“The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation … The Press lives by disclosures … For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences — to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice and oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgment of the world.” (Robert Lowe, editorial writer for The London Times, 1851
Mr. Lowe He had been asked by his editor to refute the claim of a government minister that if the press hoped to share the influence of statesmen, it “must also share in the responsibilities of statesmen.” (h/t: Creators.com, Alexander Cockburn)
When I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it’s my own policy — our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission. (Tim Russert)
(Hint: If you were a journalist and hundreds of government officials attended your funeral to honor you, you probably didn’t do your job.)
Piece of Mindful 
Can’t see through the pollution. Embeded journalist could be the oxymoron of the decade.
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Nice sentiments from Robert Lowe, but editing is inherent in the system, if even for page space.
The press can’t help but reflect some mainstream consensus, even if mainstream means a few people at the top:
) FDR’s infirmities were largely kept from the public. I don’t know if revealing them would have been useful.
) JFK had some serious health issues and womanizing that surely would have kept him from a second term if disclosed.
) The mainstream press and most of the blogosphere reports uncritically about racial and ethnic differences among people, and its impact on things such as education and crime, while privately everyone is conscious of such differences and organizes their own lives along such lines. This is not even cognitive dissonance. It is an acknowledgement of a difference between the public and private man, and the acknowledgement that the press can be used for social engineering.
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Your attitudes about race seem to dominate your thought processes. It’s almost as if you have a victim complex. You need to listen again to that old song “Walk a mile in my shoes” by Joe South.
FDR was president during wartime, so I understand why the press, which was heavily (and openly) censored at that time, cooperated in the concealment.
JFK’s behavior is more emblematic – at any given time there are probably hundreds of people carrying on in DC and the state capitols like he did, yet only a few are chosen for exposure. JFK was a good guy doing what good guys do – going along with everything, bombing Cambodia, attacking Cuba, lowering taxes on wealth … he was a sleazeball, but did not challenge the status quo, and so was given a pass.
John Edwards and Newt Gingrich are sleazeballs. One has to pay for his sins, the other not. Why? David Vitter and Elliot Spitzer consorted with high-priced hookers. One has to pay for his sins, the other not.
Why?
By the way, why was JFK a Democrat, and not a Republican? Why is New York City (heavily Jewish) a Democratic stronghold? It has little to do with politics, and everything to do with discrimination. The old Republican Party represented the protestant wealth of the post-Civil War North, while the Democrats were strongest in the racist south. Jews and Catholics were not welcome in the Republican Party, and so new wealth, like the Kennedy family, were not welcome, and so joined the Democrats. Likewise, Jews migrated to the Dems, as they were not welcome in the GOP.
JFK was no reformer, no saint, no lefty. But oddly, down through the years, with all of the family members killed or exposed in various ways, many of the kids in that family the kids seemed to have become true public citizens. It’s odd how tragedy has changed them.
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Your attitudes about race seem to dominate your thought processes.
Yes, I am a bitter clinger, living in a bunker, peering out with a periscope, on watch for little brown people who want to clean my place. I cackle gleefully as I slam the door in their face.
When I first started reading your blog, I was fresh off a site where someone was bemoaning the demise of construction unions in San Diego. And here you were, frothing at the mouth about how great unions are. Fine, I thought, unions have good and bad, let see what he has to say, but it seems for certain sure he should acknowledge the pressure illegal immigration has put on such. But, nope, nada, nothing.
I bring up race and such because I find it your most glaring and obvious omission.
From the Left we usually get either, “race doesn’t matter” or “white people are evil and we need to hasten their demise.” Both are problematic but the second seems a little more honest.
Lest you didn’t consider it, I wanted to point out general press bias in reporting on crime. Some of that is changing now with internet access to public video cameras. A friend was relaying a conversation he had with someone who helped produce the show “COPS”. Teams were sitting around viewing video sent in of police chases, and 9 out of 10 involved some kind of minority. They kicked up all the ones with white people so the show could put together politically correct programming.
I largely disagree with the rest of your post.
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YOu cannot do the “walk a mile” thing, can you. It’s all about you. The country was heavily populated with indigenous people, and we took it from them. The Southwest was inhabited by Spanish and Mexicans, and we took it and they are still there and wander back and forth as they always have, and we hate them for it.
You don’t know what it is like to be a minority person. You demonize them. You don’t understand that people make their own economy when they are excluded for ours, and that we make it a point to criminalize that economy and imprison them.
You focus on the crimes of unions, as you are taught to do, and ignore the far worse crimes of Wall Street, Pinkertons, scabs, the National Guard.
