the press is free and will print what the hell they want the first proposition is dubious What presses set fit to print is often a calculated judgement on what the owners prefer what advertisers on them won t object to and what the readership that buys the paper would prefer to read As one sees at critical moments in The Times of London or The New York Times reportage can be devastatingly skewed This goes for the mainstream press The second proposition has nothing to do with either comprehensiveness or accuracy of reportage but rather who cares I like it I want the readership to think this way The Murdoch press is a prime and notorious example It s old book but written by Walter Lippmann Public Opinion 1921 freely downloadable but is trenchantly eloquent on ther pseudo environment in which we are constrained to live by exposure to media analysis of the nature of news and of the economic basis of journalism seems to show that the newspapers necessarily and inevitably reflect and therefore in greater or lesser measure intensify the defective organization of public opinion This is what a great humane liberal newspaper man could write about what really occurs in media At the time that was a centrist adminission of how much bullshit is flogged to a gullible public to manufacture consent at whatever price to the facts His position is held today by Noam Chomsky whom Lippmann s heirs regard as a dangerous man In short the classical moderate realist view of how information is cut and tailored to produce a social mindset is now only retained by those whom modern day centrists call extremists End of New Year Lecture