Recently, and my favorite one recently was from last week. This is the headline. This is true, not fake news. This is an actual headline in post. Shington it said this. Can republicans relearn how to accept political outcomes that they dont like . [laughter] john thats what the Washington Post was wondering last week. Now the more notorious headline , was, joel alluded to this, was when we learned about the killing of the isis leader. Did you see the headline the Washington Post gave that, right . It was, albaghdadi, austere ofigious scholar at helm islamic state, dies at 48. That was the actual headline in the Washington Post. I dont know your experience, but that was like the best day ever on twitter. Because everybody started inventing their obituary headlines. Right . So there was one that said herod the great, noted for his special interest in small children, dies at 77. Do you guys know the author brad thor, the novelist . So he put up this one, john wilkes booth, renowned thespian, theater goer, and passionate supporter of states rights, dies at 26. Then there was this. Adolf hitler, vegetarian, landscape painter, and german statesmen, dies at 56. Now, i think we have way too many hitler references in our politics, right, we should avoid them, but i got to admit, that one made me laugh. I want to start with a couple of lines about the press. Let me read this to you. The American Press is, to a fearful extent, in the hands of a cowardly mercenary and unprincipled class of men who have no regard for truth in dealing with what is unpopular, who cater to the lowest passion of the multitude, and caricature every movement aiming at the overthrow of established wrongs, who are as destitute of all fairness and controversy as they are lacking in selfrespect, and whose columns are closed against any reply that may be proffered to their libelous accusations. Does that sound familiar . Someone said Thomas Jefferson, it is not Thomas Jefferson. It is William Lloyd garrison in 1858. 1858. William lloyd garrison. So we have been complaining about the press for a long time. Theres almost nothing more american than complaining about the press. For the next three hours, i like saying that and seeing the reaction. The looks of horror. Tonight, im going to talk a little bit about the history of journalism with an eye toward explaining the moment we find ourselves in right now. And i also want to push back against this increasingly popular fairytale that the press used to be a lot better than it is today, in the sense that things were so much better a generation ago, wasnt it wonderful when we had a completely objective press that always told the truth . Right . Im hearing that more and more, i am hearing it especially from liberals in the media who are often complaining about the mere existence of fox news. Im also hearing it from my own college at hillsdale who bought into this idea that social media has wrecked everything in journalism and made it worse than ever before. So i want to push back on that a little bit. I think the truth is more complicated. And one of the things i want to say about the state of journalism today is, it has never been worse and it has also never been better. So i will explain that a little bit, as well, and also raise what i think are a few unique challenges for us today, both as conservatives and libertarians, but really for everybody who is an american who wants to follow the news. So a question i like to ask my students often at the start of a hillsdale in journalism courses is, what is the purpose of a newspaper . They will raise their hands and start to give earnest replies about informing the citizens and presenting facts to the public and so forth. These are all good answers, and there is truth in them, but the purpose of a newspaper is to make money. It is a business. Right . Its a commercial enterprise. We never can lose sight of that fact. Its important to recognize. Strength withreat that, but also weaknesses and vulnerabilities that comes with that when you are in the press, but we cant ever forget it. One of the downsides of the fact that this is a business is that you were always chasing after readers and trying to get more. And today, we hear about click bait on the internet. Click abate, which is clickbait, which is simply to get someone to click the link because it is a provocative headline or picture, because the website will get another nickel for someone having done that. Not even, a fraction of a nickel even. But clickbait, right . And thats all about making money. But journalism has always had withincentive, right, sensationalism is a word we have attached to this in previous generations, or yellow journalism, all about selling copies of newspapers by telling fibs, by reporting fake news, etc. It has always been there. The purpose of newspaper is to make money. We cant lose sight of that. It has led to some bad decisions and abuses of what we consider Good Journalism throughout history. I want to go back in time to the founding era of our country and talk about what journalism was like then. Im going to mention three extraordinary journalists, and one interesting, colorful journalist. One of the great, you know, sort of the founding father