The problem I have with you, like Swede, is that you debate from a platform of ignorance, and steadfastly cling to it. Your words above – “I disagree” says it all. You are not concerned with facts and will not do anything except confirm your own bias and prejudice. I disagree with sunlight, but there it is, shining through my window. You makes much sense.,
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Tsk tsk. Stupid people impose upon you.
YOu cannot do the “walk a mile” thing, can you.
How is this relevant here? I’m asking that all immigrants be legal, and that we keep accurate statistics. If I walk a mile in someone’s shoes and decide that they have a raw deal, am I supposed to give them my money? Am I supposed to give them your money? Am I supposed to give them my job? Am I supposed to give them your job?
The country was heavily populated with indigenous people, and we took it from them.
Ah, yes. The perils of illegal immigration. The lesson should have been learned by now.
A stronger culture demographically replaced a weaker culture. We’re getting demographic replacement now, which you cheer and I lament, but what is galling is that the losers are subsidizing the winners.
The Southwest was inhabited by Spanish and Mexicans
Never was, and you know this. You’re just on a roll and tossing everything in.
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Are you daft? Are you saying that the SW was unoccupied? Good grief!
Anyway, the immigration issue as you debate it is fraught with racism. We might agree that we should control the borders, but I maintain that the problem is the anti-union bias of the American moneyed classes. They gave us NAFTA, NAFTA torpedoed Mexican farming, and displaced workers had no place to go but north.
The moneyed classes like this because it undermines American wages.
So we agree that we need to control that border.
But your racist attitudes are a hamper to reasonable debate on the issue.
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Are you daft? Are you saying that the SW was unoccupied? Good grief!
Yes, I am surely daft, and you were the one that was bemoaning the displacement of the Apache, Comanche, and Havasupai et al by Europeans, you know, like the Spanish. And Mexico proper had a claim to the SW for, what, five days? If the Spanish and Mestizos of the past have any claim today, the people and government sending them here now don’t have any, or scant, claim. And this is not to even mention the Central American and other illegals you won’t talk about, so thanks for repeating the usual talking points.
But your racist attitudes are a hamper to reasonable debate on the issue.
There is a racial component to these things, and I think it can be discussed in a reasonable fashion. You and yours completely abandon all debate when even a whiff of racial discomfort arises, thus leaving the field more open than necessary for the White Nationalists and others.
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I was not bemoaning anything. The Native Americans could not hang on to their land as they were not strong enough. But they still live among us and are, if they so choose, citizens.
The underlying culture in the American Southwest is hispanic. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
There are different cultures, race is an illusion. I don’t regard our culture as superior, as we kill and attack to many people for my taste.
The American mindset of wealth accumulation is fine, except it’s very hard on the environment. But not everyone wants to live that way. You got a problem with that?
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The underlying culture in the American Southwest is hispanic.
Superficially. No one comes to America for the Hispanic culture.
race is an illusion
You don’t believe that, except on some pedantic level.
I don’t regard our culture as superior…
Okay, fine, but it makes me wonder which one you like. Most “voters” tend to move in our direction.
The American mindset of wealth accumulation is fine, except it’s very hard on the environment. But not everyone wants to live that way. You got a problem with that?
Do I have a problem with that? Do I have permission to speak freely? Bwhahaha.
I agree that our mindset is hard on the environment. I wonder in the future if we’ll be starving out while the Cubans and North Koreans will be saying, “been there, done that, know what to do now.”
A lot of people want to live our way, and it calls forth another reason to think again about immigration: a Mexican immigrant triples their carbon footprint when they move here. Some Minnesota churches make a point to move in Somali immigrants, who must increase their carbon footprint 120 times. Immanentize the eschaton indeed.
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No, no, no – I’m not kidding here. Scientists will tell you that race is an illusion. Culture explains our differences.
There is a correlation between countries we attack and immigration – El Salvador and Nicaragua were coming here as we destroyed their countryside, and Vietnamese, and I suppose I have to explain the NAFTA/Mexican connection to you again?
And I’ll guarantee you that people are happy and unhappy without regard to wealth. There may be some poor schmucks who don’t have a dime to live on each day, but I doubt there is any correlation between wealth and happiness, except perhaps negative.
I think you are missing something.
In my travels, I find America to be a tense place with virtually very one working an angle. The greed of our wealthy classes seems unquenchable – never enough! They don’t need our Social Security money, they hardly pay into the program, don’t need it for retirement, won’t do anything good with it perhaps save stealing it, but the assholes can’t leave it alone! It’s life ripe fruit on the vine.
Anyway, enough – greed is not good, and greedy people are not a social benefit. They are piranha.
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It did die.
And reborn thru the internet.
Which begs the question. Are you disheartened that the message(s) cannot be controlled?
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So says the guy who gets his information from Fox News.
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