Bad "News" (Thomas Sowell)

Thanks for the ping and the post.

Solzhenitsyn’s remarks on the media...

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.” But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Thanks to raymondpronk...here...

http://raymondpronk.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/solzhenitsyn-on-writers-and-lying/

from “Live Not By Lies” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn...

“Will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea which he can only see is false or a distortion of the truth whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science, or music.”

“And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, but not with any help from me.”

from...

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/livenotbylies.html

Thanks to FReeper Fred Nerks for the link.

The media just loves to try to embarrass George Bush any way they can. It has sabotaged the security of our country time after time in an effort to get back at him for their misconception that he “stole the election.”

That opinion is widespread but not true, IMO. A tactic used by the Left, the Communists, worldwide is to try to first steal an election but failing that to then accuse the winner of stealing the election. They keep that up along with calling the legally elected winner to be illegitimate. They do that until they can actually steal an election and gain/regain power.

To them, everything is about getting and keeping power. It is known that Senator Jay Rockefeller went to Jordan and Syria just prior to our buildup to invade Iraq and using the inside information he had, information shared with Congress by the President, that Bush was serious and was really going to invade Irag. This gave Saddam the information he needed to spirit the WMD out of Iraq.

Rockefeller did this to make Bush look bad and help the Democrats regain power. He didn't care about the country or the safety of out troops. He cared only about power. There are many like him.

My only disagreement with you is as to whether the Democrats/Left/Media really think Bush stole the election. I think they only pretend to think that to affect the Useful Idiots, who probably really do believe it

It was the media who sponsored all the investigations of the Florida election, the investigations which all proved that Bush won fairly. So, they know that no election was stolen, they just want to leave that impression on the impressionable. That is just one of their many deceptive practices.

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