not exactly new but in light of the attack in Paris on journalists, newly relevant. TM **********
Nov. 17, 2014 by Taegan Goddard
George Packer: “In the worldwide movement away from democracy, perhaps the most vulnerable institution is the free press, and the most disposable people are journalists.”
“In recent years, reporting the news has become an ever more dangerous activity. Between 2002 and 2012, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (C.P.J.), five hundred and six journalists were killed worldwide, as opposed to three hundred and ninety in the previous decade.”
“One major shift in the years since September 11, 2001, has been the erosion of a commonly accepted idea of press neutrality. Journalists are now seen by many combatants, especially jihadis, as legitimate targets and valuable propaganda tools, alive or dead.”
“The digital revolution, in undermining traditional forms of media, has actually produced a greater concentration of power in fewer hands, with less organized counter-pressure.”
“As a result, the silencing of the press, otherwise known as censorship—whether by elected autocrats, armed extremists, old-fashioned dictators, or prosecutors stopping leaks with electronic evidence—is actually easier and more prevalent today than it was twenty years ago.”
In the U.S. “we suffer from the loss of facts—a body of empirical information that American citizens can accept as a common starting point for public debate. We suffer from the loss of faith that our institutions can be shaken up and reformed under the scrutinizing pressure of an independent press. We suffer from irresponsible leaders and an ignorant public. Democratic erosion takes many forms—the hardest to see can be the ones in front of our faces.”
** Rich Lowry, Nov 30, 2014 on “Meet the Press” Sunday, National Review editor
Stop trying to make the Ferguson protests something they weren’t. And, just as importantly, stop trying to make Michael Brown, the man shot to death during a fight with police Office Darren Wilson in August, something he wasn’t.
“If you look at the most credible evidence, the lessons are really basic ... don’t rob a convenience store. Don’t fight with a policeman when he stops you and try to take his gun. And when he yells at you to stop, just stop.”
The 30s and early 40s are a remarkable time when it comes to the way Western "Liberals" like how Duranty and others dealt with the brute who was Stalin. Among the books which deal with this time of madness is a very good one entitled Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society: "Why did so many distinguished Western Intellectuals—from G.B. Shaw to J.P. Sartre, and. closer to home, from Edmund Wilson to Susan Sontag— admire various communist systems, often in their most repressive historical phases? How could Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, or Castro's Cuba appear at one time as both successful modernizing societies and the fulfillments of the boldest dreams of social justice? Why, at the same time, had these intellectuals so mercilessly judged and rejected their own Western, liberal cultures? What Impulses and beliefs prompted them to seek the realization of their ideals in distant, poorly known lands? How do their journeys fit into long-standing Western traditions of looking for new meaning In the non-Western world?"
Do you know who was as bad as Duranty, if not worse? Our own ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938, Joseph Davies. Davies was such a low life that he used to be invited to KGB facilities where starving Russians would surrender for a mere pittance priceless art they had hidden in order to get food. The KGB would then let Davies pick over the objects and select the best for his private collection which in turn became the basis for his donation of Russian icons and chalices for the museum in the National Cathedral and other art museums within the United States. (We are reminded quite often of the theft of Jewish art objects stolen by the Nazis but never that extracted from the Russian people by such as Davies).
Davies acted as a propaganda megaphone for Stalin and the Soviet system. He even stated, "that communism was "protecting the Christian world of free men", and he urged all Christians "by the faith you have found at your mother's knee, in the name of the faith you have found in temples of worship" to embrace the Soviet Union". He also wrote an infamous book, later made into an equally infamous movie, which supposedly described his experiences in the Soviet Union, Mission to Moscow. "The movie gave a one-sided view of the Moscow trials, rationalized Moscow's participation in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its unprovoked invasion of Finland, and portrayed the Soviet Union as a state that was moving towards a democratic model, a Soviet Union committed to internationalism. As did the book, the final screenplay portrayed the defendants in the Moscow [show] trials as guilty in Davies's view. It also portrayed some of the purges as an attempt by Stalin to rid his country of pro-German fifth columnists."
Davies was a total pos, but so were so many others in this period including Duranty.