TV, Conservatives, and the First Amendment

...And to deprive this particular medium of its First Amendment rights is exactly as sensible as chastising a printing press...

...But any intervention by the state into intellectual or artistic areas should be fought...

...statism...

...This clamor for state rule over our economic existence is the dominant philosophy on every major American campus...

...And we should strenuously avoid any system which creates such beings in a free country...

...I hold no political value higher than liberty...

...I am totally unconvinced that speed of communication is, of itself, a threat...

...When Daniel Patrick Moynihan defended our system with ringing rectitude to that grab-bag of vicious little totalitarian satrapies that infest the United Nations, it was like an electric shock for millions...

...Only ideas can destroy ideas...

...And such philosophical trends are not restricted to the airwaves...

...The medium (technology, words, pictures) is innocent...

...We are virtually voiceless in our own ideological self-defense...

...I agree thoroughly that broadcast news departments are giving us a shallow, outof-context, distorted, and often biased view of American political life and of world events—a view that is often nihilistic, hostile to this country, and increasingly statist and collectivist...

...This inadequacy strikes one quite forcibly when one looks clearly at the caliber and quality of the ruling statist ideas...

...In fact, it dominates much, if not most, of the intellectual world today, both at home and abroad...

...I believe that the reason for the growing impulse to interfere with the freedom of broadcasting emerges, in part, from a failure to differentiate between two problems of a very different order...

...It is, of itself, just what it is called, a medium of communication—in the case of broadcasting, a medium through which communications, or propaganda, are transmitted electronically...

...Her article is adapted from a speech delivered last April at a journalism conference at Pepperdine University...

...It is their own ideological inadequacy which is the enemy...

...I think these questions are based on some faulty perceptions...

...And that is why the capitalist nations are being devoured from within...

...What's more, I think that by virtue of that very orientation, they constitute a growing menace to our liberty...

...No attack should ever be leveled upon the First Amendment from the conservative side...

...Steal from the evil rich, give to the virtuous poor...

...Just about nowhere...

...The ideology of the Left consists of a handful of pathetic little slogans: "Rich is evil, poor is good...

...In other words, the medium is not the message—and one must not view both as a package...

...And that, when you get to the bottom line, is why the liberal media are biased...

...Imagine that in the myriad ways it pushes for more government power over our economic lives it were pushing against such power...

...I say that nothing else should have been expected...

...Imagine that the philosophical bias on the airwaves were not liberal—that it consistently opposed big government...

...Obviously not...

...We desperately need the First Amendment...

...It is in the name of political liberty—freedom from control by the state—that I conduct my own private war against the increasing bias on the airwaves in favor of big government...

...What is needed to fight poverty at home and abroad is more capitalism, not less...

...And anyone who claims to be a humanitarian, who claims to be concerned with the material well-being of the common man, and who is not an advocate of capitalism, is one of two things: he is ignorant or he is a fraud...

...They had heard no one defend our system with intelligence and passion in years...

...And there you have the contemporary liberal and leftist repertoire today...

...I cannot, therefore, advocate any form of statist control to solve the problem of the growing advocacy of Edith Efron is a contributing editor to TV Guide, and author of The News Twisters...

...The problem of the message being broadcast, however, the problem of a growing trend towards statist and collectivist philosophies, is an absolutely separate issue...

...In fact, I'd like to see government expelled totally from broadcasting —no regulation whatever of commercial TV, cable TV, pay TV, etc., save perhaps, for the functions of electronic traffic cop, to keep signals from jamming...

...If advocates of individual freedom find themselves impotent before the collectivist and statist ideas of the Left, it is their own intellectual impotence which they must examine and against which they must wage war...

...Which is to say that it is not sensible at all...

...The ideological message of this medium which is shrunken, mediocre, and destructive should be challenged in ideological terms...

...Coercion, guns, cops simply do not destroy ideas...

