It was 1800, and John Adams was President of the United States of America with Thomas Jefferson as Vice President. Adams was running for a second term and Jefferson was running against him. Hamilton composed a 50-page pamphlet that was published to defame Adams and John was quoted to say that it would cause him to lose the election. He lost and Jefferson and Burr were tied for electoral votes with the House voting for Jefferson. A publication was given the credit for Adam's loss.
The 1st amendment gives a freedom that had never existed before in any country, for the press. In studying all forms of government Adams, Jefferson et-al, had realized that a pure democracy as the Greeks had and a republic as the Romans had would not work alone so they were combined to form a new government. The founders were worried that power within the government could usurp the freedoms that had been granted so they wanted an overseer to be the watchdog of the government and of those doing the governing. That was a free press that had enormous power in collecting and disseminating information about the happenings in government. We see the pamphlet published by Hamilton had the power to dislodge a sitting president from a second term. At the time of this election there were many news outlets and pamphlets printed about each candidate with many written by "anon" or an alias. Many were untrue and wrongly accused the candidates of many things to turn voters against them. Everything was printed and if there was any bias it was met with an opposing view by another publication.
I have read a lot of history but do not know another time that the press became so biased against one political party or one president as it is now. There has been bias in news reporting during the history of our country but was usually countered by other outlets. Since WWII, we have seen the mainstream press which is newspapers, and radio and television networks become more inclined to favor the democratic party and their more liberal thought. Most of the time competition for viewers and ad money forced evely dispersed news about bothh parties In fact, during the Viet Nam War one TV network staged battles with actors and presented t as news. It was not evident until George W. Bush became president that we saw outright defamation of a president on the evening news and both the cable news outlets and the main networks take the left side more than the right. I remember anchors calling him lacking in intelligence through name calling and magazines putting caricatures on their covers. The hatred sent his way came from most all news organizations with one exception. When Obama ran for president the news organizations drooled over him and completely forgot he had an opponent. The bias was very evident. Of course, when Trump came into the picture it got worse and pure hatred started to be spread and the truth did not matter anymore. The idea of the free press being the guardian of democracy and overseeing governmental workings and those that were elected to run it had come to a complete halt. We now have a press that has for the most part become another arm of the democratic party and gives us news slanted to the left or omits anything that would be anti-democratic party. A glowing example is the problem with our Southwestern border and the thousands of illegals pouring into our country every day. The property owners on the border are being invaded every day with destruction of their property and in some cases, homes being broken into. The media outlets except one have totally omitted any coverage of this crisis and the President had the invasion stopped for his visit to show us there is no problem. Our president openly lied to the people that elected him to preserve the left's wishes of open borders. In 2 years, we have seen enough illegals enter our country to populate West Virginia, Wyoming, Vermont, New Hampshire and one other state. The press has completely become a political hack and is in violation of the reason the freedom was given. I'm sure our Founders especially Jefferson and Madison, are rolling over in their graves.
If the news outlets together, were to show the pictures of the real problem and tell the actual story of what is happening at the border, I'm sure that the problem would be taken care of immediately. Those that elected the president would finally see the true story of the invasion and the press would be doing the job for which their freedom was given. Imagine a bias free press that you could believe and trust to not omit truth that should be reported.
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