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How the Media Can Increase Freedom

Before key legislative votes, publicize presumed-supporters’ positions. Before primaries, highlight incumbents’ key votes.

James Anthony
November 26, 2021

The Republican Party leadership’s choice to not have a platform has raised questions of what the party is and what it stands for. These questions can be answered simply and quantitatively.

Republican Party Is Progressives’ Lynchpin

In the critical election of 1896 and the political reforms of the Progressive Era, 1900–20, the policies and coalitions making up the two dominant parties were dramatically reshuffled … [and] American journalism broke from its past explicit, formal partisanship and adopted a new public ethic.

— Richard Kaplan, “The Origins of Objectivity in American Journalism” [1]

The Progressive’s century-plus started in 1894 [2] and is ongoing in 2021. Their administrative state [3] and other regressive changes have greatly increased government, greatly reducing freedom. Freedom will increase again if we scrutinize each Progressive change and reverse it.

One key Progressive change was to attack reporting that’s openly activist and to substitute reporting that’s supposedly objective. To increase freedom, constitutionalist media must instead provide reporting that’s activist.

The activist reporting that can increase freedom would focus on an area that’s of great interest, the directions our governments are moving, and would tell the most impactful, compelling inside stories.

Inform Activists before Legislative Votes

Freedom is increased when life, liberty, or property are made more secure. They are threatened most by government, so they are secured and freedom is increased most by repeals.

Repeals aren’t supported by cronies [4]. Who they are supported by is we the people. And each repeal is a series of feature stories that’s waiting to be told.

The story line starts with the story of the champion who sponsor the repeal, introduce it, and keep it alive against all odds and despite hostile supposed leaders and their cronies.

The story line continues with the stories of the politicians whose talk says they should vote for a repeal but whose silence on specifics says they can’t be trusted. Digging up the goods on these politicians is the difference between increasing freedom now or being shafted for years.

Executives also can evaluate for themselves that existing statutes and opinions are unconstitutional, and can use the power vested in them to not execute any of these [5]. Putting these politicians on the spot is the difference between increasing freedom now or increasing coercion for even-more years.

Audiences yearn for freedom. Asking questions for audiences and then telling them the truth, no holds barred, is money.

Inform Voters before Primaries

When politicians use their constitutional powers to limit government, increasing freedom, these are feel-good stories worth retelling right when it matters most to audiences, before primaries.

Champions are to be praised. Even politicians who did the right thing only under pressure still did the right thing and are to be praised for doing that.

When the politicians who could limit government and increase freedom haven’t, these are wrath-inducing stories that badly need retelling right when this matters most to audiences, before primaries.

Where Progressive politics has no end of stories of victims, freedom has no end of stories of heroes. A little digging upfront and some reputation building upfront, and these media pioneers will find their phones and inboxes filling with more of these stories that their audiences crave. Still more of these stories will start being created, because politicians will have outlets for their most-heroic stories, and these stories in turn will strengthen these politicians come election time.

Inform Action

Progressive supposedly-objective reporting kills stories of the building of freedom and substitutes stories that build victimhood.

What audiences actually crave—and the only reporting that we’ll find satisfying—for is for media to provide activists and voters the information we need before legislative votes and before primaries.

The media antidote to Progressivism is targeted activist reporting for freedom.

References

  1. Kaplan, Richard. “The Origins of Objectivity in American Journalism.” The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism, edited by Stuart Allen, Routledge, 2010, pp. 25-37.
  2. Rothbard, Murray N. The Progressive Era. Edited by Patrick Newman, Mises Institute, 2017, pp. 163–97.
  3. Anthony, James. “On the Reading of Old Constitutions.” rConstitution.us, 9 Oct. 2021, rconstitution.us/on-the-reading-of-old-constitutions/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2021.
  4. Anthony, James. “Who Decides: Cronies, or Customers?” rConstitution.us, 28 May 2021, rconstitution.us/who-decides-cronies-or-customers/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2021.
  5. Anthony, James. “The First 1,461 Days of a Constitutionalist President.” rConstitution.us, 8 Jan. 2021, rconstitution.us/the-first-1461-days-of-a-constitutionalist-president/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2021.

James Anthony is the author of The Constitution Needs a Good Party and rConstitution Papers, has written in The Federalist, American Thinker, Foundation for Economic Education, and American Greatness, and publishes rConstitution.us. Mr. Anthony is an experienced chemical engineer with a master’s in mechanical engineering.

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