Close, but no cigar. We want, we need, we must have free and independent presses.What we have now is a single “associated” press consisting of multiple outlets all coming from a common input pool, the AP newswire.
And when we speak of “presses” we do not restrict our attention to the particular popular topical nonfiction genre known as journalism.
The trouble with journalism is that by its openly proclaimed commercially motivated rules journalism, while claiming to be objective, is (knowingly) negative toward society. And yet if “The conceit that negativity is objectivity” were a Jeopardy answer, the corresponding Jeopardy question would be, “What is the definition of cynicism?”
Cynicism toward society implies faith in - or at least naiveté toward - government. And this combination is the defining characteristic of leftism. Thus we require a different sort of discourse to put journalism into context. What we need is philosophy. Philosophy is “the love of wisdom,” and philosophers reject tendentious argumentation - sophistry - and demand that argumentation restrict itself to facts and logic. But anyone who functions as a philosopher - who listens respectfully to facts and logic which oppose his own perspective, and respectfully offers rebuttals without resorting to ad hominem attacks or other tendentious argumentation - will be condemned by journalists and other leftists. Who function as sophists in evading the facts and logic espoused by the philosopher.
Journalists and other leftists attack the philosopher as a “right wing talk show host."