The Vindication of the Press.

 In my early teens, 1973 to be exact, the Watergate hearings commenced. I was amazed and flabbergasted that this had occurred within the government of the land I call home.  I was mesmerized by the questioning and flummoxed by the answers and replies of those called before the committee.  This was in the days of not only statesmanship, but having to account for your actions, if in your political career you exhibited less than that and most especially, if you were a crook playing a con upon the American people whose sacred trust was violated.  

I have been drawn back into the mindset that I had at that time by a recent replaying of the film, "All the President's Men."  Taking that story two other steps further I also watched "the Post" and "Mark Felt, The Man Who Brought Down the White House." I wanted to see various points of the same geometric equation; point A to point B to point C.  

The demonization of the press, in those days, became paramount in order to continue the ruse that was going on.  In order for the success of the dastardly acts that not only threatened the democracy of our republic but the institutions designed to protect it it, the press, in their discoveries had be made to appear as though they were something obtuse and their hypotheses half baked.  It almost succeeded and if it had it would have undermined and sabotaged the first and foremost bill of right; freedom.

Similar has happened in times past, 1930s Germany for example .. as well as in France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria and it has happened since, in early 2000s.  The press has been demonized and yet, at times, some have sold their soul and capitulated in order to allow for the destruction of their fellow journalists... not to sell papers, but to have a seat at the table of paranoid narcissism, putting "me" first, instead of serving the public that as journalists, reporters have signed on to do. 

Don't get me wrong, of course their is muckraking going on. There is a slew of yellow journalism and that hasn't changed in over a hundred years. But happened in the 1900s, in the later 1900s and even now in the 2000s, is different and multiheaded dragon has been reawakened and we are all in jeopardy because of it.

Thankfully, we do have a few who have stood up to say enough baloney, it is time to come to terms with the furrow we've created and the seed that was sown.  Perhaps, in my lifetime, more will do the same and bail out our most fundamental freedoms; thought, assembly, faith, and the press. 

Let's Have a Dialog.