Townhall.com
Arthur Schaper
April 9, 2018

The New York Times featured another article about the slowing down of the liberal print media. Their featured corpse was The Denver Post, and the headline read: “Denver Post Rebels Against Its Hedge-Fund Ownership.” On the cover of the The Denver Post’s latest Sunday edition, the headline photo features a crowd of the Colorado staff, most of whom are hollowed away in silhouettes. The shadowy gaps are supposed to elicit pity from the readers about the recent, drastic cuts to the newspaper. Joining the photo, articles from the staffers themselves denounced the massive cuts. Instead of pleading for their jobs, however, the writers were demanding that the paper’s hedge fund owners either fight to keep the paper alive, or sell the paper to someone who wants to keep it alive.

It is difficult to read that and not laugh. These journalists think of themselves as the avant-garde of some new political resistance. Since when do the workers in any profession get to unilaterally demand the employer/owner’s decisions and dictates? Have they forgotten that newspapers are a product and a service, both which must respond to public taste and the marketplace?

They haven’t necessarily forgotten it—they just choose not to believe it. Like much of the reporting from the liberal press over the last sixty years, today’s corporate journalists—if they can be called that still, with all the propagandizing and editorialized narrative-baiting—are still committed to a vision of how the world should work rather than how it actually works.

Famed conservative comic and pundit Evan Sayet discussed this self-delusion in a signature speech [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c] about modern liberals’ thought process (yes, they have one in a very limited sense). He went to greater length about the liberal media in another speech [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yGBkJT2L55k] well worth the watch.

For the last three generations, college students have learned that the most important value is acceptance, or what Sayet called “indiscriminateness”. To overcome the evils of the world, one must stop recognizing any standard of good and evil. To point out differences between good and bad is tantamount to conflict-inducing bigotry. Surprisingly enough, this pernicious ideology entered Western thought starting with the hopelessly Romantic, anti-intellectual Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His radical ideas were dismissed in his day, since people had to rely on common sense just to get by. However, the incredible wealth and prosperity of the Western World post-World War II has enabled college students to consider and pursue Rousseau’s backward views without immediate hurt.

College journalism majors have been taught that advocacy, not objectivity, is the mainstay of their profession. These journalism students are specifically taught that they need to report on the sorrows of the downtrodden, represent the world as a fundamentally unfair place defined by poverty, disease, death; and that injustice cannot be vanquished but by rejecting traditional standards of morality.

This mindset gave us a media which downplayed success, evil, and truth. The Killing Fields of Pol Pot, along with the mass genocide of other dictators, were reported as mere murders (read How Democracies Perish for more information). Journalists deliberately misreported the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which was actually a crushing victory for the United States. The media were shocked at the collapse of the Soviet Union, and puzzled that the United States--the greatest country on earth because of its commitments to God, liberty, and E Pluribus Unum—survived and thrived.

Their latest major fail? Foreseeing the election of Hillary Clinton, when Donald Trump not only stomped all over her, but won the working-class voters who actually endure the day-to-day rough-and-tumble realities of life, frustrated by depressed wages, unsafe streets, and rampant mass migration. The press missed these trends because they reject objective standards but remained committed to their Rousseauian, utopian worldview.

Even today, consider the incessant focus of the diminishing liberal print press on the plight of illegal aliens instead of American citizens. Americans for the last thirty years have complained about this relentless problem, whose consequences include cheap wages for foreigners who have broken into our country, who have decimated the life and culture of our country. The modern, liberal press has obsessed over on transgenderism, climate alarmism, with relentless attacks on free markets and the sharing economy. They publish fawning articles about politicians who profit off identity politics and promise more money for local governments, who in turn require businesses to print notices and fictitious business licenses in the newspapers.