of journalism in certain ways in our country is ben franklin. Instead of george washington, washington is first in war, first in peace, first in the right . Of his countrymen, ben franklin was like first in everything else. When we think about what makes franklin great, what comes to mind . Diplomat, scientist, inventor, politician, all kinds of things he was really great at. The first thing he was was a journalist, he was a printer making money printing newspapers and periodicals. This was his business. He was an amusing writer. He published one of the great periodicals in American History, Poor Richards almanac. And these things made him wealthy. That enabled him to do the other things for which we remember him. So ben franklin started out as a great journalist. An exemplary journalist, someone who was a model before. Have you signed up for the new jonah goldberg, steve hayes, the dispatch, they are calling it . They got the name from the writings of ben franklin. Hes the inspiration for their new media enterprise. Another great journalist from thomas paine, who wrote common sense. The document that, more than any other, convinced the colonists to declare independence against the throne in england. Sense as ammon pamphlet, basically as an essay published on its own. The pamphlet was a great form of journalism back then. We have lost it now. We dont really have pamphlets. In that era, they were publishing ideas in pamphlets. It was a fantastic medium for debating ideas. Thomas paine was a great practitioner of it and wrote the most influential one in American History that spurred us on to the fourth of july. A third great journalist from that era is Alexander Hamilton, founder of the new york post, the best newspaper in new york. Right . So he founded the new york post, which is still with us. Also, the author of the federalist papers. One of the authors of the federalist papers. And when we encounter the federalist papers today, when we have to read them in school, they come to us as a book. They were really newspaper opeds. Every number of the federalist was a newspaper oped. If Alexander Hamilton and james madison, and john jay were writing the federalist papers today, they would be opeds in the wall street journal. Thats how people read them back then. We forget that, because we regard them as classics of political philosophy, essential in the ratification of the constitution and we read them in books now, but they were journalism. So with those three great examples, we have ben franklin, the printer, who was a great entertainer and a great businessman, maybe the first media mogul in american journalism. With thomas paine, we have the great polemicist in america. The first great polemicist in American History. With Alexander Hamilton, the , the greatader persuader in opinion journalism you might say in American History. I want to introduce you to a guy named james calendar, the first great political hack writer, hack journalist in American History. Calendar has this colorful, wonderful, appalling story that states to the united from scotland, an immigrant in the 1790s, as so many journalists were. Alexander hamilton was. As you know. And calendar immediately entered into the news business. And back then, all of the newspapers were closely aligned with Political Parties. In fact, the purpose of a lot of newspapers then was not to make money, they were subsidized by the party. The purpose was to present their ideas and attack their rivals. So calendar signed up for that and became a jeffersonian in the 1790s. And we sometimes put the Founding Fathers on a pedestal for all the great things they did and we forget the fact that a number of them didnt like each other, they fought with each other. Jefferson versus hamilton was one of the great divides in the early republic. James calendar signed up for the jeffersonian side. And he started publishing, writing, and so forth. And in the early 1790s, he published a pamphlet which had a bizarre long title. But in it, he accused Alexander Hamilton, who was secretary of the treasury, accused him of financial impropriety. Of basically accused him abusing his position as treasury secretary to enrich himself through insider trading. He makes this accusation in print. We actually dont have any copies of the pamphlet he did this in. It appears as though Alexander Hamilton bought them all and destroyed them. [laughter] john but, we know what it said, because there was a reaction and people talked about it. We just dont have the original document. What hamilton said in reply was you are wrong, i have not been engaged in insider training, but i have been making payoffs to this figure in new york. Because he has been blackmailing me for having an adulterous affair with his wife. [laughter] john so this actually demolished hamiltons reputation. His life was cut short, obviously, but people say he was on track to becoming president , but he never would have recovered from this accusation, which james calendar reported. He didnt report precisely what happens but he exposed it through his rumormongering journalism. Journalisttisan hack undid, in many ways, the career of one of the great Founding Fathers. Hamilton remained active in politics, but it