Being the media that is, in a quote taken from Thomas Jefferson by Donald Trump in his presentation today. This is picked up at Ann Althouse.

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. 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 knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

And just for completeness, here is the quote directly from Jefferson. For the rest, a couple of historic quotes on the media from the comments section of Ann Althouse.

1) Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

2)“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

Let me give you two different takes on the rise and fall of General Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor. He was nominated and then had his nomination withdrawn because of a phone call to the Russian ambassador. This is Andrew McCarthy discussing Why Was the FBI Investigating General Flynn? He goes through the issue point by point to demonstrate that it had been absolutely illegal for the investigation into Flynn to have taken place, and then that it was equally illegal for any of the news media to have published the details of this conversation when it was leaked to them. Here’s how it ends:

There appears to have been no foreign-intelligence or criminal-investigative purpose served by the FBI’s interrogation of General Flynn. It is easy to see why Democrats would want to portray Flynn’s contact with the Russian ambassador as worthy of an FBI investigation. But why did the FBI and the Justice Department investigate Flynn — and why did “officials” make sure the press found out about it?

And why were the media allowed to print what they were given? To answer that, there is this second article that is worth thinking about. This is an article with the title, Leakers Beware. Read it all if you are interested in spycraft – as I have been for the whole of my life – but also read it as a plausible possibility from a very sophisticated White House that knows what it’s doing. Here’s the start”

President Trump has defeated Democrats in the intelligence community (IC) who were leaking classified information to the press. Such leaks have been a problem for many presidents, but Trump is the first who took a proactive approach and set up a sting operation that identified the leakers. It’s highly illegal to leak classified information. It’s also illegal to PUBLISH this information, but Trump is too smart to try and prosecute reporters.

I thought that Trump would fire members of the IC until the leaks stopped, but the president solved the problem with a much more imaginative and deadly approach: He fed the IC false information. When this information was published, Trump was able to identify individual leakers.

How?

Each group or individual who leaked was given a different version of events. This is CLASSIC spycraft. If nine individuals are told nine different stories, and then each of those stories is published, you know the identity of each person who talked to the press.

It’s called a “barium meal,” after the medical test used to detect problems in the gastrointestinal tract. Soft tissues don’t show up on X-rays. Barium salts are “radio-opaque,” meaning that they show up in a radiograph or X-ray.

Author Tom Clancy called it a “canary trap.” You give multiple sources multiple versions of events. When the sources repeat their version word for word, you can identify each leaker individually.

All is explained in detail in the story. Essentially, though, you give out stories A, B, C, D and E, to individuals V, W, X, Y and Z and when you find A, C and E in the papers the next day, you have identified V, X and Z as those you cannot trust. Who knows? The story has been difficult to follow from the start since nothing particularly heinous seems to have happened. Here’s the conclusion which seems to fit the facts as well as anything else:

Flynn was not fired against his will. For some reason people don’t understand that. I’m very surprised. Do you not grasp that Flynn CREATED this operation? The position of National Security Adviser is almost ceremonial. When the leaks began in September of 2016, it was FLYNN who crafted this sting. He hasn’t been sacrificed. Instead, he’s working behind the scenes to root out corruption in the IC.

Today at his press conference, Donald Trump said he thinks the leaks will stop. This is because the leakers are looking at very long prison sentences. Like Tom Cruise in The Firm, Donald Trump now knows everything.

It’s up to the IC whether or not Trump unloads his cargo of information or keeps it at sea forever.

Is Trump that smart? We shall certainly know something if the leaks now really do come to a stop.

I watched the press conference this morning but had things to do so didn’t get around to posting my thoughts till now. It is compelling for the whole one hour and seventeen minutes. If anything, he might well turn out to be better than I hoped. But the media remain the problem they have been from the start, and what is astonishing is that they are so lacking in insight that they are bewildered by what is being said to them by the president. Chuck Todd: Donald Trump’s Delegitimization of Press ‘Un-American,’ ‘Not a Laughing Matter’.

In a tweet sent during President Donald Trump‘s Thursday press conference, MSNBC host Chuck Todd indicated he didn’t find the bizarre hour-long back-and-forth with reporters all that humorous.

The Meet the Press host live tweeted the spectacle, at times sending tweets that indicated he didn’t believe the president was telling the truth, and that the rambling press conference would damage his relationship with Congress.

He knows few of us will ever locate the video of the press conference and then spend the hour and a quarter to watch it. For me, it was a Trump master class. For him, it was an unendurable rant from someone out of touch with the socialist screwballs who write most of the news stories we read.

To see the other side, there is this: Sorry media — this press conference played very different with Trump’s supporters of which there will be more and more if things keep up like this.

Amid feverish reports of chaos on his team and with Democrats fantasizing that Russia-gate is another Watergate, Trump took center stage to declare that reports of his demise are just more fake news.

Far from dead, he was positively exuberant. His performance at a marathon press conference was a must-see-tv spectacle as he mixed serious policy talk with stand-up comedy and took repeated pleasure in whacking his favorite pinata, the “dishonest media.”

You will see this for yourself if you watch the press conference for yourself. For a similar view, there is also this from Rush Limbaugh: Trump Triumphs Over Press. This is mostly a transcript of the press conference, with the occasional aside from Rush, such as this:

RUSH: Just what the doctor ordered. This is Donald Trump going over the head of the media right to the American people, advancing his domestic agenda and being totally transparent with these people. They don’t know how to get on the same stage that he’s on. The American people are gonna eat this up when they see it.

The media remain in the same ideological mode as their mentor Walter Duranty. The Big Lie remains the media’s most enduring modus operandi.

Compelling for the whole one hour and seventeen minutes.