One of my relatives lived in Virginia and worked in DC. He said it was common knowledge - that EVERYONE knew about JFK and Marilyn Monroe.
He knew it, his friends knew it, the PRESS absolutely knew it.
When did the American press start with the lies?
Sorry state they are in now, but I wonder how far back it took for the press to go sour.
Fellow FReeper conservatism_IS_compassion places the time at or about when the telegraph was invented. "News" had to be condensed and edited to such a degree that one and only one "version" could be put out because of the technological constriction of the distribution method. I think his theory has merit.
When did the American press start with the lies?“The point is, the MSM has ALWAYS been in the tank for the Marxists/Bolsheviks/Democrats but we never had any alternative news-gathering/news-distribution systems like we have nowadays with the internet.”
Sorry state they are in now, but I wonder how far back it took for the press to go sour.
I was already in my late ‘30s during the Carter Administration when I realized that journalism was systematically “in the pocket” of the Democratic Party. I am obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But after a year or two of reading the Accuracy In Media (AIM) Report, the question was no longer if that was true, but why. And I cogitated on that issue for a long time, and came up with the idea that journalism was left-oriented because journalism was entertainment, and its system for creating that entertainment was to stir up the reader with stories of how the people we rely on to provide our food, our water, whatever, could not be trusted and therefore we need the journalist to keep an eye on them for us.Fellow FReeper conservatism_IS_compassion places the time at or about when the telegraph was invented. "News" had to be condensed and edited to such a degree that one and only one "version" could be put out because of the technological constriction of the distribution method. I think his theory has merit.
I still believe that, but I also knew that journalism used to be competitive regarding ideology, and that has never been the case in living memory. I wondered about the possible effect of the high speed printing press, but I couldn’t identify why that would have such a thoroughgoing effect. Then I saw the book, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails, and instantly I knew that the telegraph was a possible culprit. I investigated by reading
by Menahem Blondheim
which is basically the story of the Associated Press. The AP traces back smack in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, which is the correct time frame. Before that, newspapers were notoriously opinionated and partisan, and you picked your poison. News Over the Wires says that when the AP came into being, the obvious concentration of propaganda power was questioned as it should have been. The AP pointed out that its member newspapers didn’t agree on much of anything, so the AP itself was objective.
That argument had a seeming logic to it, except for one glaring problem:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam SmithIn that passage Adam Smith points out that it is impossible to completely isolate “people of the same trade” from communication with each other, but it is not in society’s interest to promote such meetings. Well, guess what! The AP newswire puts all our major news organizations into constant communication with each other! De facto, the AP is a “Borg.” Membership in the AP means assimilation into it. There is no such thing as journalistic independence when it comes to the party line. And the party line of the AP is precisely the conceit that all journalists are objective. Now think about it: membership in an organization which says that all its members are objective is equivalent to a making the claim of your own objectivity. And claiming your own objectivity is inherently the most subjective thing you can do.
If you want to even attempt to be objective, you must be open about any and all interests and motives you have which might have a bearing on the issue you are analyzing/discussing. And claiming to actually be objective is the very opposite of that. So we can know beyond peradventure that journalists are not even trying to be objective.
So we have two effects: journalism has an entertainment imperative which requires it to emphasize bad news, which inherently means that journalism prospers from mishap/misfortune, and is therefore helped by what hurts America - and, journalism is actually a single entity with multiple fronts such as the New York Times, NBC News, et al.
So why is journalism in the pocket of the Democratic Party? The better way to look at it is that the Democratic Party is in the pocket of the journalism Borg. By choice. Because it inherently puts the AP’s propaganda wind at the back of the Democratic Party. The only difference between an “objective” journalist and a “liberal” or “progressive” politician is what hat they are wearing. As the example of George Stephanopolis exemplifies.