“Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the 1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of corporate dictatorship. This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new groupthink, dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.
The source of ‘fake news’ is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox News, or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it.
Complex stories are reported to a cult-like formula of bias, hearsay and omission. So much of the mainstream has descended to this level. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters is the ‘perception.'”
John Pilger, Hold the Front Page: The Reporters are Missing
“I am weak and small, but I want to do what is right.”
Hans Scholl
“Stand up for what you believe, even if you are standing alone.”
Sophie Scholl
Katharine Graham’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers was indeed laudable, helping to expose lies that had greased the wheels of the war machinery with such horrific consequences in Vietnam. But the Washington Post was instrumental in avidly promoting the lies that made the Vietnam War possible in the first place. No amount of rave reviews or Oscar nominations for “The Post” will change that awful truth.
The printing of the Pentagon Papers and the subsequent decisions of the old grey lady to be more political were part and parcel of the attack on our political institutions and the objective nature of a free press.
It isn’t that the corruption in the Nixon adminstration should NOT have been exposed, but in hindsight, considering what we know about the Pentagon Papers and all the other sneaky things Ttricky Dick did, you have to realize that Katherine Graham (at the Post) and the other publishers had their own agenda they served.
It wasn’t free speech, in my opinion.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/lessons-plans/landmark-supreme-court-cases-elessons/new-york-times-v-united-states-1971/
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/25/archives/united-states-v-nixon-abroad-at-home.html
Nicknamed “The Gray Lady”.
It is still ongoing, isn’t it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=bOwr9PX05p4