In The News ...

[YosemiteSam]

Seems the media, even when it was just print, was already knee deep into fake news.


There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it
is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know
it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If
you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear
in print.
I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper
I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing
similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one
issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours:
my occupation would be gone.
The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon,and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what
is about the same — his salary.
You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual
prostitutes.

John Swinton, [former Chief of Editorial Staff at the New York Sun.
Said to have been made at the "Journalists' Gathering" in the rooms of
the Twilight Club in the Mills Building, New York City, on April 12,
1883. in a talk "Some Things an Editor Dare Not Discuss.

~YS~

[Michael Press]

In article <df6d9cf5-8840-48ea...@googlegroups.com>,

What do today's editors say behind closed doors?
I rather think many of today's editors are true
believers rather than salaried realists.

I do not read newspaper news stories.
Never captured my imagination.

At one time the SF Crock had fun columnists
and interesting Sunday feature articles.
Two feature articles that I still remember are
"I Rivethead" by a Michigan automobile line worker.

"Cracking the Egg Ring" by an attorney in his first job---an
attorney for the Department of Agriculture. He kept getting
"pestered" by a farmer complaining about hens eggs smuggled into
the USA. He thought it beneath him, then finally took the case.
Turned into a big success for him and he got the use of a
verboten animal skin briefcase for the remainder of his tenure at
Agriculture.

--
Michael Press