John Swinton, former Chief of Staff of The New York Times, circa 1880, “On the Independent Press”:
There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns.
You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with – others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things – and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an “Independent Press.”
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
John Swinton wrote a nice interview/puffpiece with Karl Marx, 1880: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/26/021.html
It appears Swinton was never “Chief of Staff” of the New York Times, but they are indeed his remarks: http://www.rense.com/general20/yes.htm
Comment by Quin — March 9, 2010 @ 5:33 am
Wow!
I wish “We are intellectual prostitutes” were on the masthead instead of “All the news that’s fit to print”.
Comment by Karl Friedrich — March 9, 2010 @ 6:44 am
Nobody would read the paper if the Timespeople would admit the truth, but then, if you read “All the news that’s fit to print” with your BS detector running it’s an open admission that the editors only want a “certain sort” of news, stories that dig only so far and go no deeper because they might rake the muck too well.
Comment by mr. mike — March 9, 2010 @ 12:13 pm
That’s a good point Mike. Not only reading between the lines with your BS detector on, there’s so many consistent themes for Uncle Sam’s imperialist project written in the Times that you can invert to its opposite to find the truth. For example, I cannot recall a time in my 50 year lifespan that the Pentagon has taken an action that has been good for working people.
Comment by Karl Friedrich — March 9, 2010 @ 1:54 pm
The First Amendment guarantees a free press. It says nothing about a reasonable press, a fair press or even an honest press. Libel aside, a free press is just that – free to print whatever it likes or “All the news that’s fit to print” according to them. If you don’t like The New York Times, don’t buy it and don’t read it. I used to run a radio station and was always keenly aware that every listener could turn the dial or switch it off anytime they wanted.
Comment by Richard Greener — March 9, 2010 @ 7:25 pm
A free press is free just like the free market is free, i.e. not at all. Nothing is free in capitalism, everything has a price. And especially in monopoly capitalism, those prices (just like the news that’s fit to print) are determined less by “free” competition than by fixed powers.
Comment by Alex — March 9, 2010 @ 8:42 pm
Just the other day, at a university bookstore looking at books with a friend, I was approached by a local TV news reporter doing a story about tuition increases, and asked for a brief interview. I’m not a student, so I refused, but recommended my friend (doing an after-degree in education). He was exceptionally eloquent and concise about the economic pressures on students these days, but the local news that evening only showed of him a split second of his hands leafing through a book. Likewise, my days of writing letters to the editor are long gone. The only response the news media deserves is open and flagrant contempt and opposition. They are the tools of the bourgeois state and the capitalist ruling class ludicrously pretending to be either tribunes of the people or objective social scientists.
Comment by Alex — March 9, 2010 @ 9:20 pm
Sorry Alex, but I have never known anyone in media ownership or management who pretended to be “tribunes of the people or objective social scientists.” The press – in fact all media – is just a business. No one pretends to do anything except entertain and make money.
Comment by Richard Greener — March 9, 2010 @ 9:33 pm
Not all press/media are out to make money. That’s why we on the left use the term “commercial press/media” to distinguish.
Comment by Karl Friedrich — March 9, 2010 @ 10:25 pm
Richard, of course you’re right to distinguish between owners and managers/editors on the one hand, and working journalists on the other. By pretenders I meant the latter, or really rather the official cultural/ideological presentation of the journalist.
Comment by Alex — March 10, 2010 @ 1:12 am
And on that point, Alex, we agree. I owned and operated the last of the union radio stations in Atlanta. We were a full-service station and had a 9 person on-air news staff. While they called themselves “journalists” to me they were “air personalities.” I suspect the publishers of The New York Times share much the same thoughts. As for the noncommercial, leftist journalists… I believe they are free, which is to say tolerated, in America because they are harmless.Instructive but nonthreatening.
Comment by Richard Greener — March 10, 2010 @ 3:04 am
“As for the noncommercial, leftist journalists… I believe they are free, which is to say tolerated, in America because they are harmless. Instructive but nonthreatening.”
- Richard Greener
…Except you have a show like “DemocracyNow!”, which runs on hundreds of radio and TV stations across America. Certainly most of the stations are part of the emasculated “public broadcasting system” or are low-power community stations, but they also stream the show at their website. The mainstream media’s response is to ignore “DemocracyNow!”, even though it has a large viewer/listener audience….ignoring things is the new version of censorship; it’s cheaper to look past something than actively seek it out and demolish it. As for the Gray Lady, right now the outfit that owns the paper is trying to start up a “distance learning” (i.e.; Internet/webcam college courses) subsidiary and the Times is now full of “hurrah for virtual colleges” articles.
Comment by mr. mike — March 10, 2010 @ 9:35 am
There’s a free pdf of his obit by the NYT:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F05E2DA1E39EF32A25755C1A9649D946097D6CF
Comment by Jim Holstun — March 10, 2010 @ 12:21 pm
Maybe his analysis is correct for late 19th century where socialist ideas were rapidly gaining ground among workers and intellectuals but today I think the presumed gap between speech and consciousness (honest opinions) serves to conceal liberal journalist’s commitment to dominant ideology. Today, nobody is paying anyone for self-censorship. But, as a defense, otherwise honest journalist invokes imbecile media moguls employing leftist journalist to shut them up as if we are short of people who don’t need to be censored. And they deceive us pretending to have a concealed essence, extremely dangerous knowledge that if once professed will initiate a revolution and topple down the State whereas our honest journalist have nothing to write beyond his/her regular garbage.
Comment by Mehmet Çagatay — March 10, 2010 @ 1:06 pm