"Journalists were liars and/or political types going back to Vietnam, and; most likely before." Well, Uncle Walter and his misdeeds are a good example of your point.
Posted on 12/28/2019 5:08:34 AM PST by Kaslin
A new year is upon us, and I am keenly aware of the Fourth Estate’s four New Year’s Resolutions for 2020: (1) get Trump; (2) get Trump’s friends and family; (3) ridicule anyone who has voted or would consider voting for Trump; and (4) protect the Democratic Party from scandal. If the “free” press can do this while impersonating the virtuous hero withstanding onslaught from the impenitent pretender in the White House, then all the better. There is nothing they like more than playing Saint George to Trump’s dragon.
They’ll need to dig deeper if they expect any of us to take them seriously ever again. This isn’t a “one-too-many Christmas cookies requiring a jump on the Peoloton” kind of resolution year. This is a full-blown “been drinking Christmas cocktails since November 9, 2016, and desperately need an intervention” moment for the press. Journalists keep leaning on the imaginary crutch that their blown credibility stems from one lone man in the country calling them out for their fake news from his Twitter account. Chris Wallace has gone so far as to claim that there has never been a more dangerous time for the First Amendment than when the President of the United States exercises his free speech. To save the press, we must regulate who is allowed to speak. Finally, a license journalists can get behind!
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Chris Wallace, Lois Lerner. Don’t any of these people have neighbors who know who they are?
Journalists were liars and/or political types going back to Vietnam, and; most likely before.
Mr. Shurk gives too much credit to journalists. He seems to think that when journalists cite anonymous sources that the sources actually exist. In fact, when a journalist cites an anonymous source, it means that the journalist invented the story. There is no source other than the journalist.
So true.
General Sherman had some creative ideas on what to do with journalists. Northern newspapers were the Confederate’s best source of intelligence.
Philippians 4:8 is God’s 8-point standard for proper reporting. The news media FAILS on every point, beginning with “Whatsoever things are TRUE.”
One of the great propagandists in history was not Goebbels but Benjamin Franklin. He took pride in being biased. When he was Secretary of State he fed articles to the British press and forged the byline as legitimate American newspapers.
Anyone believing in an unbiased media is naive to the point of stupidity. They're all liars to some degree. It's human nature.
Right after she told House Republicans to bleep off, Lois Lerner was cornered outside her house by a conservative journalist; panicked, she ran to a neighbor’s house and begged to be let in.
Her neighbor told her to bleep off.
Heart warming story.
"Journalists were liars and/or political types going back to Vietnam, and; most likely before." Well, Uncle Walter and his misdeeds are a good example of your point.
Let’s don’t. Journalism was “great” when we were being gullible. It can never be great when the public isn’t allowing itself to be played for suckers.The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. And as we cannot always be satisfied merely with being admired, unless we can at the same time persuade ourselves that we are in some degree really worthy of admiration; so we cannot always be satisfied merely with being believed, unless we are at the same time conscious that we are really worthy of belief. As the desire of praise and that of praise-worthiness, though very much a-kin, are yet distinct and separate desires; so the desire of being believed and that of being worthy of belief, though very much a-kin too, are equally distinct and separate desires.
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. — Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
People 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. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)The problem of journalists “meeting together” and conspiring against the public was not “all that” when all that was happening was journalists reading each others’ newspapers. The advent of the telegraph in 1844, and of the AP (1848), created continuous virtual meetings of all major journalists, and we should have been diligently on the lookout for conspiracy among them ever since.“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” ― Alexander HamiltonOnly by dint of continuous scrutiny of our sources of information can we have a great representative republic. The default is a great “Fourth Estate” of journalists who think it their right and duty (to each other) to gull us with claims of authority as the ancient Greek sophists did.
- sophist
- 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments.
- philosopher
- O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage."
"Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]
- philosophy
- A fondness or love for wisdom that leads to searches for it; hence, seeking a knowledge of the general principles of elements, powers, examples, and laws that are supported by facts and the existence of rational explanations about practical wisdom and knowledge.
Journalism has fallen far short of the ideals I was given through my education in high school and college (it was my college major).
You were to report the facts and leave the preference out - other than for country in time of war. There were the five “W”s (who, what, when, where, why) and an “H” (how). Those were then backed up by quotes and background information to add relevance to the key details (5 Ws and H) as why this was news.
Liberals decided that facts were not enough. That you needed to be told what to think about a story. They despised Nixon and worked actively to remove him. They despised the Vietnam War and worked tirelessly to get Americans to stop supporting it.
By the time Reagan became president, they had decided Americans were too stupid to be correctly led the liberal way so they changed to another form called “advocacy journalism”. Instead of giving equal time to both sides of an argument, the reporter extolled the virtue of one side and demonized the other. Then, this evolved to simply assuming you agreed with their side without any explanation given as to why. It is due to this we have today’s nonsense like “global warming” and “climate change” built entirely on hogwash.
People like the homeless are championed rather than being derided as societal leeches. Homosexuals are championed as being somehow more enlightened than the rest of us, freed from the bondage of raising children that takes up so much of the hetero’s time, rather than derided as perverts who are one-offs the building of an effective society. Liberals constantly chant about “fairness” while giving solutions that are almost always unfair.
These have led to a dumbed-down society that has not been taught the basics of critical thinking. Thinking has been replaced by feeling and you’re not allowed to criticize feelings, especially those espoused by groups the media champions.
I’m not sure but that you’d have to ban all of today’s journalists and j-schools and replace them with those who have not had their minds poisoned by this rot of advocacy. Like Joe Friday, I want “just the facts, ma’am” and let me decide for myself. There was a time when opinions were labelled as “editorial”. Today, almost all journalism is opinions when intelligent people thirst for the facts. Fox News became popular when they believed their own mantra of “we report, you decide”. Today, they too have become non-stop opinion, speculation and chatter.
I had an adjunct journalism instructor (at UF) who had been a reporter at the St. Pete Times. He came into the classroom and started talking about something. A minute later, some guy burst into the classroom yelling something about his wife being hit on. He brandished a knife and lunged at the adjunct instructor, who collapsed over a desk, as the attacker left the room. A couple of seconds later, the instructor stood up and told us, “You have three minutes to write about what happened.” My first instinct was to look at the expressions on the faces of the other students.
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