The Founding Fathers Loved A Free Press

The Founding Fathers Loved a Free Press. That is why they made it the first amendment. And it is not because they liked the press, it was just as critical and often unfair to them as it can be today. But what they recognized is that the only war for a Democracy to function is for people to have access to a wide range of thought. In the wake of Constitution Day yesterday I want to remind people of the importance of a functioning Press as we see in this election cycle of it completely failing. Thanks to Jon Bartholomew at Common Cause for reminding us the central role the Media plays in our Democracy: ...The First Amendment does something not found in any other part of the Constitution or its amendments. It protects one particular industry - the press. (Read our media reform plan for a new administration) Why? Simply said, a democracy can not function properly without the press informing the public, exposing voters to the marketplace of ideas, and holding public officials accountable. But here's how the founders of our country put it... The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) proclaimed that "the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments." Thomas Jefferson said: "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." (Jefferson wrote a lot about this subject) Benjamin Franklin, who largely is responsible for creating the modern press in America, wrote "An Apology for Printers" in which he states, "Printers are educated in the Belief, that when Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter..." Instead we get the failed corporate media complaining the John McCain keeps being allowed to lie and distract with stupidity like Lipstick on a Pig and whether Obama is enough of an American based on his lapel jewelry. This is the point of this amazing post by Eric Boehlert of Media Matters: (YOU HAVE TO READ THIS POST) McCain and Palin are laughing at the press -- and it's the press' fault As John McCain's manufactured "lipstick on a pig" story was taking flight last week, Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, kicked off the hour by teeing up the story. In a note to viewers that telegraphed his disdain for the lipstick controversy, he announced that during the show, he'd share his own thoughts "about how, with a troubled economy, crumbling bridges, rail and roads, a failing educational system, a war that is now going on for five years, and an uncertain American economic future, we're sitting here talking about lipstick." Later, he complained the story was "an insult to the intelligence of our democracy." Did you hear the media are mad? According to Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post, the press is angry at McCain for his patently untrue lipstick attack ("It's false. It's ridiculous"), and they're seething over how Sarah Palin keeps telling her demonstrably false Bridge to Nowhere tale even after members of the media pointed out her stump-speech applause line was a lie. (A "whopper.") During the past week, virtually every major news outlet has produced welcomed, hard-edged fact-checking pieces about how the Republican ticket goes far beyond bending the truth and just plain snaps it out on the campaign trail. In the past, that kind of truth-telling would have embarrassed campaigns and likely caused a dramatic change in the rhetoric. But what do McCain and Palin do in response? They pretty much ignore the press and its critiques. Writing on The New Republic's website, Eve Fairbanks spelled out the conundrum, capturing the dumbfounded realization that spread through the press corps. It's like that scene in a movie when the superhero realizes his unique power (for the press, it's collective indignation) has suddenly been rendered useless: Reporters demolished the claim that the Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere, and yet the McCain campaign insolently still uses it. Writers dismantled the McCain campaign's untrue assertion that Barack Obama compared Sarah Palin to a pig yesterday, and yet the campaign put out an audacious ad featuring the ridiculous allegation, presumably on the assumption that Real Americans don't care what the elite press says anyway. Instead of recoiling, the Republican ticket seems to have adopted a post-press approach to campaigning in which the candidates simply don't care what the press does or says about their honesty. More to the point, the candidates don't think it will matter on Election Day. They may be right. And that's the media's fault. They've reported their way right into the margins. Submerged in trivia and tactics for the past 18 months, the press, I think, has damaged its ability -- its authority -- to referee the campaign. Proof? Let's go back to the pissed-off Matthews for a perfect example. Raise your hand if, in the past six months, you've seen an entire episode of Hardball devoted to discussing our "troubled economy," the sad state of America's transportation infrastructure, the failings of our educational system, the never-ending war in Iraq, or the "uncertain American economic future." Matthews claimed those are the key issues that face our country and, by implication, are what are important to this campaign. Yet Matthews hosts a cable news program that pretty much refuses to discuss those issues. Remember, Matthews is part of the same Beltway press crowd that told news consumers Hillary Clinton's laugh was extremely important and needed to be analyzed for clues about her true character, that John Edwards' haircuts raised serious doubts about the man's candidacy, and that Barack Obama's bowling score spelled trouble on the campaign trail. And it wasn't that long ago that the campaign press stressed how important it was that John Kerry windsurfed and that Al Gore spent time as a politician's kid growing up in a Washington, D.C., hotel. These were issues of paramount concern for the media. I think when journalists wallow in that nonsense for so long and pretend it's newsworthy and important, the coverage of a truly important story (e.g. what the media have now identified as the Republican candidate for president trying to lie his way into the White House) comes across as just another trivial pursuit. For news consumers, it comes across as just more forced cable chatter because there's no seriousness left in the entire endeavor. Again, just look at the absurdity of Matthews' performance. He basically devoted an entire program to addressing the question of whether McCain's camp really thought Obama was referring to Palin with his lipstick comment. The entire program. And then within minutes, Matthews announced that the story insulted everyone's intelligence. Obvious question: So why spend an hour talking about it? And that was just Matthews' program. The entire charade was repeated everywhere across the Beltway landscape. Fact: Between Monday and Friday of last week, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC aired more mentions of "lipstick" than they did "Fannie Mae." You know Fannie Mae, that's one of the two distressed mortgage giants (along with Freddie Mac) that the federal government had to take over last week in order to fend off insolvency, an unprecedented move that was fraught with dire economic repercussions. ...Were some of those lipstick mentions on TV made while criticizing McCain's empty ploy? Absolutely. (See NBC's Chuck Todd.) But that still didn't excuse the media's Pavlovian response to the McCain whistle, of embracing and spreading the phony story in the first place. The proper response would have been to essentially ignore the so-called story and keep moving. Or to note that McCain's camp tried to float the phony lipstick story. But turning the soggy affair into the day's top news event was an embarrassment. The media's failure to do so wasn't surprising. The press throughout this race has walked away from any semblance of traditional standards, yet journalists seemed oblivious to the long-term implications of their chronic embrace of fluff. Exactly... read the whole thing to find out more. RSS