The Journolist scandal, America, the media, and the assumption of objectivity

Clearly, these journalists lived beyond Plato’s assessment of the banal rhetorician:

“A competent rhetorician need have nothing at all to do, they say, with truth in considering things which are just or good, or men who are so, whether by nature or education. For in the courts they say, nobody cares for the truth about these matters, but what is convincing.”

These writers embraced a further utilization of the Hitlerian, “big lie.”  It is remarkable how Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was embodied in this online-faction,

“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed.”

Unfavorable stories to their glorious leader were, to borrow the Al Gore phrase, “inconvenient truths” that needed to be crushed.

In terms of political discussion, the members of this listserv were clearly not interested. The Machiavellian move to silence opposition embodied an ideology that is so anti-American only someone along the lines of Hugo Chavez could recognize it. The utilization of lies, distortions and the imposition of fear demonstrated a desire for these writers to exert control.

Andrew Breitbart asserted that, “American journalism died a long time ago”. Unfortunately the institution was still dead-on-arrival in terms of objectivity long before the Daily Caller’s article was published. Nevertheless, the press serves a vital purpose in the vitality of the freedom enjoyed in the United States. It must be noted that an unabashed conservative press organ uncovered this secret project. This stands as another example of our Freedom of the Press and the independent (of government) checks and balances on set systems. The press is and was never perfect. The lesson to be gleaned for those in a position ideologically dissimilar to the Obama-propagandists was one Thomas Paine knew too well, “[t]hose who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

While we view the press as a vanguard of sorts, it must be recognized by all involved that it is a fallible institution. Living up to set standards is truly laudable. Nevertheless, no system is complete without its failings. To work as a free nation with a truly free and objective press we must be constantly vigilant.
Phillip Smyth works as a freelance journalist, researcher and political consultant in the United States and in the Middle East. He is a managing editor with the Young American’s for Freedom’s New Guard Magazine, a researcher with the Middle East Political and Economic Institute, and has been published on the Counterterrorism Blog.