The American people would not believe they live in a democracy were it not for journalists repeating the lie as though democracy is set in stone every time they refer to this country as a democracy. Happily:
And well it should be when it serves democracy:
America’s Founders would not have included a free press in their Constitution had they known it would become a tool for democracy:
Alas, the Founding Fathers mistakenly included a free press in the First Amendment because they could not imagine a constitutionally protected press doing more to abolish liberty than all of the foreign enemies combined could ever do:
As time marched on a whole lot of people came to see journalism, and journalists, for what they are. John Swinton and James H. Barry barely scratched the surface of today’s press:
Bottom line: Media and democracy are marching arm in arm to the dumper because the public's trust in one cannot survive without trust in the other.
Freedom of the press is in trouble.
And well it should be when it serves democracy:
The press, the “Fourth Estate,” is meant to serve as a balance to the power centers of government. It is essential to a healthy, functioning democracy.
Journalists worried about press freedom
By Renee Garfinkel
Monday, May 15, 2017
Press freedom under fire
By Renee Garfinkel
Monday, May 15, 2017
Press freedom under fire
America’s Founders would not have included a free press in their Constitution had they known it would become a tool for democracy:
John Adams hated democracy and he feared what was known in the language of the time as “passion.” Adams’s famous assessment: “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.” Democracy, he wrote, “never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”
What John Adams Knew
by Kevin D. Williamson March 18, 2016 4:00 AM
Our Government Was Designed to Protect Us from the Trumps of the World
by Kevin D. Williamson March 18, 2016 4:00 AM
Our Government Was Designed to Protect Us from the Trumps of the World
Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few. John Adams, An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, August 29, 1763
XXXXX
The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived. John Quincy Adams
XXXXX
The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived. John Quincy Adams
XXXXX
We are a Republican Government, Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy...it has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity. Alexander Hamilton
Alas, the Founding Fathers mistakenly included a free press in the First Amendment because they could not imagine a constitutionally protected press doing more to abolish liberty than all of the foreign enemies combined could ever do:
Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. Thomas Jefferson
As time marched on a whole lot of people came to see journalism, and journalists, for what they are. John Swinton and James H. Barry barely scratched the surface of today’s press:
There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. John Swinton
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. John Swinton
XXXXX
"You wish to know my "confidential opinion as to the honesty of the Associated Press." My opinion, not confidential, is that it is the damndest, meanest monopoly on the face of the earth--the wet-nurse for all other monopolies. It lies by day, it lies by night, and it lies for the very lust of lying. Its news-gatherers, I sincerely believe, only obey orders." James H. Barry
Bottom line: Media and democracy are marching arm in arm to the dumper because the public's trust in one cannot survive without trust in the other.
