Curtis Dahlgren
The "forbidden" news topics: so much for freedom of speech
By Curtis Dahlgren
[This column is actually an excerpt from my new book.]
"The press is a little like the blackbirds in the fall — one flies off the telephone wire, the others all fly away; and the other one comes back and sits down and they all circle and they all come down and sit . . in a row again." — Senator Eugene McCarthy
"Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world. If you're a good journalist, what you do is live a lot of things vicariously, and report them for other people who want to live vicariously." — Harry Reasoner
"As reporters, we should stay the h — out of politics and maintain a private position on any issue." — John Chancellor
"Democracy depends on information circulating freely in society." — Katherine Graham
"We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business." — Jimmy Carter
"There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians. When bought, they stay bought." — Bill Moyers
"Hitler said that he always knew you could buy the press. What he didn't know was you could get them cheap." — Mort Sahl
"Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here — not yet." — Chet Huntley
"And that's the way it is . . . and most of the time we hope it isn't." — Walter Cronkite
"Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don't." — Earl Wilson
"Guerrilla journalism came about because we didn't want to be a part of access journalism. We hung out at parties and eavesdropped and stole memos and every other d — thing to crash through." — Robert Scheer
I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk." — Barbara Walters
"If a senator is putting his hand on my fanny and telling me how he's going to vote on impeaching President Nixon, I'm not so sure I'm going to remove his hand no matter how demeaning it is." — Sally Quinn
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have a statement to make." — Pres. Reagan
THE OUTCOME THAT IS DESIRED IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE TRUTH AS IT EXISTS. Section 3A was about the attitudes of the news media, and the subject of this one is their intentions. And intentions always trump results in the wonderland of journalism, the planet with four moons. John Chancellor's "private positions on any issue" went out of style with the polyester liesure suit.
Even before "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-grader?", the target audience for television was about age 13, the lowest common denominator of the populace. Even National Public Radio, despite a pseudo-intellectual facade, parrots mainly with the liberal, immature, side of the coin. As I said in one of my own columns:
Ain't relativism and "equality" and self-esteem wonderful? The lowest common denominator rules. We've gone from Camelot to Vunderland in just a few short years. If a member of the audience insists that 2+2 = 4, he is put down as a bigot and it is explained once again why 2+2= 5.
"'That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lesson from day to day' . . .I only took the regular course . . the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."
It's like another line from "Alice": "Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. "There's a tortoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail."
That illustrates the reasons for the popularity of talk radio and Internet news. In the hinterlands of Kansas or the Upper Peninsula, we don't get invited to those Washington dinner parties, and we also resent being talked down to by the people who do. We want a little coffee with our sugar, more substance than fluff, and the New Media provide the substance. Believe it or not, there IS a country out here between the Potomac River and Burbank, California.
Robert Murdoch of the New York Post describes journalism's problem this way: "Is there any other industry in this country which seeks to presume so completely to give the customer what he does not want?" Believe it or not, the customer wants to be treated like an adult, but the MSM (mainstream news media) think we can't handle the truth.
It's more about smoke-and-mirrors than mirroring the truth. Jimmy Breslin said, "The city room is an outhouse. You can get black lung just working on the rewrite desk for a week."
Even the mafia has its "standards" and everyone in the world needs at least one thing to hang their "self-esteem" on, and for the MSM its "thing" to feel superior about is pollution — either caused by smoking or too many people out there exhaling carbon dioxide.
OTHER TOPICS, HOWEVER, ARE TABOO:
1) The link between abortion and breast cancer (if women were cows, veterinary medicine would have done something about it a long time ago).
2) Post-abortion depression, infertility, and suicide.
3) Homosexuals are NOT ten percent of the population; "gayness" is not inherited.
4) Homosexual suicides, and the fact that "gays" can change their "orientation."
5) "Safe sex" isn't (a new disease, MRSA, is being boycotted by the news media).
6) If a crime is committed by an illegal alien, the MSM won't even mention the ethnicity of the perpetrator, let alone his legal status.
7) The Intelligent Design movement is seldom mentioned, but when it is, the MSM always mischaracterizes proponents as the "same old Creationists" who think the world is flat and that the earth is only 6,000 years old (if your faith is so ironclad, why the need to lie about us?).
8) The real reasons pro-lifers are pro-life are never mentioned (they are characterized as women-haters, even though there are more women than men in the pro-life movement).
9) Pro-life marches by hundreds of thousands are buried by other news, such as a protest by a handful of so-called "pro-choicers."