What’s worse, the liberal media has missed emerging political and cultural currents, but they didn’t care, just as they ignore the stark realities of competition in the marketplace. Nevertheless, competitive media outlets began reporting objectively, and about the issues that everyday readers care about. By the way, I found the Times article not on its main website, but on Drudge Report. Since the late 1990s, when Matt Drudge began featuring key articles from news sources around the world, he initiated the long demise of mainstream, traditional left-wing journalism. For the first time, on a daily basis, an independent source was providing a clear cross-current of news all over, and at the same time exposing its conflicts and contradictions to the reading world at large. Finally, there was one source willing to provide real journalistic diversity, rather than the monomaniacal obsession with the progressive worldview.

Ironically, the journalism class like The Denver Post are rebelling against the wrong people. Their rebellion against reality, and the moral standards which emerge from these realities, contributed to their downfall. The mainstream media needed the very readers whom they repeatedly disdained. Those readers have now found a better. Like the public during Rousseau’s time, working people today don’t buy into the progressive idealism of “no standards, no right or wrong.” Even worse, they have endured the brunt of progressives’ misguided, destructive idealism—the same worldview championed by The Denver Post—and now they’re the ones rebelling, and rightly so.

Link

the only useful Denver Post is the one that you tie your horse to

calling them 'journalists' seems to give them an air of credibility that they otherwise lack

If only the Founding Fathers had the foresight to give us a free press

Now they know what it was like to work at a blacksmith’s shop watching the automobiles go by.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Now they know what it was like to work at a blacksmith’s shop watching the automobiles go by.

As the expression goes, Stolen!

quote:

For the last three generations, college students have learned that the most important value is acceptance, or what Sayet called “indiscriminateness”. To overcome the evils of the world, one must stop recognizing any standard of good and evil. To point out differences between good and bad is tantamount to conflict-inducing bigotry. Surprisingly enough, this pernicious ideology entered Western thought starting with the hopelessly Romantic, anti-intellectual Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His radical ideas were dismissed in his day, since people had to rely on common sense just to get by. However, the incredible wealth and prosperity of the Western World post-World War II has enabled college students to consider and pursue Rousseau’s backward views without immediate hurt.

I doubt that most of those "enabled college students" who "pursue Rousseau’s backward views without immediate hurt" have ever even heard of Rousseau, much less read Emile (1762).
Nevertheless, the author makes a great point.
The relative wealth of the West has insulated several generations of students from the consequences of not recognizing any form of moral absolutes, any standard of good and evil.

And just to show you where this 'might' be heading.... Over Easter a couple of my son's college buddies were at our home talking about the Orlando Sentinel and how it was really 'hurting'. When I told them it and most all print media was on its way to closing for good, two of them attempted to 'educate' me that government should step in and subsidize them, because that's where a lot of people still got their news. When I attempted to 'educate' them on what a horrifically bad idea that was, they seemed completely confused. Yeah, the future of this country is not that bright if these nitwits have anything to do with it.

Unfortunately, the alternative to newspapers for most people is even worse than the newspapers, as biased as they are. Get your news from Facebook or other social media? Seriously? Or from the "Most Trusted News Network", CNN?
Face it, it was Craigs List that killed off the newspapers because they relied on local classified ads for a large part of their income, if I understand it correctly. Then the business ad money is going to Google and Facebook.
There was a time I considered Google News as superior to newspapers, now I consider it worse because their bias is more hidden.

quote:

Face it, it was Craigs List that killed off the newspapers because they relied on local classified ads for a large part of their income, if I understand it correctly.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The St. Louis Post Disgrace lost subscribers like me long before Craigslist or the internet because of their liberal bias. I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and National Review from the time I was in college, but refused the local paper even when they offered it (for a limited time) for free!

quote:

Surprisingly enough, this pernicious ideology entered Western thought starting with the hopelessly Romantic, anti-intellectual Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His radical ideas were dismissed in his day, since people had to rely on common sense just to get by.

No pun intended?

quote:

However, the incredible wealth and prosperity of the Western World post-World War II has enabled college students to consider and pursue Rousseau’s backward views without immediate hurt.

