On Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:52:16 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
.. .
...
That's not libel, that's bias. Bias is legal. Libel is not. If one
doesn't recognize the difference, he should stay out of the business.
He just doesn't get it....

Ed Huntress

Bias hasn't always been legal either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

I don't want to see the third estate claiming a more favorable
interpretation of the First Amendment for themselves than they accept for
outsiders.



Without knowing your age it's hard to know what to say here, except
that the Fairness Doctrine was the product of facts on the ground
during the early days of broadcasting, when there were few channels
(we got two TV stations, and considered ourselves lucky) and when TV,
particularly, wound up in a legal twilight zone between newspapers and
common carriers, such as the telephone companies. The FD was based on
the common-carrier side of the law, and similar legal principles apply
today for other common carriers. When cable came in, the FD went out.

But bias has always been part of the free press, more before 1950 than
at any time since. Now the Internet is turning it into a
yellow-journalism free-for-all again, like it was in the early days of
thr country. Bias is the normal state of the media, and works OK as
long as the opportunities to publish contrary views are readily
available.

As for journalists and the shield laws, as I said, I generally agree
that the constitutuional and philosophical basis for them, IMO, is
pretty flimsy. They came about largely because of Watergate and the
Pentagon Papers, and a series of revelations about government(s) using
their power to intimidate journalists from covering corruption and
governmental abuses. Again, you can cite individual cases that, on one
hand, will convince almost anyone that journalism needs some extra
protections to fulfill the intent of the First Amendment's press
freedom, and you can cite other cases that make the protections
themselves look like abuses.

We may disagree about this, but my view is that bloggers have debased
the whole enterprise and make special protections for the press even
more problematic. My blood boils when I see intentional slander and
libel hiding behind shield laws. In the balance, I'd be glad to do
away with those laws, given the present state of journalism.

--
Ed Huntress