slatten49 wrote:
Nancy Gibbs, Editor of Time Magazine; February, 2017
During the campaign of 1800, an opposition newspaper warned that if Thomas Jefferson were elected President, "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced...the soil will soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes." And still it was Jefferson who argued that that given the choice between "a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government," he wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter. Two hundred and forty years since the founding of the country, a free press remains democracy's k**ler app.
Nearly every President has found much to dislike in news coverage---Harry Truman referred to press clippings as "the day's poison"---but seldom have reporters been the target of such relentless hostility as we are seeing from the current administration. Barely a day in office, President Trump declared his "running war" with the media; top adviser Stephen Bannon calls the press "the opposition party" that should "keep its mouth shut," and Kellyanne Conway suggests that if journalism were a "real business," 20% of the media would have been fired for all the things they got wrong.
To demonize the press, to characterize it as not just mistaken but malign, is to lay the groundwork for repression. The American public came through a spirited, exhausting, d******e e******n season anything but repressed. An argument over the direction of the country, the focus of policy, the priorities and values that should guide us is alive in the streets and online and in the pages and screens of our media. That's as it should be. That argument makes us smarter and connects us to the government that serves in our name.
At a time when the media is ever more fractured and siloed, and much of it partisan on both sides, TIME is on the few remaining institutions that speaks to a broad and global audience. Our audience has never been bigger, and we are at our most effective when we welcome debate and discussion from all compass points. I know from my own inbox and social feeds that both praise and criticism of what we do come from left, right and points between, and that's where we live: at the center of a conversation that must be civil, rational and open-minded. We are committed to independent inquiry, defending the possibility of progress, holding the powerful to account and providing an arena where diverse voices and visions compete. Our purpose is not to tell people what to think; it is to help them decide what to think about.
The enemy in any democracy is not dissent, from either within or without. Dissent, in fact, is essential. The enemy is dishonesty, ignorance, indifference, intolerance. The ability to hold journalists accountable has never been greater, and we take legitimate criticism as a challenge to do better. Attempts to suppress, dismiss and control, on the other hand, we understand as exactly what Thomas Jefferson warned against.
Nancy Gibbs, Editor of Time Magazine; February, 20... (
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There are legitimate complaints against today's "free press". For one, it isn't in any way "free", at least, where money is concerned. Uber wealthy type personnel, don't invest in news agencies or networks, if there's no money to be made. That being said, we still need the press for a number of reasons, the most important is it's ability to shine a spotlight on issues that would otherwise remain unknown.
Flint Michigan would probably be a dead town by now, if the press hadn't picked up the story about the poisoned water, because the Government failed at every level in keeping people safe. People in Government and industry can be extremely myopic, when it comes to covering their own asses, but when the press blows the cover off - the cockroaches are blinded by the light and can't escape.
I often accuse the press of sensationalizing things for ratings, exaggerating, picking and choosing the juiciest stories to run, ignoring far more important news, minimizing human tragedy, and compartmentalizing human interest stories. I also accuse the press of becoming Trumps patsy, allowing him to use the press to promote his lunacy, hatred, and delusions, because he knows they cannot make themselves stop reporting every fart, I mean tweet, thus muddying already murky waters.
Still, we need the press to keep at it, we just need them to reboot to an earlier, more honorable set of ethics, where they stick strictly to the bare t***h. They can editorialize in the editorial section, and stop doing it on prime time news.