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I can't take credit for writing INFORMATION WARFARE: Winning the Media Battle, but I do like to point people to it.

The "Media" has always been controversial in America, even before we were a country. Our Founding Fathers invented freedom of the press, and newspapers historically made no pretense of nonpartisanship.

The Federalists had their papers and so did the Jeffersonians and there was an ideological balance of power among the information providers that kept them relatively honest. This balance of power broke down in 1860, and Lincoln had such terrible press that he had to suspend the First Amendment and shut down Democrat Copperhead newspapers.

"Yellow" journalism from William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer drove us into a "war of choice" with Spain. Then came the muckrakers and the newspaper publishers began to flex their muscles, shining the light of bad publicity on their enemies and spinning away the sins of their friends. Deciding what the voters will be bombarded with and what they will never see in print was an enormous power, which in the two World Wars and Korea they exercised responsibly.

The Soviets and the Nazis made a science of propaganda and American business made a science of advertising and the big players in the American media, now including radio and television, studied those sciences to improve their capability to steer public opinion and manufacture consent, increasing their power.

I believe Joe McCarthy was right. Soviet agents recruited American journalists. Naive college boys are more easily impressed than crusty old police beat reporters. Working class reporters with high school educations began to be replaced. Newspaper reporters became journalists.

The Vietnam War was a victory for Communist agitprop, a victory they could not have achieved without the willing assistance of the American media. Many of these Fifth Columnists are still members of the Fourth Estate.

It is our great good fortune to live at a time when the "Media" is no longer just the NYT, WAPO and LAT, parroted by ABCNBCCBSCNNPMSNBC. Free Republic is part of the "Media" now. Bloggers are part of the "media." Anybody with a cell phone camera can be a member of the "Media" if they want to be. The old Media is dying. Let us redouble our efforts to put it out of its misery.