was different after that for him. Calendar goes on and continues writing for the jeffersonian. In the late 1790s, he runs afoul of the sedition act. Afoul of the sedition act. Essentially, he started writing things so critical of the government and adams administration, that they threw him in prison. He spent a couple of years in prison for having criticized the government in his writing. A lot of people are wondering about freedom of the press at that point. Act expired, Thomas Jefferson was elected our third president , and calendar exited jail at that moment. He came up thinking i spent the 1790s writing and fighting for Thomas Jefferson, i went to jail for his Political Party to advance his ideas, i deserve a sweet political appointment. Jefferson didnt give him one. So calendar switched sides. He went from a jeffersonian attack dog to a federalist attack dog who waged war on the jefferson administration. He moved down to richmond and became the first writer to put in print the allegation that Thomas Jefferson was sleeping with a slave called sally. You probably heard that story, which we are still debating today. Which we still dont know the entire truth about. But he exposed that, also. A partisan attack dog journalist. Biggest scoop of the 19th century . Thats what he did. You dont hear about thomas calendar in many histories of american journalism. He is a disreputable figure. When he reported on jefferson and hemmings, all he had were rumors. He had no proof. He just heard people talking about it, so he leveled the accusation in print. Turns out he may have been right. We dont entirely know. The circumstantial evidence is good. Likes what journalism was back then, full of fake news and personal attacks, also sometimes truthful, maybe in unexpected ways. As we moved into the 19th century, journalism remain highly partisan. Tospapers remained tied Political Parties for most of the first half of the 19th century. You see vestiges of this, when you see a newspaper such as the arkansas democrat gazette, the newspaper in little rock, arkansas that has its own connections to the democratic party. Massachusetts, the spring springfield republican. I just learned santa rosa, california, there was the santa rosa republican. This is going back to the days when newspapers had these partisan alliances. We had great opinion journalism during this era. We had the fiery abolitionist leader. The greatper was abolitionist paper of the era. Another great journalist was frederick douglass. We all regard him as one of the great champions of human freedom in our country. Most people encountered his work through his newspaper. Workread his speeches and in a newspaper originally called the north star. To have a newspaper named after you after that. Is withrted to happen the partisan division, some people had an interesting idea on how to make more money in journalism. That involves the birth of the Associated Press. It publishes wire Service Articles in newspapers around the country. Started 15ted press newspapers in new york decided to pool their resources to cover the mexican war. It would be cheaper to bring resources together and get the same information coming out of mexico. The Associated Press formed to do that. Thats what it did. Later, one of the key writers had an insight. Have all of these newspapers that supply information to have the country, and these other newspapers do it for the other half based on partisan information. What if there was a company that sold our articles and information to everybody . The idea was objective journalism, nonpartisan journalism, report whats happening in washington, every paper, no matter what their political alliance, and thats basically what happened. They eliminated a lot of a lot of the over partisanship that dominated American Press. A lot of it is still around today. Ofts where the idea objective journalism is born. It picks up steam, especially in the 20th century. Were also dealing with the era of yellow journalism, of hearst and pulitzer, the newspaper wars in new york city. Most prestigious award in american journalism, is named after that guy. He was one of the biggest yellow journalists in his time, meaning fake news of the 1890s. Arguably, fake news let us us into the spanishamerican war, when the uss maine blew up in the harbor of havana. The accusation spaniards bombed it. It turns out maybe they didnt. Maybe it was just a boiler explosion and a tragedy. We went to war over that. The newspapers led us there. Arguably. Ke news, happening, theres more objective journalism, the idea we are not going to sell to half of the country. It really picks up steam in the 20th century. The New York Times and Washington Post are important forces in this effort. How objective where they really . Back in the days when you could get your news from one of three sources on tv. They were picking their news based on what the New York Times put on its front page that day. Was it as objective as people are claiming . I dont think so. Cronkite,ed of walter one of the most trusted man in america. He misreported the results of in 1968, andsive possibly turned americans against the vietnam war permanently based on false information. Saidr cronkite, who later he