If it isn’t about the economy it’s about the press. The Press in America represent the trusted imparters of information – they also represent bastions of sensationalism – corporate shills – mouthpieces – confidants and neutral sources.
Throughout history, as long as there were newspapers and avenues of communication on a mass scale there’s been the press. Sometimes the objects of trust and adoration and other times deceit and derision.
It has always been about the interpretation of important moments. Creating word pictures to those who were not witnesses. There has always been a love-hate relationship with the Press. The press have been accused of bias; whether it be bias on the right or the left; each side accuses the other of political manipulation. And often times differentiating fact from spin becomes muddled.
In current times it’s an active attempt at blurring sides; everything is up for interpretation and in order to get to the facts it’s become a question of citing several sources and sifting through rhetoric in order to get there. News outlets are increasingly skewed towards bias on one side or the other – the facts, though actively sought, are sometimes buried under the weight of charges and counter charges.
But it is any different in 2024 than it was in 1939 when this episode of America’s Town Meeting Of The Air was broadcast? Absolutely not. The situations and the players are different but the methodology is the same – using the Press as a tool of manipulation, despite protests to the contrary. The difference is in the scope – in 1939 we had a very strong and rigid FCC which prohibited newspapers and radio to be owned by each other. We had a limit to how many radio stations could be owned by one company and no more than one in each city. It was different then. Today we have corporate entities who span across several areas and the intermingling is rampant. We have the Citizen Journalist, an outgrowth of blogs and social media which didn’t exit in 1939.
If anything, we are more bombarded by disinformation now than we’ve ever been in the history of our culture – but the end result is the same; changing your mind, manipulating your opinion and juxtaposing the outcome.
The debate on this program is lively – between Secretary of The Interior Harold Ickes and newspaper publisher Frank Gannett – and the audience is just as rowdy when the Q&A session starts,’
Here is that episode of America’s Town Meeting Of The Air – Do We Have A Free Press as it was broadcast on January 12, 1939
