ideological power structures that are designed to violate individual rights via government laws and actions—to satiate the particular dictatorial appetite of the media brass.

The media have often been corrupt over centuries, attracting statist “social influencers” like manure to flies.

This is nothing new. The media have often been corrupt over centuries, attracting statist “social influencers” like manure to flies. If Thomas Jefferson could somehow pop to life for 24 hours, he would not disagree. Though he knew the necessity of the media, he mostly reviled it: “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads newspapers.”

Fresh out of college in the late 1980s, I worked as a reporter and editor at fairly large newspapers for 13 years. I worked with and talked with hundreds of coworkers. I can fully attest to their abject ignorance and insouciance regarding rights. They either smirked when I mentioned rights or they argued with me until the sun came up, often stomping off in fury toward a nearby coffee shop because I refused to acknowledge that homeless people “deserved” to be taken care of by government or that animals had rights or that the Earth was allegedly in need of government protection or that government should ensure that women make as much as men.

The list is endless. They sought the murky “common good”—the intentionally foggy misnomer that is the calling card of all dictators, Marxist or otherwise.

The media personnel then and now are misanthropes, skeptical of the human capacity for goodness and efficacy.

The media personnel then and now are misanthropes, skeptical of the human capacity for goodness and efficacy. Their one exception to this is that of the elitist: THEY are good and efficacious and should be in charge of people in general via a statist, intrusive government that commands people. They fashion themselves the éminence grise—the power behind the throne. They are to be the loud and petulant puppeteers, and government officials are to be their abiding statist marionettes.

One might rightfully note the irony of misanthropes seeking to control society for an alleged common good. Indeed, their intent is not “the good”; it is the heady power of the dictator. Better, the heady power of those who actually control the actions of the dictator, throwing tantrums and sipping lattes if the dictator veers even slightly away from dogma.

They’ve now licked their statist chops for 110 years in America, as the national government has aggrandized into a beast of proportions that the modern world has never seen, stealing more than $100 trillion from Americans, wrecking capitalism, making a mockery of private property, confiscating citizens’ gold, peeking into bank accounts, dictating behavior and movement during disease outbreaks, and much more. America is no longer even modestly free, as it had once been.

For Americans—or any other citizens of the world—to be free, there must first be a clear understanding of our individual rights, which I make extensively clear in a new U.S. Constitution that I recently penned and published on Amazon. We must have a constitution that fully honors and protects our rights.

But what then? How do we keep our freedom once we get it?

One very important answer is, yes, the media. Not the current bloated, infested pesthole of losers and noblesse-oblige Marxist dunces. Instead, idealists whose ideal is a fully-free populace protected by a properly constitutional government.

But even then, how do they do it? How should the new idealists report the news? What should the news media do? Let’s dive in, taking a look at what news actually is and how best to convey the information.

…

There are only two broad subjects for all news media articles.

News media are in the business of formally delivering information—ostensive facts, or their opinion on facts. There are only two broad subjects for all news media articles:

  • Activity and things that are noncoercive
  1. Things and activities that are part of the natural world around us
  2. Actions by humans that are noncoercive (not criminal behavior)

 

  • Activity that is coercive
  1. Actions by humans that violate human rights (criminal behavior)

 

Coercion is the initiation of fraud or unallowed force against other human beings. In a moral society, coercion is outlawed and punishable because it violates human rights.

With the above in mind, how should the media cover stories? What should its approach be? How can it always maintain integrity and honesty, no matter the subject matter? Before we get to that, let’s dive deeper into the two primary subjects that the media address:

 

Noncoercive activity and things

This comprises human action that does not engage in unallowed force against someone else, as well as all activity by nature herself. We might call it “innocent” or “regular” activity by people in everyday life, as well as things and occurrences in nature. Here are some examples:

 

  1. Artistic work, such as songs, paintings, moviemaking and choreography
  2. Other work, such as making rockets, checking out groceries, knitting, programming
  3. Speech that does not publicly slander or declare an intent to harm (coerce) others
  4. Meetings, parties, assemblies and other private gatherings
  5. Tornadoes, animals, lake levels, outer space, forest fires, habitats
  6. Science, medical procedures, architecture
  7. Capitalism
  8. Immigration
  9. Sports
  10. Gaming
  11. Social media
  12. Hunting
  13. Home renovations
  14. Gun ownership
  15. The owning or killing of lower animals

 

Coercive activity

This comprises forcible actions initiated (or planned) against other humans, privately or politically (government), without their consent. This coercive activity involves free will (choice) by the perpetrator and is therefore culpable. Because nature—including the lower animals—has no free will, nature cannot coerce and is therefore not culpable for its actions. It simply does. Here are examples of coercive human activity:

 

  1. Murder, genocide
  2. Theft, robbery
  3. Assault
  4. Government “regulation” of or involvement in private commerce (capitalism)
  5. Fiat money monopoly
  6. Driving (drunk or otherwise) that threatens others
  7. Government “programs” to rob and redistribute money
  8. Government takeover of land and activity
  9. Trespassing
  10. Government monitoring of noncoercive activity

 

How SHOULD news media cover these two forms of information?

