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A newspaper is not just for reporting news, it's
to get people mad enough to do something about it. -- Mark Twain
Just
because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean
you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar. - Edward
R.
Murrow (1908 – 1965)
What you see is news, what you know is
background, what you feel is opinion. -- Lester Markel, editor
(1894-1977)
People
forget
the
role of a journalist is not to be a pleasant
conversationalist with those in power. - Susan Bennett, quoted
in Christian Science Monitor, 3-10-2005. Judith Miller and Bob
Woodward seem to have completely forgotten this principle as they
cozied up to power.
May 2004
When The Times opts for CD's rather than CDs, it's considered house
style. But if a shopkeeper mislays an apostrophe, the kind of people
who worry about whether anal-retentive has a hyphen are quick to
criticize.
A modern newspaper, seen from
the point
of view of the workers, is a gigantic munition-factory, in which the
propertied class manufactures mental bombs and gas-shells for the
annihilation of its enemies. - Upton Sinclair, 1919
Did a sense of shame ever reside in
our
Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by
themselves. [George] Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk
purse can
be cited as world class sycophancy. - Norman Mailer
[Norman Mailer] has put his finger on
the problem of the mainline Washington commentariat: a plodding
devotion to the ordinary, a near-neurotic need for the social
acceptance of their political betters, a knee-jerk predictability that
makes most columns coma-inducing, a waste of perfectly good trees. - Michael
Ryan in TomPaine.com 3/18/02, about Mailer's criticism of George
Will, 3/14/2002
If our knowledge of the world is
controlled by the media then we live in a mediocrity.
To announce that there must be no
criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president
right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic, but is morally treasonable to
the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt. (thanks, G.B.
Trudeau)
Trying
to determine what is
going on
in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by
watching the second hand of a clock. - Ben Hecht
Freedom of press is limited to
those who own one. - HL Mencken
A newspaper is a device for making the
ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier. - HL Mencken
Democracy is grounded upon so childish
a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of
taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern
must thus be to penalize the free play of ideas. - HL Mencken
Journalism: An
ability to meet the challenge of filling the space. - Rebecca West
I'm all in
favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Lets
start with typewriters. - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
No government ought to be without censors, and where the
press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair
operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means
of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics. I think
it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its
sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to
pamper the former and persecute the latter. - Thomas Jefferson
Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who
deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces
him to desert? - Abraham Lincoln
Our local newspaper is the Worcester Telegram and Gazette,
which is
now owned by the New York Times. Its editorial policy is
moderate
conservative, and it has an open letters-to-the-editor policy that
lends itself to abuse by religious and
political kooks. For example, although the editors came out in
favor of water fluoridation in 2001, it printed so many dozens of
blatantly false and hysterical tirades in opposition that the
referendum on fluoridation was defeated. In 2009 it puffed the
treasonous "Oath Keepers," and in 2010 promoted the candidacy of tea
bagger Scott Brown. Having an open mind shouldn't
mean "so open
your brains fall out." I stopped writing to the paper
after its second hash of one of my letters - there was no response to
my complaint about that.
The Telegram does have some good
columnists - Dianne Williamson and Clive McFarlane on various local
issues, (formerly) Kenneth J. Moynihan on politics, Albert B. Southwick
with a
weekly history lesson - but it also has its right-wing editor, Robert
Z. Nemeth, ham-handed or just clueless right-wing cartoonist, David
Hitch, and a crew of mostly right-wing syndicated columnists.
When it runs the NYT columnists, it's several days after original
publication.
On 19 September 2004 a carnival ride called
the "Sizzler" broke apart in Shrewsbury MA, killing one man and
injuring another. The Telegram has devoted more front-page
headlines to that accident than to the 9/11 attacks, the Asian tsunami
or Hurricane Katrina. Some weeks it has been in the paper every day! As
of Nov 2005, we can still expect at least weekly articles. Pathetic.
There are/were some thoughtful
conservative
columnists - William Safire, James Kilpatrick, sometimes George Will -
from whom one can occasionally learn something, even though their
columns usually
end up with "the Democrats are sending the country to the dogs." Then
there are the droolers, paleocons like Michael Reagan, Jeff Jacoby and
John Leo, who
would be happy if
Mussolini was in power. I occasionally wonder whether they are included
in moderate papers to appease the rabid right on one hand, and make the
right look like moronic troglodytes to everyone else. Ditto for the
comic strip Mallard Fillmore.
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