10) Horrendous crimes committed in the name of Islam or Communism are "minimized" and/or blamed on the United States, our President, or "hopelessness" (not hatred).
Years before the term "political correctness" was coined, there appeared a prophetic article entitled "Moral Dishonesty" (National Review, 12/19/75). The author, Gerhart Niemeyer, said in the opening paragraph:
"A sensational book by the German paleontologist Heinrich Erben maintains that mankind is probably a declining species. He points to certain parallels between extinct animal species that lost their fitness for survival because they were too protected by circumstances, and the human race as it exists today . . . To Erben's list of human immaturities . . let us add another: moral dishonesty."
Niemeyer goes on to say, "In thinking about detente we tend to see the Soviet regime as a normal government, its relations to its subjects as normal policies [etc] . . even though there is much evidence that says, It just ain't no. Evidence disturbing to attitudes of good will toward the Soviet Union is simply read out of court . . . The truth is conceived as an enemy of international goodness . . .
"Self-will may govern our actions but it does not sit easy in our souls. Moral dishonesty, by contrast, not only considers itself guiltless but positively glows in self-righteousness while heaping moral condemnation on those who disagree . . Reason takes second place not to traditional morality but to subjective 'moral' intentions and the emotional self-satisfaction of supporting a public cause seen as progressive . . .
"Traditional morality — either the Ten Commandments, Aristotle's list of virtues, or Christ's double love of God and neighbor — can never pass off falsehood as the necessary price of goodness. That possibility belongs exclusively to modern progressivism . . . More than Tartuffe, who knew that he was lying, they suppress reason by not allowing the voice of Truth to be heard even within their own hearts. A fraud of secular piety wholly engulfs their being, so that reason is dethroned . . .
"It goes without saying that in the process not merely reason but morality itself is lost. For where reason and knowledge are despised, there Mephistopheles can easily snare Faust in the net of hell." [my emphasis]
There you have the reason that modern journalism highlights certain "news" while censoring, suppressing, and outright silencing all opposition: It simply makes them "feel good."
NO WONDER TALK RADIO AND THE INTERNET HAS BECOME OUR PRIMARY SOURCE OF THE NEWS!
P.S. Most of the quotations in this column are from "The Book of Quotes" by Barbara Rowes, Ballantine Books, 1979 (probably out of print now)
© Curtis Dahlgren
[This column is actually an excerpt from my new book.]
"The press is a little like the blackbirds in the fall — one flies off the telephone wire, the others all fly away; and the other one comes back and sits down and they all circle and they all come down and sit . . in a row again." — Senator Eugene McCarthy
"Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world. If you're a good journalist, what you do is live a lot of things vicariously, and report them for other people who want to live vicariously." — Harry Reasoner
"As reporters, we should stay the h — out of politics and maintain a private position on any issue." — John Chancellor
"Democracy depends on information circulating freely in society." — Katherine Graham
"We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business." — Jimmy Carter
"There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians. When bought, they stay bought." — Bill Moyers
"Hitler said that he always knew you could buy the press. What he didn't know was you could get them cheap." — Mort Sahl
"Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here — not yet." — Chet Huntley
"And that's the way it is . . . and most of the time we hope it isn't." — Walter Cronkite
"Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don't." — Earl Wilson
"Guerrilla journalism came about because we didn't want to be a part of access journalism. We hung out at parties and eavesdropped and stole memos and every other d — thing to crash through." — Robert Scheer
I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk." — Barbara Walters
"If a senator is putting his hand on my fanny and telling me how he's going to vote on impeaching President Nixon, I'm not so sure I'm going to remove his hand no matter how demeaning it is." — Sally Quinn
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have a statement to make." — Pres. Reagan
THE OUTCOME THAT IS DESIRED IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE TRUTH AS IT EXISTS. Section 3A was about the attitudes of the news media, and the subject of this one is their intentions. And intentions always trump results in the wonderland of journalism, the planet with four moons. John Chancellor's "private positions on any issue" went out of style with the polyester liesure suit.
Even before "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-grader?", the target audience for television was about age 13, the lowest common denominator of the populace. Even National Public Radio, despite a pseudo-intellectual facade, parrots mainly with the liberal, immature, side of the coin. As I said in one of my own columns:
Ain't relativism and "equality" and self-esteem wonderful? The lowest common denominator rules. We've gone from Camelot to Vunderland in just a few short years. If a member of the audience insists that 2+2 = 4, he is put down as a bigot and it is explained once again why 2+2= 5.
"'That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lesson from day to day' . . .I only took the regular course . . the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."
