The news!

Mark Twain is considered one of the great American writers by many.  He could even qualify as a journalist, although he might deny that.  Therefore, it might be surprising to some how he seemingly felt about the news and journalists in particular.  I find his views on this to be rather enlightening.  In fact, they speak to an issue that still exists today.  Bias and usefulness of the media in general.  Now, I support a free press and I'm certain that Mark Twain did also.  However, you have a free press in order to ensure that information gets out and to make sure that the government is NOT controlling what is reported.  In a free press, you'd have multiple news sources, some of which do choose to spin as the government wants, some who spin as corporations want, some who spin as their individual editors want, etc., but none that can truly claim to be unbiased.  To claim they are unbiased is a rather ridiculous statement, but this obviously isn't ridiculous to many since they continue to think that the news is worth reading.  Therefore, below are some quotations about the media.  This is a grouping of things over time that clearly shows the media doesn't change much in America.  Unfortunately, they do still control the conversation.  So, I will share a bit about why I think each of these quotes are relevant to what we experience today.

I am personally acquainted with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the majority of them would not be worth tuppence in private, but when they speak in print it is the newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not visible) and then their utterances shake the community like the thunders of prophecy.
- "License of the Press," speech, 31 March 1873

This is one from Mark Twain and he shows he has a rather low opinion of journalists in general.  The real essence of this quote is that journalists are just like you and me.  Their opinions and stories have little more weight than yours and mine.  However, once they put it in print, somehow it takes on an aura of importance it hasn't earned and doesn't really deserve.  I like this quote because the perpetuation of blogs and twitter and everything else brings more of "our" opinions to the forefront and begins to lessen the importance of those things put in the media by "journalists".

This next quote is often attributed to Mark Twain and sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but the real author is unknown as far as I could find.

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.

 This is the essence of the news media after all.  They don't care about the truth, they care about selling "papers".  These days, they sell tv news, blog sites, websites, newspapers, etc., but it is all the same.  In television, they want ratings, in newspapers they want sales, in internet sites they want hits and downloads, etc.  In the end, the integrity of the news is entirely dependent on where they get their revenue.  This is why MSNBC is a liberal hack network and FoxNews is a conservative hack network.  They know their audience.  That said, beware of the good sounding person who claims to have the answer to this conundrum.  They trumpet the "public" press as the alternative.  However, the same trap applies.  The publicly funded press is beholden to those who provide it with their budget.  Therefore, they are beholden, not to the taxpayer but, to the government.  This leads to the "state press" which has worked out oh so well in Soviet Russia, Cuba, China, etc.

Here's an interesting quote that speaks to this very phenomena:

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read:  "President Can't Swim."  ~Lyndon B. Johnson

 LBJ is recognizing a truth here.  That newspapers challenge those in authority.  However, he is also pointing out that they spin the truth to suit their purposes, whatever those may be.

Mark Twain has further insight into this.

It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people -- who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations -- do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies. - "License of the Press," speech, 31 March 1873

He is asserting that newspapers (the media) lies and that they knowingly do so in order to mold the masses.  Now, you argue, they can't lie as he claims because they'd be hit with a libel suit.  Sure, they could be sued, if they ever lied in such a way as to be so blatantly obvious.  The LBJ quote above speaks to this as well.  The newspaper headline paints the former President in a very negative light while being "technically" truthful, but it is a lie nonetheless.  So, Twain is building on this quote from a few years earlier.

I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one. -- Mark Twain in Galaxy Magazine, Dec. 1870

So, what does Twain mean here?  Well, as I stated below, the news editor has a great deal of power...just ask William Randolph Hearst.  I think Twain is hoping he doesn't fall into the trap of letting his own biases dictate what gets printed.

In 2008, Sarah Palin was treated horribly by much of the media.  Whether you like Palin or not, you should recognize the double standard for her as a woman (or perhaps it was because she is a conservative woman) and cringe.  She was criticized for getting new clothes paid for by the Republican Party before the convention because it didn't fit her "average girl" persona.  Yet, our male VP candidate here in 2012, Paul Ryan, is criticized because the Republican Party apparently can't afford to have a tailor make sure his clothes fit.  Sorry media, this one stinks of bias.  However, Palin was also criticized for her inability to answer a "simple" question.  That is, where does she get her news from?  Well, here is Thomas Jefferson's answer to that question. 

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.  ~Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson is quite clearly stating that it would be better to be the uninformed person quoted about above than be a person who only relies on the media.  So, should Palin have been able to answer the question?  Certainly, but the big deal made out of her not being able to say "well Katie, I watch your show" instantly was horrendously biased.

After all, even David Brinkley knows that not everything reported is really worth anything.  He's quoted as having said this. 

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.  ~David Brinkley

So, if we give it to you straight with the same emphasis as we'd give "real" news, then you'll buy it and be happy.  Thanks David for confirming the above.  It also speaks to the next set of quotes, which are not particularly rosy towards the media either.

It seems to me that just in the ratio that our newspapers increase, our morals decay. The more newspapers the worse morals. Where we have one newspaper that does good, I think we have fifty that do harm. We ought to look upon the establishment of a newspaper of the average pattern in a virtuous village as a calamity.
- "License of the Press," speech, 31 March 1873

Twain is saying the the perpetuation of media decreases morals and should be seen as a calamity.  He said this in an age where newspapers were pretty much it and news traveled slowly over distances.  Today, with our desire for instant gratification and the media's ability to provide it to us, this outlook can only be compounded.  Now, whether or not Twain's assessment is truthful is a matter of opinion, but those who argue about the decay of society (right or wrong) could certainly find a correlation with the proliferation of media.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything.  Except what is worth knowing.  Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891

Oscar Wilde speaks here about several aspects already referred to.  Brinkley talked about supplying news even when there wasn't any.  Twain discussed the proliferation of media and his belief that it negatively impacted society.  I've mentioned the motivation of the media being to make money, etc.  So, Wilde seems to recognize all these things and sums it up nicely here stating that the public's own insatiable curiosity is to blame.  There is demand, so "journalists" provide the supply. 

Finally, we come to this warning.

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.  ~Malcolm X

Malcolm X is not normally a person I would quote, but he makes a very good point here.  The media knows full well that they have the ability to move society in certain directions.  Jefferson, Twain and Wilde also clearly understood that and they also believed the media was fully aware of it.  Society has to be careful here, because the media does in fact have the power to move us in a direction we might not take in the absence of media.  We've seen it before.  We saw it in the north-south split of the newspapers during the Civil War era.  We saw it with the original split of our founders in the north-south split of federalists and anti-federalists.  We saw it when William Randolph Hearst decided we should go to war with Spain and used his media empire to bring about that exact outcome.  We see it again now, with Fox supporting conservatives and MSNBC supporting liberals.  This is nothing new, but our job is to carefully consider that we will begin to agree with a particular viewpoint if we limit ourselves to only a few sources of media.  Our responsibility as good citizens is not to be informed by the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or CNN, or FoxNews, but rather to expose ourselves to multiple media sources expressing multiple viewpoints and biases.  Anything less than that makes us all one of the stupid masses led blindly along by the whims of the media, which is my way of summing up what Mark Twain said and agreeing with what Malcolm X said.  Now, you liberals, go read more FoxNews and you conservatives, go listen more to MSNBC.