Thomas Jefferson Wouldn’t Think Much of Modern Journalism. Blogging – That’s Another Story…
Many journalists are fond of telling us how central they are to our democracy. Some cite Thomas Jefferson’s quote, “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” These self-important boasts by journalists deserve to be challenged. Modern journalism is not only different from what Jefferson intended, it is almost completely the opposite in three fundamental ways: the role of the press, the voices that matter, and the importance of opinions.
1. The role of the press — Jefferson’s vision for the role of the press was completely integrated with his vision for the country. He believed that each of us is born with God-given rights that must not be taken away — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The potential thief he had in mind was government. Accordingly, he thought that the single most important role for newspapers was to serve as a “fence” to prevent government from encroaching on individual rights.
But modern journalism has hopped this fence by tending to side with the government establishment, often protecting it from people and corporations. Jon Ham notes that newspapers typically feature government as an enlightened class and make use of a “standard journalism template that the private sector has questionable motives, i.e., profit, whereas the public sector’s motives are pure, i.e., altruistic.” PBS’ Bill Moyers now tours the country lashing out against the dangers of too much corporate control over the news media, while singing the virtues of government-controlled NPR and PBS. This anti-corporate attitude has its roots in Marxist, not Jeffersonian thought. As ABC’s John Stossel points out, corporations do not have nearly the same power as government entities, which are “coercive monopolies that spend other people’s money taken by force.”
2. The voices that matter — Jefferson’s insistence on a Bill of Rights was also consistent with his vision for America. It reaffirmed the equal rights of all, and the First Amendment explicitly guaranteed to everyone freedom of expression to protect themselves from government encroachment on their rights.
But modern journalism has so confused us about the true meaning of “freedom of the press” that only a few outside of intellectually honest constitutional scholars can tell you what it really means. Despite all we have been taught, the phrase “freedom of the press” was not intended to highlight special freedoms of certain people known as “the press.” It refers to the freedom of all people to use the printing press. Just as the immediately preceding words grant all of us the right to speak our minds, these words grant each of us the right to publish what is on our minds. In his letters, Jefferson regularly referred to “free presses” — i.e., free use of printing presses. When the First Amendment was written, there were no journalists as we think of them now. Newspapers were produced mostly in one-man shops by those whose trade was “printer” – not “reporter,” “journalist,” “columnist,” or “editor.” It would be another 30 years before America had its first full-time reporter. Jefferson wanted newspapers filled with all of our voices, not just those who happen to make a living writing news.
3. The importance of opinions — What Jefferson really wanted in news was opinion and debate — a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas. He wrote “nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics” than “the fair operation of attack and defense.” He himself threw his hat in the ring by founding his own highly partisan newspaper to attack Federalists like Alexander Hamilton.
Instead, modern journalism has attempted to create for itself a faux-scientific world, where facts are sacred, opinions are contaminants, and debate is a waste of time. Allegedly, their methods are “objective” and their content is a pure stream of verified truths. But, new media has taught us that mainstream media often do not get the story straight and regularly masquerade center-left opinion as singular truths. Journalists also strangely insist that the public has an incontestable “right to know” these “truths,” and tend to recklessly dismiss the sometimes real risks that their exposure might threaten the survival of our Jeffersonian government at the hands of enemies who do not protect individual rights.
Clearly, when Jefferson said he would prefer “newspapers without a government” to “government without newspapers,” he did not imagine a journalism that was favorably disposed to government and that presented only one view. No doubt, he would have preferred “bloggers without a government” even more.
Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He works for Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.”
Given your argument, I take it you are a fervent supporter of net neutrality.
Jeb, Actually, I am a fervent opponent of net neutrality because it would set a precedent for government regulation of the Internet. Eventually, regulation would lead to a chilling of free speech as it has on broadcast TV, where the stations are subject to political pressure for license renewal, and radio, where until the late ’80′s the now-lapsed Fairness Doctrine precluded talk radio. I believe that technology and free market competition will provide Jefferson’s desired “multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas” and government will only serve to prevent it as it has in the past.
When I hear people mention Net Neutrality, I wonder exactly what they mean. I’ve heard several definitions, and I know I have a different idea of it.
I think of Net Neutrality as not blocking any form of transmission. In other words, an ISP, (Comcast comes to mind), may not block bittorent.
They might need to shape the traffic as a temporary measure during periods of high bandwidth usage, but they won’t stop it. This would also cover VOIP traffic or multimedia traffic or any protocol out there.
Now some think of Net Neutrality as preventing ISP’s from charging content sites, (Google comes to mind), so that their users can reach them. This was brought up a while back when some CEO commented that high traffic sites should also pay other ISP’s for “Priority access” to their customers.
This second option was brought up by an ignorant CEO who was frustrated at how much growth was going on and how he didn’t want to actually pay to upgrade his company’s network.
This type of thinking is usually associated with a CEO who has no idea what is going on and is more concerned with his stock options then actually growing the business.
If a company actually blocked google from their network because they wouldn’t pay danegeld, I suspect they would begin losing clients rapidly.
