“In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.” – Ayn Rand
Fairness and its often silent partner “evenhandedness” are the fulcrum by which the media’s good intentions are flipped into the upside-down world of moral relativism and political correctness. The media’s job is not to find the mid-point of competing political agendas, but to report the news regardless of how that plays out for or against any particular group’s interests. In the name of “fairness” our media too often aim for a sort of “average” position between opposing groups. Whether those opposing groups are political parties, cultures that are competing for survival or warring armies, the “mid point” between them is seldom anything but a barren no man’s land. The sort of fairness that we find routinely in the media is, at best a morally blind position based on reporting both sides equally credibly and credulously. The reason that no one seems to be satisfied that we are not getting fair and honest representations of events is, simply, that we are not.
This tautology of universal offense is one of the hand-maidens to the most dangerous public delusion in Western Civilization: moral relativism, which holds that no set of values or opinion or culture is superior to any other. This radical variant of multiculturalism, which refuses to judge other cultures by our own (or any) standards, dominates much of the media and academia.
It seems safe to say that in all of human history there has never been a conflict in which both parties were exactly as right (or good – or nice) as the other. In truth, the morally neutral approach actively undermines the side with the most moral clarity and confers an unfair advantage on any side that is less democratic, ethical and open. So why is the media intent on making believe that all causes are equal?
“To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.” – Margaret Thatcher
“In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”
This is self evident…but to see it that way one must have some semblance of absolutism…particularly where good and evil are defined.
..when one is chronically relativist in ideology ( as most leftists are) there is simple go pure good or real evil…all are relative….therefor a compromise to evil is no compromise at all…the evil is relative and the compromise is relative.
Wasn’t it Churchill who commented on the inadvisability of reaching a compromise between the fireman and the fire?
On the other hand, this reasoning is exactly why AGW absolutists insist that no reporting time need be or should be given to skeptics.
It’s all too easy to use this principle as a way to insist that “Because we’re good, we don’t need to compromise,” or “Because they’re asking for compromise, they must be evil.”
There’s a different between a simple truth and a simplistic solution.
Seems that the Fanatics (on both sides) think their job is to define the centre.
If it would be a ‘weighted average centre’, it may have some merit. (The Silent Majority wins !)
But that is too complicated for our ‘dumb-it-down’ media.
Just measure the distance between the nut-cases and divide by 2
Is that why they called it the Fringe Festival ?
” .. the inadvisability of reaching a compromise between the fireman and the fire? ”
Do Fanatic Liberals (and the Media) really think there should be no discrimination ? Absolutely no discrimination at all ? Even between right and wrong ? Between the Drug Dealer’s right to make a living and the school children’s right to a safe day ? Between a worn out hip and a gang war injury ?
Or do the Media just like chaos better because it sells more papers ?
I have almost finished reading ‘The Road To Hell’ by Julian Sher & William Marsden, Hells Angels in Canada. Seems that our courts sometimes think there should be no discrimination either.
My theory on this…
It’s because of the writings of Noam Chomsky. “Manufacturing Consent” is the thesis where he puts forward the idea that ALL media and particularly the Press insert their own bias into what they produce.
Chomski’s Marxist paranoia led him to the conclusion that since (in his mind) all newspapers are owned and controlled by evil capitalist oppressors then all reporting and editorial content will reflect a favorable bias to those robber barons and of course by inference a negative view of righteous socialist activists.
Since this little essay of his gets read by every J school yob at some point it seems to me that something happens to the sort who are overly influenced by such ideas.
For one thing some may accept it unconditionally and work overtime to counter that imagined bias toward tradition and capitalist conservative sentiment. That’s your lefty tool journos.
Another result may be that the feeble minded believe the idea to be correct and that their “Duty” is to force a type of balance between what the see as Right or Left or any other pair of ideas or groups in opposition. These are the self appointed arbiters Political Correctness who can never see that right and wrong are not just arbitrary concepts.
Another result may be that some are able to put Chomskis theses into an undistorted context and see how the manipulation of truth has No inherent political source. Instead it comes from the inability of lazy minded fools to get beyond the default positions and apply a discipline of logic and their own minds to issues at hand.
If the Jschool profs are not in that last group then what we get is a disproprtionate proportion of junior journos that actually end up believing in Chomski hook line and sinker.
Which is IMO where things stand now.
Of course there’s also the Attitude that good journalism has to include ‘drama’ and tension…. giving us the unending supply of confabulated stories that are 90% hype and usually less than 10% substance.
The way the media handled the Cadman Bio story is a pretty good example.
The CBC National’s Peter Armstrong reported last week on the slaughter at the seminary in Jerusalem. I always watch for his reports to see what sideways tactic he’ll use, always floated in sanctimonious faux-objectivity, to either blame the Jews for all violent acts committed by Palestinians, or to draw some broad moral equivalence in their respective characters.
In the March 6 report, it was the latter. Mobs of Palestinian men women and children were shown celebrating — dancing, grinning wildly, shouting like they’d won the lottery — over news of the murders of the young Jewish students. Over In Jerusalem the Israelis, including emergency workers, gathered near the scene were somber, and somberly eloquent. In one short video clip of the grieving Israelis, a middle-aged, portly man wearing a yarmulke was waving his finger rhythmically trying without much success (you could hear a couple of voices half-heartedly joining him) to get others to repeat and chant that which he was saying. Armstrong, referring to the Israelis: “‘Death to the Arabs’, they chant.”
There you have it, a sort of all-Canadian moral compromise, an equivalence being subtly posited by finding a specious “mid-point” from which it’s all the same picture.
Armstrong’s reporting on the ME is a perfect example of how the all-Canadian “compromise” can be functionally nothing less than a hunting-blind with great utility for pure, unadulterated viciousness. Every action taken from there can be portrayed as being merely the gracious moral fine-tunings of an honest broker.
I can easily imagine Armstrong’s ilk reporting from a train platform that events won’t change until the Jews shown being loaded onto trains admit that as part of the process of reconciliation they will have to put forward a compromise stance in which they accept their share of the responsibility for German actions, and that until they do any reactions by the Germans reflect an understandable frustration.
Another problem is the way they give opposing sides the same air time regardless of the numbers they represent. So May gets the same air time as Dion or Harper.
Of course, this does not mean May should not get air time at all. But they should not give the impression that the middle ground is halfway between the position held by the Greens vs the position held by the Tories.
If the media would just stick to the facts they would do better. They should report what happens, not go around looking for various opinions about what happened, and not injecting into their report their own feelings about what happened. It’s tough to do, but it’s honest.
I am always confused when the media refuses to accept and report that certain things are beyond the level of accepted social behaviour. Case in point, the use of a mentally handicapped person as a suicide(an ironic use of the term) bomber. What does this say about the ‘morality’ of their cause?
There are times when the actions, regarless of the righteousness of their cause, of the combants are so far outside the pale that they need to condemed as unacceptable and no amount of ‘context’ should be applied to justify them
Kate- What a recovery, yesterday done in-to-day, feisty and taking on relativist BS.
Good on you, never give in!
This comment isn’t mine. It came from a commenter on this site awhile back, and I think it is appropriate.
“If we who live in “privilaged” western liberal democracies have no moral authority to pass judgement upon the human experiments of others and pronounce them inferior to our own – then on what basis do you defend recognition of the “refugee” seeking safe harbour on our shores?”