Steve Boriss offers insight into the roots of “professional journalism” in a Pajamas Media piece called “News Should Be Neither Fair Nor Balanced.”

Thomas Jefferson sought to establish a nation that featured maximum free expression, with a public allowed to think for themselves and their collective wisdom valued as “the consent of the governed.” He wanted newspapers to support this system by dispersing information and engaging in a process of opinion-driven “attack and defense” — in his view, this was the best and only way to get to the truth, deal with unknowns and unknowables, and absorb the personal preferences of a free people. Jefferson put his money where his mouth was. When his rival, Alexander Hamilton, helped found a newspaper to promote federalist ideas, Jefferson co-founded with James Madison a tremendously unfair and imbalanced newspaper to attack it. In case you missed it, this means that Thomas Jefferson did not believe in fair and balanced news either.

Boriss also looks at one of my favorite topics, the Creel Committee and provides an outstanding comment about the fruit of committee member Walter Lippmann, the father of professional journalism.

His proposed remedy has become our journalism of today — a rough-and-tumble craft that now falsely presents itself as a scientific profession, claiming to deliver singular truths using objective methods backed by a process of verification. Fairness? Balance? What do they have to do with it? Why settle for that when journalism elites can deliver something even better — true, correct answers in all matters of public policy?

It’s great to see other observers writing about these things, because they’re important at a time when we’re all trying to figure out what to do and where to go next. Journalism is a trade best practiced by passionate writers who wish to use their gifts to make a difference and advance the culture on behalf of everybody. Facts need no protecting, so argument should be one of its roots, for what good is knowledge based on experience, education or, yes, opinion, if one is unable to express it? As Jeff Jarvis has been writing lately, the contemporary press functions largely as a single entity — what he’s calling the “press-sphere” — and I certainly don’t believe that was ever the intention or view of the people who wrote the First Amendment.

As I read Steve’s essay, I couldn’t help but think that we wouldn’t be having this conversation, if the financial stress on mainstream media wasn’t as acute as it is today. And since I honestly believe the discussion is overdue, I have to view what’s taking place as a “correction” of some sort. Life is like that. It has a way of bringing things back to the source, when excess moves them away.

Walter Lippmann genuinely felt that the “mass” of people in our culture was prone to myth and superstition, and he wanted to do something about it. An educated elite who would lead, he believed, was the way to go. Perhaps he was right, but his solution has proven to a disaster, because it turns out that even educated elites are in it for themselves.

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