Every evening the national news shows appear to have precisely the same script. I can channel-hop and never miss a beat.
Especially noticeable when suddenly a queer buzzword like gravitas is being used by every talking head to deny Bush.
“It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people — who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations — do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies.”
“Among us, the newspaper is a tremendous power. It can make or mar any man’s reputation. It has perfect freedom to call the best man in the land a fraud and a thief, and he is destroyed beyond help.”
“There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.”
“I have a sort of vague general idea that there is too much liberty of the press in this country, and that through the absence of all wholesome restraint the newspaper has become in a large degree a national curse, and will probably damn the Republic yet.”