Fyodor explains that fake news is nothing new.

Actually, it is the norm and always has been.

First, find below my thoughts on "objective journalism".

Second, some links to articles about the history of American journalism that no one alive today knows anything about because it happened before they were born. 

Last, I offer the most horrific fake news ever, the story of Walter Duranty's cover-up of Stalin's Ukrainian genocide, which won the bastard the Pulitzer Prize.

The conceit of modern journalists and scholars is that in the olden days newspeople were partisan and biased, skewing their writing to advance their political agenda or that of their employers. Then, the 20th century arrived, and magically, so did "objective journalism" which was the rule until Rash Dimbulb and Fox News appeared and started spewing right-wing "propaganda" while calling it news. And that made the lumpenproletariat vote for Orange Clump.

What miracle occurred in the early 20th century to change partisan yellow journalism into a crusading force for truth, justice, light, and niceness?

Nothing.

Not a single, solitary thing.

There was no change whatsoever. "Objective journalism" was invented to protect journalists from anyone who dared question their fairness and objectivity. Anyone who did so was shouted down as a crank or an un-American fascist. "How dare you question the integrity if the Press, sir? We are the defenders of freedom. We are the First Amendment incarnate!"

Today, the progeny and heirs of this 20th century fairy tale fear they have lost control of the "narrative" and with it, the lumpenproletariat. (Defined as anyone too stupid and/or evil to agree with them.) These citizens don't like where the fairy tale peddlers are leading them and therefore choose to listen to sources they like. Same as it ever was. In other words, there is now an "anti-Establishment press" press.

Make no mistake, kiddies, the media is an Establishment in and of itself. It has a philosophy, an ideology, and interests it promotes and defends at all costs. These can be summed up in one word - power. Grasping it, consolidating it, getting more of it, and destroying any person or institution that threatens it's power are the priorities of any Establishment or elite.

If you believe the fairy tale (or lie, or, dare I type it, fake news) of the creation of "objective journalism" out of the morass that was 18th and 19th century partisan journalism, you are most likely someone who supports the Establishment media and it's political and social agenda. Of course, such a person would also vehemently deny their biases and constantly repeat the fairy tale verbatim.

I am posting this in the (probably) vain hope that some folks may ask themselves if it is possible they too suffer from "confirmation bias".

The Fall and Rise of Partisan Journalism – Center for Journalism Ethics

History of American newspapers - Wikipedia

Partisan politics? Take a look at the 19th century - The Boston Globe

Media bias is nothing new. - The Washington Post

A Brief History of Media Bias | RealClearPolitics

The roots of media bias go back to the nineteenth century, and complaints about bias

in part reflect a questionable idea about the media's role and purpose: that newspapers

and other dispensers of public information exist to transmit objective, factual information

gleaned and communicated by credentialed ...

Searches related to partisan journalism in 18th century

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Pulitzer-Winning Lies | The Weekly Standard

AT LONG LAST a Pulitzer Prize committee is looking into the possibility that the Pulitzer

awarded to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent whose dispatches

covered up Stalin's infamies, might be revoked.

In order to assist in their researches, I am downloading here some of the lies contained in those dispatches, lies which the New York Times has never repudiated with the same splash as it accorded Jayson Blair's comparatively trivial lies:

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
--New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please.

Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth

and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program,

believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."
--New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
--New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18

"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread

mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."
--New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

I would like to add another Duranty quote, not in his dispatches, which is reported

in a memoir by Zara Witkin, a Los Angeles architect, who lived in the Soviet Union

during the 1930s. ("An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin,

1932-1934," University of California Press ). The memoirist describes an evening

during which the Moscow correspondents were discussing how to get out the story about

the Stalin-made Russian famine. To get around the censorship, the UP's Eugene Lyons was

telephoning the dire news of the famine to his New York office but the was ordered to stop

because it was antagonizing the Kremlin. Ralph Barnes, the New York Herald Tribune reporter,

turned to Duranty and asked him what he was going to write. Duranty replied:
Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant.

This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.
And this was at a time when peasants in Ukraine were dying of starvation at the rate of 25,000 a day.

In his masterwork about Stalin's imposed famine on Ukraine, "Harvest of Sorrow," Robert Conquest

has written:
As one of the best known correspondents in the world for one of the best known newspapers in

the world, Mr. Duranty's denial that there was a famine was accepted as gospel. Thus Mr. Duranty

gulled not only the readers of the New York Times but because of the newspaper's prestige,

he influenced the thinking of countless thousands of other readers about the character of Josef Stalin

and the Soviet regime. And he certainly influenced the newly-elected President Roosevelt to

recognize the Soviet Union.

What is so awful about Duranty is that Times top brass suspected that Duranty was writing Stalinist

propaganda, but did nothing. In her exposé "Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York

Times's man in Moscow," S.J. Taylor makes it clear that Carr Van Anda, the managing editor,

Frederick T. Birchall, an assistant managing editor, and Edwin L. James, the later managing editor,

were troubled with Duranty's Moscow reporting but did nothing about it. Birchall recommended

that Duranty be replaced but, says Taylor, "the recommendation fell by the wayside."

When Duranty of his own volition decided to become a special correspondent on a retainer basis

for the New York Times, the newspaper published an editorial reassuring its readers that his reputation

as "the most outstanding correspondent of an American newspaper during all the years of his faithful

and brilliant work at Moscow will remain unimpaired in the slightest degree by the change now made."

This about a man whom Malcolm Muggeridge, the Manchester Guardian correspondent and Duranty's

contemporary, described as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism."

Duranty was one of a gaggle of Stalin's intellectual admirers. Muggeridge, whose centennial we

celebrate this summer, wrote about them in these lapidary words:

Wise old [Bernard]Shaw, high-minded old [Henri]Barbusse, the venerable [Sidney and Beatrice] Webbs,

[Andre] Gide the pure in heart and [Pablo] Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen

and millionaires, driveling dons and very special correspondents like Duranty, all resolved, come what might,

to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook nothing, however villainous, to approve anything,

however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident

expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth could

be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good liberal causes to

which they had dedicated their lives. ("Chronicles of Wasted Time," pages 275- 276.)

(Emphasis mine. - F.G.)

Let's all give a great encouraging cheer to the Pulitzer committee for undertaking a task 70 years late.

And perhaps the Times will now a look back at the Herbert L. Matthews coverage of Cuba and

the man he so admired, Fidel Castro.

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for the Washington Times.

More on Duranty's lies in the name of commie douchebaggery....

New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize

Walter Duranty - Spartacus Educational

How Stalin Hid Ukraine's Famine From the World - The Atlantic

Times Should Lose Pulitzer From 30's, Consultant Says - The Old Gray Whore...

Pulitzer Board Won't Void '32 Award to Times Writer - The Old Gray Whore ...

Ukrainian Genocide: NY Times Still Covering Up - The New American

Ukrainians want pro-Stalin writer stripped of Pulitzer | The Guardian ...

Russians Hungry Not Starving (New York Times March 31 1933) by ...

The denigration of Gareth Jones by Walter Duranty in The New York Times, Friday March 31st 1933.

RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING. Deaths From Diseases Due to Malnutrition High,

Yet the Soviet is Entrenched. LARGER CITIES HAVE FOOD. Ukraine, North Caucasus and

Lower Volga Regions Suffer From ...

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.