- Isn’t “pack journalism” collusion?
- Articles of note regarding latest big media atrocity
Fight Collusion: Pass Up a Newspaper on August 16th
The Washington Post Crosses a Very Dangerous Line
Jeff Bezos and the leadership of The Washington Post are signing off on a vile comparison of President Donald Trump to Goebbels.
“The dirty war on the free press must end.”
More than 100 newspapers will publish editorials decrying Trump’s anti-press rhetoric
WOW! THAT’S A DRAMATIC SWITCH. IT’S LIKE CALLING ON ALL LATE NIGHT “COMICS” TO ATTACK TRUMP. OR LIKE NFL PLAYERS TO STOP RESPECTING THE AMERICAN
FLAG AND OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM. YA THINK THE QC TIMES WILL GO ALONG…THEY COULD JUST REPUBLISH ONE OF THEIR USUALLY LAME ANTI-TRUMP EDITORIALS.
Here more on the story as reported by CNN, no approbation from them expected:
More than 100 newspapers will publish editorials decrying Trump’s anti-press rhetoric
“The dirty war on the free press must end.”
That’s the idea behind an unusual editorial-writing initiative that has enlisted scores of newspapers across America.
The Boston Globe has been contacting newspaper editorial boards and proposing a “coordinated response” to President Trump’s escalating “enemy of the people” rhetoric.
“We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,” The Globe said in its pitch to fellow papers.
The effort began just a few days ago.
As of Saturday, “we have more than 100 publications signed up, and I expect that number to grow in the coming days,” Marjorie Pritchard, the Globe’s deputy editorial page editor, told CNN.
The American Society of News Editors, the New England Newspaper and Press Association and other groups have helped her spread the word.
“The response has been overwhelming,” Pritchard said. “We have some big newspapers, but the majority are from smaller markets, all enthusiastic about standing up to Trump’s assault on journalism.”
Instead of printing the exact same message, each publication will write its own editorial, Pritchard said.
That was a key part of her pitch: “The impact of Trump’s assault on journalism looks different in Boise than it does in Boston,” she wrote. “Our words will differ. But at least we can agree that such attacks are alarming.”
Journalists have noticed an uptick in Trump’s attacks against the news media in recent weeks. He has been using dehumanizing language like “enemy of the people” more often. He has also been speaking to reporters less often, limiting the chances for questions to be asked.
With Trump’s words and deeds as the backdrop, some media critics have urged the White House press corps to engage in acts of solidarity. There were cheers last month when reporters in the briefing room deferred to rivals who were trying to ask follow-up questions, and when numerous outlets stood up for CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins after Collins was told she could not attend a Trump event.
The coordinated editorials may be another example of unity across the news business.
Although there’s a longstanding debate about the effectiveness of newspaper editorials, there is certainly strength in numbers — the greater the number of participants, the more readers will see the message.
Pritchard said she expects differing views from the editorials, “but the same sentiment: The importance of a free and independent press.”
In contrast to this malevolent and juvenile incitement by the liberal Boston Globe to do what too many of their colleagues alreadydo without goading…attack President Trump for legitimately calling out fake news stories and and their purveyors… is this thoughtful column by Frank Miele, editor of the Daily Interlake:
Journalists used to fight fake news; today they pretend it doesn’t exist (excerpt)
The Philadelphia Times, on April 19, 1898, had this to say about the tactics of Hearst and Pulitzer and fake news:
“In periods of great public excitement, and especially when a nation is convulsed by the apprehension of war with all its countless horrors, the public press has an exceptionally responsible duty to perform. It should resolutely print the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
“Since the beginning of our severely strained relations with Spain, some of our public journals have done more to degrade American journalism than has ever been done in the same period in the history of our country. The most reckless sensationalism has been adopted and continued from day to day, until the more intelligent portion of the reading public has ceased to respect newspaper publications relating to the war, because of the unparalleled extravagance of the fake news given in some of the leading journals of the country. They have not only brought an ineffaceable stain upon the journalism of the nation, but they have wantonly and maliciously inflamed public sentiment by the most atrocious perversions of the truth.”
That indictment of the New York World and the New York Journal and the other Hearst and Pulitzer papers stands as one of the high-water marks of American journalism. It is so easy for a newspaper to call out the unethical antics of a politician, but much more courageous to challenge one’s own peers to a higher standard. May the spirit of the Philadelphia Times prevail as journalism lives through another period of “reckless sensationalism” and, yes, regrettably, “fake news.”
And kind of what i’ve tried to say but, of course, powerline says it better…very readable and deserving of widespread dissemination:
DLH
