In 1864, a man born in Hungary decided to emigrate to the United States of America, he was a man of intense political sensibility, a champion for the ‘common man’ and a fierce anti-slavery advocate; Joseph Pulitzer enlisted as a soldier in the Union Army, and after the Civil War settled in the Missouri area, and worked as a Journalist.
The name of Pulitzer is of course synonymous with Journalism, and the development of the American Press; but Journalism itself has a much older, and complex history. We have to look among the ruins of the ancient world, and ruminate on the scrolls and scratchings of our distant ancestors to truly gain the full field of view.
We can visualise the importance of ‘News’ throughout history, because even in the far distant empires and expressions of political power that defined the world for our ancestors, information defined how people were able to make sense of their social world.
Language, and writing have always been the essentially human gifts; I am guilty of being tedious on this point, for it has always struck me that communication is at the very core of our nature, we are able to build our world only because we can communicate with each other.
With this insight very much in-mind, I propose that Journalism is a craft/profession of the most critical importance.
The invention, and use of the Printing Press signaled the very beginnings of what scholars have labelled the ‘modern world’. We can understand this very easily, for it was the mass production of books and texts that enabled people to rise up from the muddy streets, and dare to dream of different orders, of a future where their children could aspire to an improved way of living, without disease and starvation, without the ‘insolence of office’ dogging their existence.
As Thomas Hobbes described in his famous work ‘Leviathan’ in 1651, life prior to the ‘social contract’ was ‘Nasty, brutish and short’.
We know that our society, and the social contract we each tacitly agree with when we exercise our natural, and citizen rights has value; we affirm this value by the simple freedoms and liberty we live by.
Journalism throughout the often turbulent and conflict ridden history of our western societies has worked on our behalf, for the people, and as Joseph Pulitzer so clearly expressed:
"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself."
And, dear reader this is precisely what we all have today, and the baseness of our society, with its self righteous, hypocrites who bray like cattle whenever an individual dares to challenge their precious creeds of political correctness and unjust social absolutes, is painfully evident to us all.
We have blatant corruption and moral decay posing as the media lynch mob on Twitter, on Facebook and in the remaining vestiges of newspapers; we have complete intolerance and economic compulsions to obey, we have an appalling state of journalism!
This is why I bothered to build my modest platform, this is why I offer help and practical assistance for aspiring journalists, we need more good quality, intelligent people to participate with the ‘Information War’, for this is what it truly is my friends, we are amidst the greatest conflict in human history, make no mistake about this, if my rhetoric offends you, too bad.
