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2005-10-27 11:53:07
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2005-10-28 13:26:38
on the problem of lynch mobs not on our payroll:
Forbes has an issue on communications out with an apparently pretty amusing piece of business class paranoia concerning the rapid expansion of the chattering class, by Daniel Lyons, excerpts here and here.
Anybody wasting their time noodling around with a blog ought to find it encouraging. I of course completely agree with Dick Lyons if I disagree with your blog, you terrible toxic mobs you.
The innocuous comment that "if blogging is journalism, then some of its practitioners seem to have learned the trade from Jayson Blair" brings to mind certain other employees of our Paper of Record that have continued working in an old tradition. As one commentator later explained:
Since the running of a big newspaper requires a large capital, the proprietors of important organs necessarily belong to the capitalist class, and it will be a rare and exceptional event if they do not sympathize with their own class in opinion and outlook.
They are able to decide what news the great mass of newspaper readers shall be allowed to have. They can actually falsify the news, or, without going so far as that, they can carefully select it, giving such items as will stimulate the passions which they desire to stimulate, and suppressing such items as would provide the antidote. In this way the picture of the world in the mind of the average newspaper reader is made to be not a true picture, but in the main that which suits the interests of capitalists.
This is true in many directions, but above all in what concerns the relations between nations. The mass of the population of a country can be led to love or hate any other country at the will of the newspaper proprietors, which is often, directly or indirectly, influenced by the will of the great financiers.
So long as enmity between England and Russia was desired, our newspapers were full of the cruel treatment meted out to Russian political prisoners, the oppression of Finland and Russian Poland, and other such topics. As soon as our foreign policy changed, these items disappeared from the more important newspapers, and we heard instead of the misdeeds of Germany. Most men are not sufficiently critical to be on their guard against such influences, and until they are, the power of the Press will remain.
Forbes is just afraid of a little free competition in the ancient market of "spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective."
:: posted by buermann @ 2005-10-27 21:47:26 CST |
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posted by AliceMarshall
@ 2005-10-28 18:42:33 | link
For some reason I cut and pasted "dick" in the url, rather than "daniel", must be some strange techo-fruedian bug in my software."Great journalists make PR possible" indeed. I believe we've discovered one of Dr. Russell's fellow travellers.
posted by buermann
@ 2005-10-28 19:29:10 | link
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