...Let me remind you of one simple thing: throughout the whole history of the human race, no other social system has fed, clothed, and housed the common man so well as the individualistic, private-property, competitive free-enterprise or capitalist system...

...Take an entirely fanciful hypothesis...

...The destructive impact is coming from the ideas themselves...

...Many conservative critics of media bias say they have been desperately disappointed by the caliber of the appointees to the FCC...

...Where are the politicians who know how to explain and defend America's unique social system...

...The danger is that these ideas are going largely unopposed...

...Or, in the racial version: "White is evil, non-white is good—so steal from the evil white and give to the virtuous non-white...

...And I'd like to explain why I am both so strong a critic of bias and so strong an advocate of total deregulation of broadcasting...

...Top this off with a little nonsensical egalitarianism: ignore such differentiae among individuals as character, intelligence, effort, discipline, and competence, and shriek for equal results in life for all...

...In fact many of the people who might be expected to oppose these ideas recite them imitatively, out of some prepos28 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/ September 1976 terous fear that they will be thought lacking in compassion and humanitarianism...

...The broadcast medium, as a technological instrument, should, like the printing press, be immaculately free...

...Violating the rights of the Left cannot create intellectual potency on the Right...

...This does not imply passivity in the face of the bias problem...

...And don't kid yourselves, ladies and gentlemen...

...And certainly they had heard no one link its liberty with its capitalism...

...Today, it is the anti-statist advocates of freedom who are the dissenters...

...Usually, the answer given is "yes," but a certain number of conservatives are so distressed by the superficiality and bias of broadcast news, particularly network news, and by the apparently disastrous impact of instantaneous nationwide communication, that they are beginning to question the applicability of the First Amendment to this medium...

...Thus, it is clearly neither the technology nor the speed of transmission of ideas which is causing the destructive mischief...

...First, there is the issue of what is often called "the communications revolution," the technology which gives us great speed of communication...

...But where are the voices saying this with eloquence and ringing conviction...

...If it is government strangulation of the individual we wish to oppose, we cannot ourselves turn into advocates of government strangulation...

...The real catastrophe is that the alleged guardians of the so-called American way of life so often imagine that wearing flag-pins in their lapels, or sicking the FBI on the Socialist Workers Party, or collecting tape recordings of Martin Luther King's sexual activities, or spying on the New Left are ways of fighting ideas...

...He either genuinely does not understand the capitalist system which has given birth to this torrent of wealth, which has tripled man's lifespan and incalculably multiplied his standard of living—or he doesn't really give a damn about the well-being of the masses...

...But compassion and humanitarianism are not the goals of all this determinist, racist, collectivist, statist, anti-capitalist, anti-technological poppycock...

...It is not the freedom to express such blatant junk which is the danger...

...Edith Efron TV, Conservatives, and the First Amendment I'd like to consider a question that is often raised by conservatives: Should broadcasting have the same First Amendment freedom as the print press...

...Or, in the cultural version: "Rational technological civilization is evil, and irrational primitivism is good—so attack reason, destroy science and technology to make the primitives feel less inadequate...

...The Federal Communications Commission should pack its bags and go home...

...Could the rapid and incessant transmission of such a philosophy threaten our liberty...

...If so, why oppose the statists in the first place...

...Such intervention is a manifestation of the statist disease, not a cure for it...

...But that is precisely why I cling with passion to the First Amendment and wish to see no weakening of it...

...There is no such thing as a good cultural commissar...

...And by that I mean no government intervention at all...

...But if one wishes to combat an ideological movement, one can only combat it with a counter-ideological movement—not with force...

...Imagine that it passionately reinforced the concepts of individualism, individual responsibility, voluntarism, free enterprise, and liberty from the state...

...Such anti-intellectualism cannot solve an essentially intellectual problem...

...The genius of the First Amendment is that it protects dissent...

...The medium itself is guiltless...

...How can they avoid looking like the leaning tower of Pisa when no important alternative to the silly anti-freedom bromides is readily available in the political world that they cover...

...My reason is this...