Unit 3: Vocabulary from Readings 1

The danger in all this examination is to submerge the subject under a sludge of platitudes.

Abraham Lincoln articulated this concept most succinctly when he said: “Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.”

There is partial government subsidy to public television and radio in the United States, but safeguards protect it against political interference.

Indeed, no human being can be truly objective; we can only seek objectivity and impartiality in the pursuit of truth.

If, however, one takes the rigid view that the truth always needs to be controlled—or Lenin’s dictum that truth is partisan—the door is wide open for enormous abuse, as history has demonstrated time and again.

While media with meager resources in most developing countries are still struggling to keep governments from suppressing news that Westerners take for granted, the mass media in America, Britain, Germany and elsewhere are preoccupied with their role as profitable businesses and the task of securing a spot on tomorrow's electronic superhighway.

Is the capitalist drive an inherent obstacle to good journalism?

In affluent societies today, media consumers are seeking more and more entertainment, and the news media's veracity (even its plausibility) is less important than its capacity to attract an audience.

In affluent societies today, media consumers are seeking more and more entertainment, and the news media's veracity (even its plausibility) is less important than its capacity to attract an audience.

Where is the relevance of all this to the emerging democracies around the world? Certainly the American experience, for all its messiness, provides a useful precedent, if not always a model.

Because they speak out against the government, they say they are independent. But haven’t they just traded one affiliation for another?

In the United States, a citizen can win a substantial monetary award from a news organization if libel is proven in a court of law. It is much harder for a public official or celebrity than an ordinary citizen to win a libel case against the press, because the courts have ruled that notoriety comes with being in the limelight.

In most cases, the complaining notable must prove “malice aforethought.”

If at least a semblance of truth-in-the-public-service does not remain a motivating force for the mass media of the future, neither free journalism nor true democracy has much hope, in my opinion.

There is still a need today—perhaps more than ever—for identifying sense amidst the nonsense, for sifting the important from the trivial, and, yes, for telling the truth. Those goals still constitute the best mandate for a free press in a democracy.

George Washington's admonition, uttered at the Constitutional Convention, still stands: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.”