This is an idea I have been working on, that mine is the first, or among the first, generations where the struggle to survive had abated sufficiently to permit what had been previously regarded as hopelessly frivilous ideas, activities, nonsense, to become common.

My parents had to pay attention to business to insure food, clothing, housing, to a much greater degree than we have, or our children have had to. THEIR parents were even more constrained, and so on back. It took struggle, responsibility, working together sometimes, little free time, often suffering. Few families raised their all their children to adulthood. There were no 3 week vacations, paid time off, family leave, spring break, automatic transmissions, indoor plumbing or year around ice cream, let along overseas travel in a day.

In my day....

quote:

There were no 3 week vacations, paid time off, family leave, spring break, automatic transmissions, indoor plumbing or year around ice cream, let along overseas travel in a day.

LOL.
But the modern conveniences sure are nice... particularly indoor plumbing! God, it would suck to have to go outside in 10* weather, and trudge through the snow... just to take a dump!

There was a time when folks presented unbiased, observational facts, free of opinion. They were the last true journalists/newscasters. True journalism is dead and gone.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
In my day....

quote:

There were no 3 week vacations, paid time off, family leave, spring break, automatic transmissions, indoor plumbing or year around ice cream, let along overseas travel in a day.

LOL.
But the modern conveniences sure are nice... particularly indoor plumbing! God, it would suck to have to go outside in 10* weather, and trudge through the snow... just to take a dump!

Do you miss the point, or do you agree that maybe these conveniences have made possible many of the silly notions about safe spaces, oppression, irresponsibility, melding of “good and bad”, or at least confusion, and abandonment of the values that brought western civilization to this point?

quote:

Do you miss the point, or do you agree that maybe these conveniences have made possible many of the silly notions about safe spaces, oppression, irresponsibility, melding of “good and bad”, or at least confusion, and abandonment of the values that brought western civilization to this point?

I don't miss the point. I agree with you.

In fact, above I said:

I doubt that most of those "enabled college students" who "pursue Rousseau’s backward views without immediate hurt" have ever even heard of Rousseau, much less read Emile (1762).
Nevertheless, the author makes a great point.
The relative wealth of the West has insulated several generations of students from the consequences of not recognizing any form of moral absolutes, any standard of good and evil.

reminds me of

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

JAllen has the right of it. My generation (approximately close to JA’s) has had much less to occupy our time with. My children and grandchildren exponentially less. In short most of us are spoilt. I can say that having chipped ice in the winter and fought off wasps in the summer just to take that dump. Our values are deteriorating rapidly and most don’t care.

If people had to work for the their existence there would be much less bullshit, try explaining a "safe space" to someone who works 16 hours in the field so their family doesn't starve.

You still see it to some degree in the non prog areas, people don't have time for the stupid shit.....they are working.

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
JAllen has the right of it. My generation (approximately close to JA’s) has had much less to occupy our time with. My children and grandchildren exponentially less. In short most of us are spoilt. I can say that having chipped ice in the winter and fought off wasps in the summer just to take that dump. Our values are deteriorating rapidly and most don’t care.

Several have noted the role of being responsible. Jordan Peterson is big on this. Most military folks know this and live it.

In the old days, you were responsible, or survival was doubtful, at least the level or margin of survival was at stake. Now, apparently some feel like they can be irresponsible with no discernible risk or disadvantage.

quote:

particularly indoor plumbing! God, it would suck to have to go outside in 10* weather, and trudge through the snow... just to take a dump!

[small drift from original post]
I was the only kid in the 6th grade to have helped dig his own family 2 holer, and continue to use it often.....

and by weird concatenation of circumstance, during an abnormal period, was the only one in graduate school using a one-holer for a period of time.

Such experience contributes mightily to a number of cosmic and social issues otherwise glossed over all too easily.



[/drift OFF]