Never Trust a Progressive Journalist
I wrote Progressivism: A Primer to explain certain anomalies in the behavior of progressives that I had noticed over a number of years. For example, I found that progressives were rarely amenable to rational persuasion. Facts, logic and even experience rarely changed their minds. You couldn’t really argue with a progressive. You would argue; they would fight. They would get angry, insult and change the subject. They never stopped proposing new government programs, spending and laws, though they appeared to lack a grand vision of what they were trying to accomplish.
To explain all this and more, I propounded an eight-part definition of progressivism. Thus, “progressivism is:
- a mindset about politics;
- that has no rational basis;
- is utopian;
- favors the use of democratic government force to solve human problems;
- holds that government force will produce a better result than voluntary society and the market;
Faced with a government employee confronting a young man who is the virtual product of government institutions and policies, what do progressive journalists do? They perform a miracle. They are somehow able to ignore the primary role of government in producing and directing these violent encounters and are somehow able to place primary blame on, you guessed it, a non-governmental entity or factor: racism. Yes, racism is to blame; read: white racism; read: white people! That bizarre conclusion being posited, the door is then open to all sorts of government solutions to redress the ongoing discrimination against blacks by white society. A non-governmental scapegoat has been found for problems almost exclusively caused by government. All is well in the Progressive State of America.
In New York State recently, there have been numerous articles about corruption as a result of the indictment and conviction of the Speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver and the Majority Leader of the Senate, Dean Skelos. Both cases arise out of their vast power over the New York economy through a complex web of subsidies, grants, regulations and tax breaks.
If we brought in a Martian journalist with a scientific approach to facts and with no progressive blinders on, she might conclude that the nature of the problem is that politicians have been given too much power over the economy, and, lacking any other rational means for distributing the loot, they fell back upon naked self-interest. This conclusion is actually fairly obvious to anyone without a self-imposed mental disability. The facts are staring you straight in the face. However, the typical progressive journalistic reaction to all this corruption is to ask, not how we can shrink government to reduce corruption but rather, how can we make big government work better through proposals such as ethics and lobbying reform, campaign finance reform and the public financing of elections. To make matters worse, there is little or no evidence provided that any of these reforms will eliminate future corruption.
All of these instances represent a predictable approach by progressive journalists applying their progressive worldview to their jobs as follows:
- The notion that government action itself caused the problem is ignored.
- Non-governmental scapegoats for problems are sought.
- Non-governmental solutions to problems are not considered.
- Only governmental solutions to problems, even problems caused by government itself, are considered.
To sum up, if journalists wear progressive ideological blinders, they cannot approach a subject with a proper scientific attitude of ferreting out all the relevant facts of a story.
Consider the media reaction to what immediately appeared to be a terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The need for stricter gun control was discussed within a few hours of the shooting and before the details of the attack were known. Private gun owners are ideal scapegoats for progressives as they are non-governmental entities. There was virtually no mention in the mainstream media of how various government policies may have caused or contributed to the mass shooting, for example, American intervention in the Middle East for the last 100 years. Nor was there any real discussion of non-governmental solutions such as arming more citizens with handguns. Apparently not a single one of the eighty persons inside the room being attacked were armed and it is apparent that the terrorists counted on them being unarmed.
A similar analysis could be performed about any major subject matter of journalism. Governmental causes of problems are ignored; alleged non-governmental causes are highlighted and alleged governmental solutions are propounded, always without a sound rational basis in either fact or logic. That’s a fair description of American journalism today.
There have been a myriad of articles about the plight of the working poor and the need for an increase in the minimum wage law to improve their lot. I have never read one such article that discussed the many ways governments impoverish low-income workers even though many of these mechanisms are extremely obvious such as the numerous taxes the government imposes on the working poor. Nor do such articles explore the possibility that government schools have failed to impart useful and marketable skills that employers would deem worthy of rewarding with higher wages. Once again, a non-governmental villain must be identified, in this case, private business firms, and a government solution must be recommended, forcing these greedy firms to increase their wages. This very same approach can be seen in every area of policy that journalists address.
Thus, we can conclude that progressives generally make bad journalists. The great casualty of progressive journalism is, of course, the truth. Since progressives utterly dominate the media and journalism, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Americans remain ignorant of the true cause of America’s continuing decline, progressivism itself.
Alas, there is always hope. Please send this article to your favorite progressive journalist today. You just might save his career.
The post Never Trust a Progressive Journalist appeared first on LewRockwell.
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