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Personal opinion: I think it was around 2004 when the media slowly stopped being the journalists that protect our democracy, and instead corporations and indivi

Personal opinion: I think it was around 2004 when the media slowly stopped being the journalists that protect our democracy, and instead corporations and individuals with political agendas. Sure there were plenty of newspapers and outlets that leaned one way or the other, but it was never so blatantly partisan, to the point of suspect. Journalists are not the enemy of the people, but the media of today certainly doesn't act like it.

liability 6y ago
> 2004 A year or two before that you had Judith Miller at the New York Times uncritically helping the American government start a war on false pretexts. And more than a century before then, American newspapers were hard at work starting the Spanish-American War for bullshit reasons.
jweir 6y ago
This has always been the case. Thomas Jefferson called newspapers a “polluted vehicle.” Hearst and yellow journalism. Mcarthy is was not a high point in journalistic integrity - the press propelled him before Murrow took him down.
tsimionescu 6y ago
You're off by a century or two, but otherwise... In all seriousness, the press has always been the friend of the powerful - whether moneyed interests, politicians, academics and so on. You don't write for the NYT or WP or Fox News or whatever you want unless your beliefs align with the interests of their owners, their advertisers, their lobby groups etc. And even if you may write for them, you'll absolutely not be editing for them unless your beliefs align with all of the above. It's not some massive conspiracy or anything like that - it's just the way people and organizations work. No manager will hire or promote (or continue paying) someone whose opinions significantly disagree with their own, and the same is true of the manager's manager and so on. Much of this is also highly related to the owners of the media outlet. There have been historical examples of moguls buying newspapers and requiring gushing reviews of any of their businesses, and vitriolic attacks of their competitors - political partisanship is a step down from that as freedom of the press goes.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Personal opinion: I think it was around 2004 when the media slowly stopped being the journalists that protect our democracy, and instead corporations and individuals with political agendas. It's literally always been that way. For a while in the late 20th Century US, the alignment of the propaganda interests of the major US media was such that it spoke with almost a single voice, but the homogeneity wasn't some kind of virtuous objectivity.
Simulacra 6y ago
Thank you for many pointing out that I'm off by a century or two, please allow me to clarify: The growth of the internet and corporate controlled media may have made the problem significantly worse, and more encompassing of the nation. I had completely forgotten about Judith Millar, thank you for point that out. I guess I remember a time when there were newspapers, and journalists were above the fray of politics. Something dragged the entire profession of journalism into the dregs and I'm at a loss to pinpoint exactly what that is.

liability 6y ago

> 2004 A year or two before that you had Judith Miller at the New York Times uncritically helping the American government start a war on false pretexts. And more than a century before then, American newspapers were hard at work starting the Spanish-American War for bullshit reasons.

jweir 6y ago

This has always been the case. Thomas Jefferson called newspapers a “polluted vehicle.” Hearst and yellow journalism. Mcarthy is was not a high point in journalistic integrity - the press propelled him before Murrow took him down.

tsimionescu 6y ago

You're off by a century or two, but otherwise... In all seriousness, the press has always been the friend of the powerful - whether moneyed interests, politicians, academics and so on. You don't write for the NYT or WP or Fox News or whatever you want unless your beliefs align with the interests of their owners, their advertisers, their lobby groups etc. And even if you may write for them, you'll absolutely not be editing for them unless your beliefs align with all of the above. It's not some massive conspiracy or anything like that - it's just the way people and organizations work. No manager will hire or promote (or continue paying) someone whose opinions significantly disagree with their own, and the same is true of the manager's manager and so on. Much of this is also highly related to the owners of the media outlet. There have been historical examples of moguls buying newspapers and requiring gushing reviews of any of their businesses, and vitriolic attacks of their competitors - political partisanship is a step down from that as freedom of the press goes.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Personal opinion: I think it was around 2004 when the media slowly stopped being the journalists that protect our democracy, and instead corporations and individuals with political agendas. It's literally always been that way. For a while in the late 20th Century US, the alignment of the propaganda interests of the major US media was such that it spoke with almost a single voice, but the homogeneity wasn't some kind of virtuous objectivity.

Simulacra 6y ago

Thank you for many pointing out that I'm off by a century or two, please allow me to clarify: The growth of the internet and corporate controlled media may have made the problem significantly worse, and more encompassing of the nation. I had completely forgotten about Judith Millar, thank you for point that out. I guess I remember a time when there were newspapers, and journalists were above the fray of politics. Something dragged the entire profession of journalism into the dregs and I'm at a loss to pinpoint exactly what that is.