To insure truth........ the presses must be burned
Journalism as we know it is wire service journalism, coming from outlets which talk to, and listen to, the AP and other wire services. It is a “virtual meeting” of "people of the same trade”:To insure truth........ the presses must be burnedPeople of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)The AP has been in business since before the Civil War (Morse demo’d the telegraph in 1844). That means that the framing timbers of "a conspiracy against the public” had been in place a century by the time “the media” was railroading Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Not the presses, IMHO - but the wire services. We need multiple competitive presses so that (in Chairman Mao’s insincere words) “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred thoughts contend.” That is what the First Amendment was written toassurepreserve - that situation existed, with limits for libel and pornography, and that is what the First amendment assayed to preserve with the expression the freedom of the press. Journalism as a monopoly enabled by the wire services assays to “squash every flower but one. Disagreement with us is error to be stamped out.”Pretty much, establishment journalism exists to criticize society, and thereby to promote big government.