I was watching this Mike Fisher video he was he was ranting about Skip Bayless. Troy Aikman, Fox football analyst and former Dallas Cowboy championship quarterback, also said how very disappointed he was that Fox had hired Skip Bayless to do the morning show Undisputed.
And they both both made the bogus accusation that Skip Bayless in his book on the 1995 championship Cowboys team that falsely accused Troy of being gay. And it’s not true. There’s a chapter in it where Skip simply mentions how widespread the rumors were around the Dallas cowboys that Troy was gay, but he made very clear in the book that he that he know no evidence that this was true, He was just shocked that Barry Switzer the coach seemed to believe that Troy was gay or at least was hearing there’s those rumors. So there comes a point where the the accurate reporting of rumors, those is it’s good journalism is is necessary to to understand what’s going on. Skip put the rumors in context, he said I now have no factual evidence for them, but all these people in the Dallas Cowboys organization seem to believe that Trey was gay.
So there’s a night and day difference between the accurate reporting of a rumor and pointing out that there’s no factual evidence for it versus making the allegation of the rumor.
So that that led me to getting into discussion with a friend what what are journalist ethics. Journalist ethics not like The ethics for doctors, ethics for lawyers because the ethical obligations to whom you owe your obligations, they’re so varied for journalists. So as a journalist, do you primarily owe ethical obligations to your readers? You primarily owe ethical obligations to your sources of information? You primarily owe ethical obligations to the people you write about? Do you primarily owe ethical obligations to your profession? Because journalists depend heavily on cooperation from general public. Who do you primarily owe?
Ethical obligations to your employer, to your advertisers? There’s so many competing ethical obligations and it’s not at all clear to whom journalists owe their primary obligation. So that makes journalist ethics quite unlike the ethical codes of other professions. For example, it’s pretty clear that the doctor’s primary ethical obligation is to his patients. And an attorney’s primary ethical obligation is to his client and to the to the legal system. An accountant’s primary and obligation is to the general public, particularly, let’s say, investors, potential investors, those who might be affected by who are relying on the the accountant doing an honest job. And dentists, obviously, their primary ethical obligation is to the patient. But dentist, that’s interesting. So many dentists, push things that are bogus.
Right? There’s so many dentists abusing the the trust of their. Their patients. Is there any profession that so often abuses their clients as dentists do. Much of what dentists recommend is bogus. For example, there’s no empirical evidence that floss does does any good. Some dental procedures are often unnecessary. All they do is line the the dentist pockets. So so there’s a great article in the Atlantic about how off the hook dangerous dentists are with their just lack of ethical behavior in getting people to have unnecessary root canals, all sorts of painful expensive surgeries that line the dentist pockets, but do the patient no good.
Yearly dental x-rays are often over a $100. Be highly skeptical of what your dentist suggest you spend because abuse is just rampant and the profession hasn’t demonstrated much interest in curtail it.
So really watch out for your dentist and car mechanics. I don’t know anything about the workings of the automobiles. I don’t know how often they’ve taken advantage of me. I suspect they’ve rooked me for tens of thousands of dollars. The primary ethical obligation for the car mechanic is to a client, but then also to the state. For example, if we have laws about emissions. There are many people who do emissions, and they help people cheat the standard and the result is we all suffer from decreased air quality.
So there are all sorts of professions that exists primarily for the benefit of the profession not for the public and they have no interest in curtail abuse. Think about mortgage brokers and mortgage lending. They they have you sign such complicated lengthy documents that that there’s no reason to expect an ordinary person to understand what’s going on. There’s are so many fees that you are not not cognizant of, it’s clearly a profession where they have aligned a complicated way of doing things, so that they can screw you over.
For journalistic ethics, the most important thing is to know the name of the person who’s committing the work. Ethical questions will sort themselves out because the most important capital you have as a journalist is your reputation. So You get a reputation for misquoting people. People aren’t going to talk to you. You get a reputation being unfair. People won’t want deal with you. People won’t give you information. So as a journalist you you largely depend on other people cooperating, giving you information. That you honor on or off the record. So you quickly develop a reputation for fairness and accuracy and integrity. Do you make an honest effort to show different sides to a story?
So as long as your name is on your work, your ethics are going to sort themselves out.
Because if you show yourself to be a bad character, people are gonna shun you. Like most professions, journalists are most concerned about their reputation with their peers. So they probably socialize mainly with other the journalists. They want to look good to other journalists and so that that gives them an incentive to operate by the standards of their profession.