The first (noncoercive) form:

This first form of activity is, on its face, innocuous—and therefore noncoercive action against others. (If any person decides to become coercive during these activities, then the action places them into the coercive form.)

The media should approach this first (innocuous) kind with absolute objectivity and with the understanding that it is a completely free activity. The media can then choose one of two routes in reporting the activity: neutrality or opinion (judgment):

  1. Neutrality: Remaining a completely impartial observer and reporter of the activity, simply conveying objectively factual information, neutrally, to an audience. (“The knitting club allows only women above the age of 50 into the club.”)

 

  1. Judgment: Disapproving or approving of an activity and passing judgment during the factual conveyance of the activity. (“The knitting club has a bias, unfortunately, and allows only women over 50 to be in their group.” or “We are glad the club allows only women over 50 in the group, to keep things friendly and adulty.”) The media, in such cases, would understand that people have a right to undertake the activity (knitting-club exclusivity, etc.) and that the media can disapprove/approve of the activity as a form of free speech.

This type of media reporting (of the noncoercive form) is simply a fly-on-the-wall approach to conveying factual information and/or opinion, without any kind of criminal element to it—without any sort of insinuation of the activity being coercive—even if the media don’t agree with what the group is doing.

All reporting of natural occurrences (tornadoes, global warming, animal habitats, etc.) should be entirely neutral, simply conveying facts without any political implications, because it is not the proper job of governments to get involved in natural occurrences.

 

The second (coercive) form:

The optimum state for humans in a society is freedom, and that is attained via the constitutional recognition of individual rights to body, property, and money—and the personal actions taken with those three things. This full legal recognition of human rights outlaws all coercive action taken against humans by other citizens or by the government. “Coercion” is the unallowed initiation of force against someone else—physical or fraudulent interference. (“Allowed” initiation of force would be a football match, in which participants have agreed that they can initiate force against each other, such as tackling, as part of the game itself. Or it might be a parent yanking back a child who is running toward the street.)

Their most important role should be the protection of human rights—to be a guardian of rights, the watchman of government over-reach.

Individual rights should be the guiding light of all media. Their most important role should be the protection of human rights—to be a guardian of rights, the watchman of government over-reach—on the lookout for any actions that may be coercive, and making the coercion a central point of a story.

Instead, the stated goal of modern news media is to be allegedly “objective,” but what they really mean is “neutral”—not taking sides, being a fly on the wall—which they cannot achieve because their (left or right) ideologies interfere with objectivity. But even if they could remain objective, such a stance would be immoral in the face of coercion. Media should take sides on all stories involving coercion. They should be on the side of those being coerced and against those doing the coercing. Their goal should be to protect freedom—always.

For example, any involvement or intrusion by a government in the private marketplace would be immoral and illegal under a constitution that fully honors rights. The media should know this, even if such a constitution does not yet exist. Therefore, any time the media is reporting on a government “regulation” of businesses, they should emphasize the violation of rights involved and the specific coercion (violation of property rights). They should state specifically how the regulation is a violation of rights. It is immoral (and reprehensible) to simply be a neutral fly-on-the-wall when rights are violated.

(If the government in a properly constitutional nation happened to hear about a knitting club with age exclusivity, that government wouldn’t give a second thought to the action, understanding that the club’s owners have their right to property and action.)

The media should always be properly objective, which means abiding by relevant facts on any particular issue. But modern media do not understand what is relevant in cases of coercion because they do not understand what rights are. They have no place to start with a story, except their own ideology. The result is a hodge-podge of fly-on-the-wall information—with the “relevant” facts often being guided by a Leftist ideology that is either overt or implicitly accepted.

 

Where the SHOULD comes from

The two primary goals of all human life are survival and happiness. Rational beings (humans) must use their minds to fully achieve each of these important goals. And coercion against humans during their pursuit of survival and happiness compromises and impedes each, and is therefore immoral.

With this in mind, living in a society requires official (governmental) recognition of these facts in a constitution, which outlines the facts and establishes a clear governmental form to protect humans from each other’s potential coercion. When a proper government does the above, it is recognizing the right of individuals to be free, to be uncoerced.

The moral implication of the above is that humans should be free of coercion. Any media organization that covers potentially coercive activity should understand the SHOULD fully. It should state clearly in its bylaws that it understands the concept of rights, supports the protection of rights, and will always make rights the clear focus of all articles pertaining to coercion against rights.

THIS is the proper (moral) role of news media in society. Any media organization doing the above could rightly take a bow, even accept awards for being the greatest watchman of our individual rights.

It’s what the media SHOULD do.

 

 

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