This is a great article.
"a reporter may well be tried for espionage in the near future" --- I cannot wait.
There can be more shilohs and gettysbergs
Bravo!!
I pray so - but ? source?
Excellent article, jennivinson! BTTT!
Great article! Mega BUMP.
Great article! Mega BUMP.
No one with who had bothered to actually study late eighteenth and early nineteenth century US political history would be ignorant enough to make such a statement.
The press of the Revolutionary period and the early Republic was often highly partisan and usually strongly aligned with political faction, so much so that the printer’s workshop was often the local party headquarters.
See, for example "The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Jeffersonian America)"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813920302/ref=ase_pasleybrothersco/104-7378546-4556717?s=books&v=glance&n=283155&tagActionCode=pasleybrothersco
for accounts of such early "dirty tricks" as Thomas Jefferson's involvement in an attempted "cover-up" when a scheme to manipulate newspaper coverage of Alexander Hamilton was exposed.
The "honest" part is journalistic propaganda having no basis in the First Amendment. Nothing in the First Amendment gives any basis for the belief that journalism would be honest, and Jefferson and Hamilton sponsored newspapers in which to wage their partisan battles. That is the model for freedom of the press.The problem is not tendentiousness in journalism; that was old in Jefferson's time. The problem is the naivete of the public which buys into the con that journalism is objective because journalism says it is objective. The other problem of journalism is government-licensed (obviously therefore unconstitutional) journalism. I have reference of course to broadcasting, which could not exist without censorship to enable licensees to be heard over long distances.
Journalism has been seized upon by broadcast licensees as an excuse for their existence as government-licensed, government-favored entities. The trouble was, of course, that objectivity is not readily defined (except in a retrospective view in the light of history). So what could broadcast journalism do but mimic unlicensed journalism? Hence we see broadcast journalism parroting The New York Times.
The conceit of journalistic "objectivity" is sustained not only by the need of broadcasting to propagandize about the "need" for "objectivity" which they provide (or at least make a pretense of providing while merely mimicking The Times) but by the willingness of journalists to go along and get along instead of competing for the respect of the public. If all go along, all get along and all are putatively "objective;" the alternative would be for persistent flame wars. Thus we see flame wars only between the institutions of "objective journalism" on the one hand and of "conservative talk radio" on the other.
Since objectivity is a virtue and it is arrogant to argue from the assumption that you have a virtue, frankly "conservative" commentators actually have the moral high ground in their positioning. For anyone who understands the difference between philosophy and sophistry, that is . . .
There's no real debate whether our Ministry of Information is tilted to the left; they are. cIc's point re competing media for much of our history is right on. The REAL question is, what happened to conservative media? And of course, why? And how..........
Excellent, excellent read. All news media that participates in this espionage ought to have their dirty deeds exposed across the airwaves and any other source possible. Their treacherous behavior is causing the demise of America...
Great piece! Get yourself on The O'Reilly Factor or Hannity and Colmes so more people can hear you!
Great article. I do not refer to them as the "elite media" though. Instead I call them what they are, the enemy, as in ENEMEDIA.
Nicely done Jenni.
Great article. A belated WELCOME ABOARD!
The separation of good, honest, freedom-loving, life-loving people individuals with bad, anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-life, liars.
Great article. Thanks for writing it. Good people are connecting rapidly.
Thank you for posting your excellent piece here- your analogy here is perfect:
"It was as if they were saying to us—“look—we stood in a crowded building and yelled fire because we felt we had a responsibility to do so. The building was made of stuff that COULD burn—so obviously—there was a danger and we reported it. It isn’t OUR fault that people panicked, stampeded and killed one another as they exited this obviously flammable building..."