would have been delighted if George Mcgovern in 1972 asked him to be his Vice President ial running mate. For member how much trouble mcgovern had with his running mate . He finally wanted up with sargent shriver. Leftwinghe most ticket in American History, at least for 2008. Mcgovern actually thought about asking Walter Cronkite onto the ticket, then decided not to, because he thought he would say no. Years later when this came out and someone told Walter Cronkite what he thought, cronkite would have taken him up in a second. He would have joined the most leftwing ticket in the 20th century. How objective is that . On we go. Im reminded of all the president s men. Terrific movie. Its also had a bad effect on journalism. Of youngages a lot people to go into journalism who thought the purpose of journalism was to bring down a government. Theres always been an adversarial side to journalism. You have to be willing to ask hard questions. That is all true. Crusader element to journalism. A lot of people in that era swept away by woodward and bernstein portrayed on film. Its a terrific movie, a fun movie to watch. They got swept away thinking it was the job of journalism, to bring down a government. Went in and started to think that way and influence that way. If you think im overstating things, do you remember dan rather in 2004 with blogger gate . The successor to walter contrite cronkite, one of three people who the majority of americans got their news in the 80s and 90s. Putting the bs back in cbs. They called it blogger gate, because these accusations were reported that president george w. Bush dodged his military service. A very serious charge in the season. An election it came out in like september of 2004. The kind of charge that if true, would have ended a presidency, and maybe should have, if true. Fact, then theas bloggers found out the truth. They started looking at the precise claims and figured out things like the letter dan rather was showing us couldnt possibly be an actual document from the era, because it had a zip code, and we were not using zip codes back then. Theres all kinds of forensic evidence bloggers were bringing in to the argument. Ended dan, it rathers career, as it should have. [applause] but, if that had happened 10 years earlier, when no one knew what a blocker was, what kind of effect would that have had . Trust this idea that the president was once subjective a generation ago. I think it was the opposite. They claim to be, but it wasnt true. It dan rather episode proves more than anything else. Possible fort people to fight back on the way they did was the rise of the internet. Thatgreat Disruptive Force had supposedly divided us more than anything else, that made americans scream at each other on social media. This was happening amid a bigger breakup of the mainstream media. We had the rise of talk radio in the late 80s and exploding in the 90s, when they repealed the fairness doctrine and we had the rise of talk radio, a new medium that was dominated. Then we had fox news. Then we had the internet. Suddenly there are a lot of different voices, conservative and libertarian, that warrant in the mainstream media, and we could hear them all. This drove the left crazy. Lets not fool ourselves into believing the media was really great 30 years ago, was reporting only the facts, everything was subjective. When i came out of college in 1992 as a right of center young writer thinking about competitive journalism as a nifty career, where does someone like that go work in 1992 . Review and national i eventually got a job. There was the wall street journal editorial page, and human events. About it. There were regional editorial pages, but options were limited. Now theres this whole ecosystem of conservative news and , you know the names. Anything from the Washington Examiner to the daily caller, the daily signal, the daily wire. On and on we go. Gete are a lot of places to information from. A lot of places for Young Conservatives to work if they want jobs in the media. Today, we have an unprecedented access to information. When i first got to washington wanted a copy of the speech yesterday by the senator, you would have to call the senate office, hope to get on the phone with a press secretary, begged that person to and standanscripts, by the fax machine, wait for the thing to come off in that weird scrolling paper it came in. This was like the afternoon. He required the cooperation of other people. You couldnt just do it on your own. Now you can look up the speech and have it in 10 seconds. Its a power journalists and all of you have, and ability to learn whats happening, what people are saying that we didnt have a generation ago. The conventional point is to say this is a type of technology we pockets,puters in our but its also worth stepping back and expressing gratitude about this fact that we have this amazing power, that most of us are old enough to have been adults when there was no internet. We remember the world as adults without internet. I like it better now. It means is we have instant access to information, a lot of it good, accurate, and reliable, and a lot misleading. I prefer this world to the other one. I like this option better than the