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 For decades, major newspapers in the U.S. have been the mouthpieces for the liberal agenda, so why not make it official, bail out the practically extinct dinosaurs, nationalize them, and and create a media system openly controlled by government?
Many major newspapers are facing financial woes, either due to poor management or the current economic squeeze. Ad revenues have fallen dramatically. Some are shedding staff; others reducing services in an effort to make ends meet.
Gannett, publishers of USA Today and hundreds of small-town papers, forced their employees into taking a week-long furlough, saving millions. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a Hearst corporation holding, stopped printing and went with an online edition only just this month. The San Francisco Chronicle says they might have to shut down. And the Tribune Company which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and others filed for bankruptcy last December, and on and on it goes.
In the nationalization spirit of the day, this has sparked Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland to introduce legislation to bail out privately owned, for-profit U.S. newspapers. "We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin was quoted as saying. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."
Cardin is hopeful that these once private enterprises will operate as non-profits, just like public television. His Newspaper Revitalization Act [PDF Download], currently before the Senate Finance Committee, would allow newspaper companies to report on all issues including political issues, but the endorsement of political candidates would be disallowed.
For years Americans have sneered at the Russians for their state-controlled media. But that’s exactly what we’ll have if this passes, to a much greater extent than we now have. Just think, the New York Times could soon officially be the equivalent of Pravda.
It’s almost laughable to hear the liberals citing Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy on a free press, twisting and spinning it away from it’s original meaning. Jefferson knew that over time principles are corrupted, warning us to ever be on guard against such corruption and the tyranny that follows.
Tom Fiedler, the former executive editor of the Miami Herald and current dean of Boston University’s College of Communication, quipped: "I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press. Thus it is in democracy's interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn't hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened."
That was echoed by Cardin while bemoaning the death of newspapers when he said it “is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."
The worst is from Robert Schlesinger who has the audacity to blog under the name of Thomas Jefferson. He praised the fourth estate’s role, supposedly unbiased, in presenting to Americans the news of the day saying, “The media plays a key role not only on informing the citizenry in terms of literally reporting the day’s events, but also in getting behind them and and in watch-dogging the institutions and people who have huge power over our lives -- be they public officials, corporate titans, other journalists and so fourth.” And then he added, “Maybe it’s time for local governments to declare eminent domain and start making the local papers public property.” (There’s an understanding of constitutional principles, goodness!)
In actuality, Jefferson understood that a free press, not a nationalized, government-controlled press, was necessary to a free nation. He was the ultimate believer in the free exchange of ideas where truth would eventually triumph. Here’s just a few of his quotations:
[This is] a country which is afraid to read nothing, and which may be trusted with anything, so long as its reason remains unfettered by law. --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan, 1816
Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816
I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799
Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786
The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness... if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated among the people. --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1799
And while championing a free press, Jefferson also knew to what extent the press could fail in it’s duties to the country by becoming a voice for propaganda.
The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper. --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807
The Chief Magistrate cannot enter the arena of the newspapers. --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1811
It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807.
Read them and weep.
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