I think all we need is a simple law or rule that is based on the common carrier notion. As long as you don’t block anything, you can’t be held liable for what passes through your network. The moment you do, you lose this immunity and can be taken to court by people who have been damaged by your decisions.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
Evilned, In the end, the only definition of “Net Neutrality” that will matter is the legislation that Congress might pass under the banner of that positive-sounding name. Whenever government has regulated a medium, free speech has been chilled. Neutrality is the natural and ultimate condition of a free marketplace, and government can only do damage by getting in the way.
Would Thomas Jefferson – to stretch the metaphor a bit – approve of the idea of allowing only the best-connected and -funded pamphlet writers to have access to parchment, thus requiring everyone else to shout their opinions in the town square?
The press at the time of Jefferson and the other founders was raucous, unruly, partisan and full of opinions and political bias. The point is that it wasn’t monolithic, manned overwhelmingly by elite people with the same set of opinions. The blogosphere is closer to that model than the print and broadcast news media today.
The last 7 years have really shown how difficult it is to get a balanced view of things just from watching network news or reading only the AP, Reuters or AFP. Blogs cover a spectrum of political opinion, firsthand reporting, analysis and pointing to stories that deserve more coverage.
The point of press freedom is to expose the people who vote to a wide range of opinion and argument. But as someone said, freedom of the press belongs to those who can afford to own one. The internet and blogging allow anybody to own the equivalent of his own printing press.
If a poor kid from Afghanistan, or some brothers living in the midst of Baghdad during the bad times of 2006, can get onto the internet to write blogs, then anybody can. Anybody in the US can go to their local library and blog for free, or to a free WIFI coffee shop and blog for the price of burnt beans.
Perhaps Blogs will establish the common-law understanding for a future worldwide guarantee of free speech. Who knows.
Americans must cease believing in the myth of pure objectivity. It simply does not exist. I cannot, for instance, be “fair and evenhanded” with someone like Joseph Mengele. Try to imagine a newscaster saying:
“Today we are interviewing Joseph Mengele. Is he a torturer and murderer of innocent human beings, or a scientist bravely pushing the envelope? Is this Nazi a misunderstood man? We report—and you decide!”
The very premise that the MSM can be “above the fray” is intrinsically impossible. Human beings are not made like that. Media outlets should return to the era when they boldly declared their biases to the general public. All of them should pattern themselves after the National Review or The Nation.
Thomson: Yes, they stepped over the line with the fancy of ‘objective reporting’ – it made people think that the thinking had been done for them already. Objectivity does exist, but is impossible from a single viewpoint.
Like an open mind, as soon as it is ‘declared’ it becomes false.
Journalists who are fond of quoting Mr Jefferson often are surprised when you mention this quote:
“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1600.htm
“The federalists having failed in destroying the freedom of the press by their gag-law, seem to have attacked it in an opposite form, that is by pushing it’s licentiousness & it’s lying to such a degree of prostitution as to deprive it of all credit. And the fact is that so abandoned are the tory presses in this particular that even the least informed of the people have learnt that nothing in a newspaper is to be believed. This is a dangerous state of things, and the press ought to be restored to it’s credibility if possible. The restraints provided by the laws of the states are sufficient for this if applied. And I have therefore long thought that a few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the presses. Not a general prosecution, for that would look like persecution: but a selected one. The paper I now inclose appears to me to offer as good an instance in every respect to make an example of, as can be selected. However of this you are the best judge. I inclose it lest you should not have it. If the same thing be done in some other of the states it will place the whole band more on their guard. ”
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas McKean
WASHINGTON, Feb. 19, 1803.
Oh please, NPR and PBS isn’t government-controlled. It gets part of its funding through the government, but it’s largely funded by both corporate and individual donations.
Like most articles of this sort, it’s huge on generalizations and short on facts, examples and statistics.
Simon, The board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides funding these organizations could not survive without, consists of 9 board members selected by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Now with a Republican majority, some at PBS and NPR have complained that the CPB is starting to push a conservative agenda. The chair of the CPB from 2003-05 was Kenneth Y. Tomlinson who commissioned a study of alleged bias on the PBS show, NOW with Bill Moyers. This sure seems like control by politicians to me.
Steve Boriss: there’s a bit of a logic gap between “a study of alleged bias” and your conclusion “control by politicians”. I look forward to your attempting to plug it.
Furthermore, freedom from influence or control by government or politicians is no guarantee of lack of bias, as the BBC infamously exemplifies.
Jim C., I would say that any organization whose entire board consisted of Presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate is by definition “government-controlled.” But I don’t believe it even takes that much for an entity to be “government-controlled.” I am also referring to the government’s ability to influence the content by creating a fearful environment in which there are unacceptable consequences to airing material the public wants that politicians from their own self-interests don’t. To a large extent, I would say that even the TV networks are government-controlled as their need to get their broadcast licenses renewed has clearly led them to watered-down coverage of government as compared to what Jefferson would have liked. Compare the political discussion on regulated broadcast TV vs. relatively unregulated cable — the political talk on cable is much “hotter,” much more critical of government. And obviously, radio was government-controlled during the era of the Fairness Doctrine. Its lapse led to much freer speech and the explosion of talk radio.
Thomas Jefferson may have foreseen the decline of the mainstream media…here’s a quote attributed to him:
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
As a Historian, I can definitely tell you that you can pretty much find ANY point of view backed up by Jefferson. He backed everything and anything. He liked to always have something to say. Now, if you produced something from Washington or Adams, that might be a little more reliable…