UNFREEDOM OF THE PRESS

UNFREEDOM OF THE PRESS by Mark R. Levin 2019 Copyright.

p.226 near the middle of the page:

...It is journalism's job to be true to their readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in

a way that will stand up to history's judgment.  To do anything less would be untenable.

The abandonment of objective truth and, worse, the rejection of principles and values of

America's early press and revolutionaries, is not new for the Times. It long predates the

Trump presidency. And it has led the Times and other media outlets into a very bleak and

dark place, destructive of the press as a crucial institution for a free people. If

newsrooms and journalists do not forthwith and with urgency to "fundamentally transform"

their approach to journalism, which, sadly, is highly unlikely, their credibility will

continue to erode and may well reach a point soon where it is irreparably damaged with a

large portion of the citizenry--and rightly so. The media will not only marginalize

themselves, but they will continue to be the greatest threat to freedom of the press

today--not President Trump or his administration, but the current practitioners of used to

be called journalism.

Therefore, I said at the opening, this book is intended to, among other things, "jump-start

a long overdue and hopefully productive dialogue among the American ctizenry on how best to

deal with the complicated andcomplex issue of the media's collapsing role as a bulwark of

liberty, the civil society, and republicanism."

From publisher's review:

Unfreedom of the Press is not just another book about the press. Levin shows how those entrusted with news reporting today are destroying freedom of the press from within: “not government oppression or suppression,” he writes, but self-censorship, group-think, bias by omission, and passing off opinion, propaganda, pseudo-events, and outright lies as news.

With the depth of historical background for which his books are renowned, Levin takes the reader on a journey through the early American patriot press, which proudly promoted the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, followed by the early decades of the Republic during which newspapers around the young country were open and transparent about their fierce allegiance to one political party or the other.

It was only at the start of the Progressive Era and the twentieth century that the supposed “objectivity of the press” first surfaced, leaving us where we are today: with a partisan party-press overwhelmingly aligned with a political ideology but hypocritically engaged in a massive untruth as to its real nature.

From six-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, FOX News star, and radio host Mark R. Levin comes a groundbreaking and enlightening book that shows how the great tradition of the American free press has degenerated into a standardless profession that has squandered the faith and trust of the American public, not through actions of government officials, but through its own abandonment of reportorial integrity and objective journalism.