Mark Twain on Journalism

Mark Twain on Journalism:

"The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier."

John Swinton (1829-1901), managing editor of the New York Times during the American Civil War. The following quote is disputed since it's been improperly attributed. Swinton did in fact exist and he did make the following statement.


"America is not a free country. The economic condition of the workers here are precisely the same as they are in Europe. A wage-slave is a slave everywhere, without any regard to the country he may happen to have been born in or made the living in.
"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 24 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."

(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)

This is what we here at the Phat City News are all about correcting. Nobody buys us off. We tell it like we see it. You can't shut us up and we won't go away. We speak Truth to Power.