That also provides them a tremendous incentive for protecting their group. I got called by a CNN booker in 2007 because I was the guy who broke the story about the mayor of Los Angeles. He’d stopped wearing his wedding ring, he’d been having an affair with a news reader on a Spanish language TV station that covered him. So CNN wanted to bring me on the show live, so they sent a limo to pick me up at 4AM.
And I got into the CNN Los Angeles studio on sunset Boulevard about 4:30AM, and then they said, oh, we’re moving the interview back till it’s not gonna be live. It’s gonna be taped, and they when when we do the taped interview, I didn’t get to see the the woman anchor was asking me the questions. That’s by design, so that you’re on the defensive. And I noted that it was well known among journalists that for many months the married mayor had not been wearing his wedding ring, but the journalists were reluctant for various reasons to report on the mayor’s dissolving marriage because they wanted to support the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in over a century and they generally agreed with this politics, and so they they were protective of mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. And the CNN anchor said, how can you say the about Los Angeles Times. They’ve Pulitzer surprises. Well, Pulitzer prize does not denote journalist excellence. It’s a popularity contest with other journalists. So New York Times journalists who lied for Stalin and covered up the the Ukrainian genocide. He got a Pulitzer prize.
Janet Cooke of the Washington Post invented a story about drug kids who are born with drug addictions. She just completely invented the story, and she she won a Pulitzer prize. So lots of long boring stories win Pulitzers because they’ve hit the sweet spot of what the profession regards as important, what it should support. S
So CNN did not air any of my interview. They didn’t wanna hear me criticize all the journalists. They didn’t wanna hear me point out that other journalists were aware of the same story I was, but that the journalist profession in Los Angeles had covered up for the mayor over the previous 6 to 9 months because they didn’t wanna break any embarrassing story about the mayor’s marriage.
Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor of The Atlantic. Like other journalist elites, he paid no price for lying America into invading Iraq in 2003 by pushing bogus stories about Iraq having WMD. Who suffered a hit for Russiagate promotion? Many of the perpetrators of that bogus story got Pulitzer prizes.
Journalists don’t generally pay pay a price for political activism. As long as their political activism fits in with the the world view of the the reigning elites.
So the New York Times found that there was the most money to be made and subscriptions to be gained from publishing opinion pieces about how horrible Trump was. So the New York Times has moved from an primarily advertising based publication where you’re rewarded for getting hits to a subscription model where you’re rewarded for reinforcing the world the world view of subscribers. So newspapers and Tv channels they’re are also a business. So just like Fox, they they tap into an audience, by largely telling the audience what they wanna hear. So to the New York Times has found its business model in telling telling its audience what it wants to hear.
Rather than what what may actually be true.
That’s the the winning business model. People have a particular view of the world, and they wanna be able to tune in to you and get that view of the world reinforced and extended into new areas.
The most powerful human desire is the desire for status. So status simply means the opposite of humiliation. So instead of going to work in the bar saying to you hey dexter bring me a cup of coffee. The boss says, hey, can you come into my office? And what do you think about this?
Love to get your opinion on this? Or you have people who who wanna know your opinion or respect you or treat you with, say some defer, so desire for status has a huge effect on our political opinions. Generally speaking, people are going to subscribe to the politics that fits in with the crowd that they wanna belong to. So if you’re an orthodox Jew you want to subscribe to a politics that fits in with the generally conservative political world of orthodox Jews. If you’re in the news media, you’re gonna wanna subscribe to a politics that fits in with with the worldview of your peers.
So you reject what our ruling elites believe is true, and you develop status in an alternative world. So you promote special knowledge aka conspiracy theories. So is there any more dramatic way to oppose everything that is held sacred in the Western world in 2020 than by denying the Holocaust. If you deny the holocaust, then you are completely giving up all options for status in the mainstream world, and you are making a dramatic play for status in the alternative world. So if you say Covid is a hoax, holocaust is a hoax then you’re rejecting status in the mainstream world and you’re are vying for status in the alternative ward.
So is it anti-social not to want status? Or even to want the opposite. I don’t believe that there’s anyone who doesn’t want status. It does seem anti-social, anti-human. If you don’t want status what you’re saying is that you’re you’re fine with humiliation which is incredibly dangerous to your well being. It’s incredibly dangerous to your health. It’s incredibly dangerous to your survival. And if you don’t want status, then you’re reducing your ability to form bonds with people. Because nobody who wants to be bonded to someone who is just continually being humiliated. Someone who is a walking talking humiliation, what kind of person will wanna bond with such a person? Only a fellow loser.
Playing to your audience is a very good business model. Having contempt for your audience tends to be a bad business model. Not wearing a mask inside during a dangerous influenza pandemic is also trying to gain status in an alternative world.
