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Part 3
“The modern-day press has forgotten this brilliant, lonely, socially awkward progenitor, who pioneered the concept of the uncensored flow of ideas and developed a new kind of communications in the service of the then-radical proposition that people should control their own lives.” So alleges American journalist John Katz in his 1995 article titled, “The Age of Paine,”
Thomas Paine’s ideas, his example of free expression and God-given ability to reason, are certainly unwelcome in today’s “controlled messaging” environment. His ideas about communications, media ethics, the universal connections between people, and the free flow of honest opinion are all but lost in our world.
Through media, Paine believed, “we see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used.” In other words, we allow someone else to do our thinking for us.
For a fella with little formal education, he certainly exemplified: knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
Paine’s worst fear was echoed more than 150 years later by critic A. J. Liebling, who wryly observed: “In America, freedom of the press is largely reserved for those who own one.” Most everyone else has been shut out.
It was hoped that media history would be reversed with the introduction of the internet; however, as we have seen, our social moral and media guardians control, through hypocritical censorship, the free expression of thought. They seem to be looking at everything save what’s most important: America’s values. One opinion survey after another confirms pervasive public mistrust of mainstream media.
Paine believed many citizens talking to many other citizens was essential to free government.
“He was right,” maintains Katz. “Journalism’s exclusion of outside voices and fear of publishing any but moderate opinions has made it difficult for the country to come to grips with some of its most sensitive issues—race, gender, and violence. Media overwhelmed and monopolized by large corporations, inaccessible to individual people and motivated primarily by profit, is the antithesis of Paine’s life, his work, and his vision for the press.”
“Paine didn’t see,” writes John Keane in Tom Paine: A Political Life, “that he was among the first modern public figures to suffer firsthand an increasingly concentrated press equipped with the power to peddle one-sided interpretations of the world.”
We could use Paine’s clear direction at a time when controlling journalists have abandoned their ethical grounding. Principled journalism has, in fact, become an aberration.
Concurs Katz, “Journalism no longer seems to function as a community. Since it no longer shares a definable value system—a sense of outsiderness, a commitment to truth-telling, an inspiring ethical structure—journalists seem increasingly disconnected from the public.
“The new generation faces enormous danger from government, from corporations that control the traditional media, from commercialization, and from its own chaotic growth.”
I suggest we heed these words from Thomas Paine’s December 23, 1776 “The American Crisis” as they are just as relevant today for those who courageously endeavor to preserve our disintegrating freedoms:
“There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both. [William] Howe’s [Commander-in-Chief of British land forces in the Colonies during the American War of Independence] first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy.”
“Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.”
Early in his life, Israel’s King David certainly experienced the need to confront the Goliaths in this world. Believed to be the author of Psalm 94, hear his words:
“God, put an end to evil; throw the book at the arrogant. God, the wicked get away with murder—how long will you let this go on? They brag and boast and crow about their crimes!
“They walk all over your people, God, exploit and abuse your precious people. They take out anyone who gets in their way.
“Can misrule have anything in common with you? Can troublemaker pretend to be on your side? They ganged up on good people, plotted behind the backs of the innocent.
“Can a wicked ruler be your ally; one who wreaks havoc by means of the law?”
Thomas Paine concludes …
“The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light … ‘show your faith by your works,’ that God may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all.” –The American Crisis, Thomas Paine
It’s time to resurrect this fiery revolutionist and heed his voice again, not for his sake, but for ours.
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