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“We Owned the News… We Were the Gatekeepers” – WSJ Editor-in-Chief Laments Mainstream Media Power Loss

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 22, 2024

In a year marked by dwindling public trust in key institutions and heralded by the theme “Rebuilding Trust” at the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos assembly, Emma Tucker, the Wall Street Journal’s Editor in Chief, has called for a reevaluation of how traditional media operates. Recalling a point when the mainstream press was the chief adjudicator of information and facts, she highlighted its demise that came with the rise of alternative media platforms.

Tucker, during a Davos panel supposedly dedicated to the preservation of truth, offered a lament for the era when the press held exclusive dominance over news and facts.

“If you go back not that long ago, We owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well,” Tucker said.

“If it said it in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, then that was a fact. Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news, and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying.”

Not only do her comments reveal a lot about how mainstream media figures see their role in society, her comment painted a clear picture of the power shift that has marked the recent history of the media landscape.

“So it’s no longer good enough for us to say this is what happened, or this is the news. We almost have to explain our working. So readers expect to understand how we source stories, they want to know how we go about getting stories,” she continued.

“We have to sort of lift the bonnet as it were in a way that newspapers aren’t used to doing, and explain to people what we’re doing. We need to be much more transparent about how we go about collecting the news,” Tucker added.

January 22, 2024 - Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video |

2 Comments »

  1. Do you think that this is “News”?

    “If you don’t read the newspapers, you are uninformed.

    If you do, then you are misinformed.”

    Twain ?

    “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world.” — Thomas Jefferson

    These remarks were apparently made by Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist (Contributor – Editor NYT), probably one night in 1880. Swinton was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:

    “There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.

    There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

    The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

    We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

    Barbara W. Tuchman. “Practicing History.” iBooks.

    “The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”

    “Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”-

    Richard Salent, Former President CBS News.

    “News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising” –

    former NBC news President Rubin Frank

    “For better or worse, my company is a reflection of my character, my thinking, my values” – Rupert Murdoch

    “We are here to serve advertisers. That is our raison d’etre”  –

    CBS C.E.O. Michael Jordan 

    “We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective” –

    Michael Eisner, CEO, The Walt Disney Co

    “We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with.” –

    Richard M. Cohen, Senior Producer of CBS political news.

    “We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”

    Katherine Meyer Graham, Washington Post publisher

    “People shouldn’t expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the ‘fringe’ media.” –

    Ted Koppel – (American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline)

    “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any  significance  in the major  media.

    William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy

    Liked by 1 person

    peterjohnarnold's avatar Comment by peterjohnarnold | January 23, 2024 | Reply

  2. Mainstream news is yet another big loser in the past couple of years like Nato, the WEF, the USofAs, EU, the Zionist Entity, and so on

    Among the many things that unite these allied forces is their total lack of grace and dignity when it comes to acknowledging and accepting that Humanity has rejected all aspects of their plans for the world.

    Like

    Victor G.'s avatar Comment by Victor G. | January 23, 2024 | Reply


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