Organized Crime

In the late 1970s University of Rochester economists William Meckling and Michael Jensen presented a theory of “liberal” bias in the media that was based on a rigorous exploration of how the media best pursue their own self interest, coupled with an analysis of the role of government in shaping that self interest. In short, their thesis was that government had become so big and pervasive that your average journalist relied primarily on government itself, with all of its politicians, bureaucrats, and special-interest appendages, for most of the information that is reported to the public. If one is an environmental reporter, for example, one must cultivate relationships with the Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats who are the main source of the latest news about environmental policy. If one is a labor reporter, one must cultivate relationships with U.S. Department of Labor bureaucrats who are the main source of the latest news about labor policy, and so on.

Consequently, any news reporter who is too critical of the government agencies that he is reporting about risks being cut off from his information source, the lifeblood of his career. Thus, career self-preservation among journalists requires that they essentially become lapdogs and mouthpieces for the state. They will tolerate and occasionally report about relatively inconsequential criticisms of the state, but are more likely to demonize those who make such criticisms. They do this in order to fool the public into believing that there is actually a public policy debate in Washington.

Whenever someone like a Congressman Ron Paul appears on the scene, who challenges the very propriety and existence of any statist central planning institution (such as the Fed), the media will ignore and/or demonize him and everyone associated with his views.

The Jensen/Meckling theory is correct as far as it goes, but it omits some other important elements of the sources of statist bias in the media. Murray Rothbard filled in these gaps in our understanding in his two essays entitled “The Nature of the State” and “Anatomy of the State.” All governments, Rothbard wrote, rely crucially on a set of myths and superstitions about its alleged greatness and benevolence coupled with accompanying lies, myths and superstitions about the “evils” of freedom, voluntarism, private enterprise, and the civil society. These myths and superstitions are not spread by government bureaucrats as much as by various intellectual prostitutes in academe and the media. The “court historians” of academe spin tall tale after tall tale about the “failures” of voluntarism and free markets and argue for more government interference in our lives. Keyensian economics would be a perfect example of this phenomenon, and New York Times/Democratic Party pundit Paul Krugman would be a perfect example of such a court historian.

This is another reason why the media ignore people like Congressman Ron Paul. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part members of the media have invested many years as skilled propaganda mouthpieces for the welfare/warfare state. They are as much a part of the state apparatus as is any government bureaucrat or politician. They are the essential tool of the state in dumbing down the general population so that it will peacefully acquiesce in the never-ending expansion of the state and the financial enrichment of all of its functionaries, expecially the media. The expansion of the state is always accompanied by a reduction in prosperity and freedom of the general population.

Most members of the “mainstream media” are therefore paid professional liars who repeat over and over such absurdities as: “Higher taxes and more government spending will make us all more prosperous”; “taking naked x-ray photographs of everyone passing through airports is constitutional”; “the Constitution gives the president of the United States the right to bomb any country on the planet without consulting first with anyone else, especially Congress”; “the founding fathers thought it would be a good idea to place everyone’s freedom in the hands of five government lawyers with lifetime tenure”; “healthcare socialism will cause healthcare costs to decline”; “recessions and depressions are caused by sudden outbursts of greed and “animal spirits”; “capitalists get rich by selling people products that will harm or kill them”; the president has a constitutional right to order the murder of American citizens if he labels them as suspected “enemy combatants”; and so on.

Having spent their entire careers spreading such absurd lies, the appearance of an educated, articulate, and knowledgeable person like Congressman Ron Paul absolutely terrifies the “mainstream media,” for he threatens to expose them, once and for all, as the frauds and enemies of the free society that they really are. This also explains the hostility exhibited by the state and much of the media toward freedom-supporting Web sites in particular and the internet in general. Such sources of gate-keeperless communication threaten to burst asunder the empire of lies upon which all state power relies.