False propaganda: The ordures of our time

When did the mainstream media turn into a false propaganda machine? Several days ago, someone asked that question and all I could think to say was, they've been fake news as far back as I can remember. The media's coverage of the Kennedy assassination exposed the fact that they were not being forthright with the American people. They promoted and protected the official lone gunman story by denigrating anyone who asked questions, besmirching anyone who presented conflicting evidence and by ignoring anyone who presented a conflicting account. In fact, the first time I heard the media refer to anyone as a conspiracy theorist was during the media's coverage of the Kennedy assassination.

Moreover, most of the evidence and eye-witness testimony, that was of any consequence, was withheld from the public. The Zapruder film, that showed the President being shot, was only shown to the media elite. Dan Rather was allowed to see it and report what the film revealed to the public. Rather reported that the President's head was forced violently forward from the impact of the bullet, thus proving that the shot came from behind; that it came from the School Book Depository. After the film was finally released in 1976, it showed the President's head being forced violently backward, which contradicted the official story and Rather's report. Furthermore, in the aftermath of 9/11, the media used the same tactics they used during the Kennedy assassination to smear and discredit anyone who questioned the official story. Even grieving family members, who lost loved ones that day, were belittled by the media for questioning the official story. Others who questioned the events of 9/11 were called nut cases and conspiracy theorists. So exactly when did the media turn into a false propaganda machine? Can history answer that question? In 1898, the USS Maine was blown up in Havana harbor and major newspapers of the time, the mainstream media of the day, wrote scathing articles blaming Spain and calling on Americans to support a war with Spain. The media banged the drums of war before any investigation could be conducted. The media coined the war cry, "Remember the Maine: To hell with Spain." The media's campaign worked and most Americans, who were previously against going to war, gave in. By the way, when the media misled the public back then, it wasn't called fake news. It was called yellow journalism. After the war, a few Congressmen called for an official investigation into the sinking of the Maine, and the same newspapers, that promoted the war, called the Congressmen unpatriotic. The Maine was finally raised in 1911, but a board of inquiry failed to determine what caused the explosion. Admiral Hyman Rickover finally conducted an official investigation in 1976, 78 years later. Rickover determined that the Maine was blown up by an explosion from within the ship's hull and not by a Spanish mine or torpedo as proclaimed by the media. Moreover, President Lincoln, like President Trump, had major problems with the media of his time. Lincoln was scorned, mocked and ridiculed by the media just like President Trump is today. Lincoln even issued an executive order to have reporters and editors, that he called treasonous, arrested and tried for treason. Here is part of Lincoln's order:

---

"Whereas there has been wickedly and traitorously printed and published this morning in the New York World and New York Journal of Commerce, newspapers printed and published in the city of New York, a false and spurious proclamation purporting to be signed by the President and to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, which publication is of a treasonable nature, designed to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States and to the rebels now at war against the Government and their aiders and abettors, you are therefore hereby commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command the editors, proprietors, and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers...." A. Lincoln

Even Thomas Jefferson, who penned Declaration of Independence, and championed the free press, wrote:

"I deplore... the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them... These ordure’s are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief... This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit." -Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 1814.

In a letter to John Norvell in 1807, Jefferson wrote: "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 knowlege with the lies of the day" If we didn't know that Jefferson wrote this in 1807, we would think this was written about the mainstream media of today. Apparently, major newspapers, the mainstream media of the time, had been taken over by the deep state in Jefferson's time. Less than 10 years after the signing of the Constitution, Jefferson warned:

"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.” -Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785.

By reading Jefferson's correspondence and articles written and published throughout our history, the answer to the question at hand has to be that the media has always been a vehicle for false propaganda when it's in the hands of ordures, as Jefferson called them. Ordure simply means something filthy like excrement. Jefferson's words certainly tell us what he thought about the media. And, Jefferson's explanation of their purpose means the present day media is the deep state's standing army. They are the deep state's false propaganda machine - the ordures of our time. I rest my case.