RUTHFULLY YOURS

Today marks another milepost on the funeral march of the American newspaper industry. Has there ever before been such a mass demonstration of self-unawareness as the collective expression of outrage this morning by the editorial boards of these ailing enterprises? Here is the editorial as it appears today in the Boston Globe, which no doubt will receive one or more journalism awards (journalists love to give each other awards for agreeing with each other) for its “courage” – as if howling mobs were outside their doors, and military vans on their way to seize the printing presses.

The editorial, indeed, raises the fear of being shut down right up front, relying on a poll supposedly indicating a public ready to send storm troopers into the nation’s newsrooms. Ginning up polls is a standard operating procedure for the media, who are well aware that by careful wording and sequencing on questions, you can shape the public response into the direction you are hoping for. In this case, Trump-haters are anxious to manufacture a purported threat to shut them down, which is something that nobody in a position of authority has ever even hinted at.

Replacing a free media with a state-run media has always been a first order of business for any corrupt regime taking over a country. Today in the United States we have a president who has created a mantra that members of the media who do not blatantly support the policies of the current US administration are the “enemy of the people.” This is one of the many lies that have been thrown out by this president, much like an old-time charlatan threw out “magic” dust or water on a hopeful crowd.

The tell here is the word “blatant.” It means unashamedly, with the direct implication that support for “the policies of the current US administration” is shameful. All of them.

The notion of a state-run media waiting in the wings is pure paranoid fantasy and a straw man argument.

You can read the whole thing yourself. It is pathetic. And so is the graphic attached to the project, with Texas apparently incontinent. Or is it the newspapers?

The great satirist Richard Terrell captures the ridiculousness of journalists who tout their “independence”:

My friend Andrew Malcolm, a veteran journalist who made his career as a foreign correspondent of the New York Times has the best commentary on the pathetic effort at Hot Air (read the whole thing):

When’s the last time you read a newspaper editorial, online or in print, and thought, “You know, that anonymous writer is right and I’ve been wrong all these years!”

Or more accurately, when’s the last time you read a newspaper editorial period? I know. I don’t read them either. And I wrote them for several of my wonderfully rewarding 40+ years in newspaper journalism.

As part of their drift off into monopoly arrogance, newspapers in general and editorial pages in particular somehow came to think and lecture like they knew better than the readers who paid good money to read their words. They were pharmacists handing out a daily dose of the news they prescribed. Not a good attitude for any business to have toward customers, especially in an era of expanding free choices.

And now these same editors and publications will again lecture the country about the dangers and evils of the man they didn’t like 646 days ago, who punches back and got elected by millions who didn’t read those lectures then either.