It's like another line from "Alice": "Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. "There's a tortoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail."
That illustrates the reasons for the popularity of talk radio and Internet news. In the hinterlands of Kansas or the Upper Peninsula, we don't get invited to those Washington dinner parties, and we also resent being talked down to by the people who do. We want a little coffee with our sugar, more substance than fluff, and the New Media provide the substance. Believe it or not, there IS a country out here between the Potomac River and Burbank, California.
Robert Murdoch of the New York Post describes journalism's problem this way: "Is there any other industry in this country which seeks to presume so completely to give the customer what he does not want?" Believe it or not, the customer wants to be treated like an adult, but the MSM (mainstream news media) think we can't handle the truth.
It's more about smoke-and-mirrors than mirroring the truth. Jimmy Breslin said, "The city room is an outhouse. You can get black lung just working on the rewrite desk for a week."
Even the mafia has its "standards" and everyone in the world needs at least one thing to hang their "self-esteem" on, and for the MSM its "thing" to feel superior about is pollution — either caused by smoking or too many people out there exhaling carbon dioxide.
OTHER TOPICS, HOWEVER, ARE TABOO:
1) The link between abortion and breast cancer (if women were cows, veterinary medicine would have done something about it a long time ago).
2) Post-abortion depression, infertility, and suicide.
3) Homosexuals are NOT ten percent of the population; "gayness" is not inherited.
4) Homosexual suicides, and the fact that "gays" can change their "orientation."
5) "Safe sex" isn't (a new disease, MRSA, is being boycotted by the news media).
6) If a crime is committed by an illegal alien, the MSM won't even mention the ethnicity of the perpetrator, let alone his legal status.
7) The Intelligent Design movement is seldom mentioned, but when it is, the MSM always mischaracterizes proponents as the "same old Creationists" who think the world is flat and that the earth is only 6,000 years old (if your faith is so ironclad, why the need to lie about us?).
8) The real reasons pro-lifers are pro-life are never mentioned (they are characterized as women-haters, even though there are more women than men in the pro-life movement).
9) Pro-life marches by hundreds of thousands are buried by other news, such as a protest by a handful of so-called "pro-choicers."
10) Horrendous crimes committed in the name of Islam or Communism are "minimized" and/or blamed on the United States, our President, or "hopelessness" (not hatred).
Years before the term "political correctness" was coined, there appeared a prophetic article entitled "Moral Dishonesty" (National Review, 12/19/75). The author, Gerhart Niemeyer, said in the opening paragraph:
"A sensational book by the German paleontologist Heinrich Erben maintains that mankind is probably a declining species. He points to certain parallels between extinct animal species that lost their fitness for survival because they were too protected by circumstances, and the human race as it exists today . . . To Erben's list of human immaturities . . let us add another: moral dishonesty."
Niemeyer goes on to say, "In thinking about detente we tend to see the Soviet regime as a normal government, its relations to its subjects as normal policies [etc] . . even though there is much evidence that says, It just ain't no. Evidence disturbing to attitudes of good will toward the Soviet Union is simply read out of court . . . The truth is conceived as an enemy of international goodness . . .
"Self-will may govern our actions but it does not sit easy in our souls. Moral dishonesty, by contrast, not only considers itself guiltless but positively glows in self-righteousness while heaping moral condemnation on those who disagree . . Reason takes second place not to traditional morality but to subjective 'moral' intentions and the emotional self-satisfaction of supporting a public cause seen as progressive . . .
"Traditional morality — either the Ten Commandments, Aristotle's list of virtues, or Christ's double love of God and neighbor — can never pass off falsehood as the necessary price of goodness. That possibility belongs exclusively to modern progressivism . . . More than Tartuffe, who knew that he was lying, they suppress reason by not allowing the voice of Truth to be heard even within their own hearts. A fraud of secular piety wholly engulfs their being, so that reason is dethroned . . .
"It goes without saying that in the process not merely reason but morality itself is lost. For where reason and knowledge are despised, there Mephistopheles can easily snare Faust in the net of hell." [my emphasis]
There you have the reason that modern journalism highlights certain "news" while censoring, suppressing, and outright silencing all opposition: It simply makes them "feel good."
NO WONDER TALK RADIO AND THE INTERNET HAS BECOME OUR PRIMARY SOURCE OF THE NEWS!
P.S. Most of the quotations in this column are from "The Book of Quotes" by Barbara Rowes, Ballantine Books, 1979 (probably out of print now)
© Curtis Dahlgren
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