Thomas Jefferson Would Prefer Bloggers over Mainstream Media

Mainstream reporters and writers are quick to point out the importance of media and freedom of the press, after all, Thomas Jefferson said “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.” But today's media might not be exactly what TJ had in mind...he might actually have been thinking of something a lot like modern day blogging.

Check out this article on Pajamas Media:

Thomas Jefferson Wouldn't Think Much of Modern Journalism. Blogging - That's Another Story...
November 21, 2007 1:00 AM
Would he read the NY Times?

Though journalism as we know it didn’t exist when the First Amendment was written, today’s reporters don’t hesitate to make the case for their importance by citing a famous Thomas Jefferson quote. Steve Boriss contends that mainstream news is the opposite of what the third president thought it should be.


By Steve Boriss

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.”

Click on the title for the rest. It is quite good!

---Katie