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Geredigeerd citaat uit George Seldes: Lords of the press (1938; CHAPTER 3, pp. 303-306; The Plutogogues.) (vet toegevoegd).
% % citaat % : The editor, the headline writer, the Washington and foreign correspondent are involved with their conscience every day – provided they have such a thing – and even the lowly wild police reporter at times must struggle with the devil in making his news truthful and honest.
In addition to the regular newspaper staffs there have arrived in prominence lately two new groups whose writings are having a more and more subtle and powerful influence on politically intelligent Americans . One group has been labeled Plutogogues, the other consists of a dozen famed columnists who co-operate in a semi-independent fashion because their vast income is from syndication rather than the lone newspaper which has served as their springboard to fame and wealth .
The plutogogue is not new but the name is. Let the inventor define.
Addressing the Institute of Human Relations, Dr. T.V.Smith, professor of philosophy of the University of Chicago, practical politician – he is a member of the Illinois State Senate- said the enemies of our democracy are demagogues, plutogogues and theogogues .
“Demagogue we all know as the personage who mistakes the empty echo of his own cadences for the very heartbeats of humanity . Plutogogue, however, is not so well known nor so easily identified. Plutogogue is the voice of the wealthy when they can no longer speak for themselves, the successor of the plutocrat of other days . He is not Allah, but Allah’s public relations counsel.”
The majority of plutogogues – as distinguished from columnists – are not newspapermen . They may be diplomats, college professors, politicians, or persons of neither ability nor intelligence who have become public figures and therefore useful to the special interests. In some instances they are just plain crooks. In other cases they are the hired prostitutes of big business. In all instances they are the voice of the plutocrats, as Doctor Smith has said, and the enemies of the general reader. The newspapers which employ or publish the work of the extreme plutogogues, and do so knowingly, are without question violating every canon in the code of ethical journalism.
The middle group of plutogogues consists of men who are not bought up for fat sums of money but who are hired by either newspapers or big business because their policies agree . It is of course difficult to differentiate among the college professors who spread the N.E.L.A. propaganda against public ownership of public utilities because they believed in private ownership and those professors who did so for N.E.L.A. money. In either case it was an action against the public interest because it was done for private interests .
But the most important group of plutogogues consists of important and usually wealthy men, including some columnists, who, honest or dishonest in their avowal of liberalism and freedom of the press, become the spokesmen of the plutocrats voluntarily.
No one hires them to do a job of work. No one bribes them to change their views. They are not tempted by the big money which is always on the right, the reactionary or big business plutocratic side, because they themselves are wealthy enough .
They have simply become part of the same ruling set-up, giving it their services free while other men doing the same work call their wages the wages of prostitution. % % EINDE CITAAT % %
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George Seldes (1890 – 1995), American journalist, son of Jewish émigrés from Russia. He became a reporter in 1909. From 1918 to 1928 he worked for the Chicago Tribune; he quit to pursue independent journalism. [H]e and his wife published In Fact, a journal devoted to press criticism, in the years 1940–50. (bronnen: Wikipedia & Britannica, 29.10.2023).
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Every Muslim’s Duty Towards Gaza. Speaker: Yasir Qadhi. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHHKj8jcZ7w
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