alternative. It has a lot of problems, but a lot of benefits. Thats true for conservatives and libertarians. We have a bigger voice in the media. Its easier to get our ideas out. It has never been easy, its not easy now. Weve never had a better opportunity to do that sort of thing. I welcome this environment in which we find ourselves. Its an improvement over the one that came forth. We also have a lot of new threats, calls for censorship, we hear them on campus all the time. We also hear them from journalists who call for limits to free speech. There is a journalist who just published a book called the case against free speech. If a journalist cant stand up for free speech, what we have left, calls for twitter and facebook to censor content. This is a thing to resist. Accounts onvorite theter, a satire account, dprk news service, the peoples north korea. It is a saturday or account that has comments on political events in the u. S. And around the world. Tweetede year ago, it calls for prohibition of fake news in west show wisdom of marshall kim jongun, dprk citizens enjoy total protection. Om false journalism i can live with foster nose and. It does put a burden on us when there is so much out there. Would it means is we have to know our sources like never before. About whatbe careful we read, what we trust. Have your relieved something because you heard it on the internet . A little skeptical, but we have to be skeptical constantly about what we hear. We need to recognize good news sources and questionable news sources, what is not to be trusted. Burden we have to take on. We also have to know our language, there are tremendous abuses of language. Heres something i read last week in the wall street journal. A great newspaper, my favorite in the country because of the editorial pages. On the front page of they have their news briefs. Heres what one of them said last week. Conservatives on monday celebrate the 40th anniversary siege. S. Embassy s iranian conservatives. These are the islamic revolutionaries, and we are calling them conservatives. When the media talks about other countries, conservatives are always the bad guys. This was a point of tremendous confusion when i was a teenager. The 1980s,n reading accounts about the soviet union, and hearing about conservatives in the kremlin, they were hardliners, the worst guys. They wanted to go back to stalin. Being 15 and reading about this and thinking i thought reagan was a conservative, shouldnt he be friendly . Conservatives are always the bad guys, everywhere. They always do that. Here it is. The wall street journal referring to iranian conservatives. There is a kernel of truth, in the sense that maybe theyre the most conservative of a fundamentalist belief in islam. Is deliberately used and misused to confuse people. Need to watch our language very carefully. That brings me to george orwell. Another great journalist. We think of him as a novelist, farm, andof animal he was those things. He was his whole life a journalist. He made his living by writing for newspapers and magazines as a literary journalist and so forth. His Great Success came at the end of his life, but he spent his life in journalism. I have heard him called every conservatives favorite liberal, and every liberals favorite conservative. He was a highly political writer. Its hard to find political writers who are admired across the political spectrum. He is one of them. His politics were a little bit confusing at times. He did maintain his whole life he was a socialist. The best description is antitotalitarian. Widely admired by all kinds of people. 30sote a book in the called the homage to collect catalonia. In his lifetime, it sold like 700 copies. Of the spanishr civil war. When spain was having a civil war in a proxy battle between fascism and communism, he went theight on the side of socialists and joined a militia. He got shot in the neck and was nearly killed. When it was over, he wrote his memoir. It was in spain that he recognized he had enemies to his left, that the stalinists were up to no good in spain, communists were up to no good, they were enemies of freedom. It was the first time he had that realization. Essential in his own political development. It allowed him to write the other books we all admire so much. Line where he has just met a russian propagandist who has come to spain to spread communist ideas and so forth. I watched him with some interest, the first time i had seen a person whose profession was telling lies, unless one counts journalists. He was used to fake news, he encountered it all the time. Reporter wasery getting the spanish civil war wrong. He thought the british reading public got misinformation constantly about what was really happening. Changed the way he thought about it. On to write a lot. One of his great essays is politics in the english language. I have all of my students read it. I think i had garrison read it twice in different classes. I make all of my students in journalism read this essay, because it is a great document and the waytelling we often manipulate language in politics. Says hisundamentally language should be a tool used to communicate the truth. All too often what happens is we become tools of language, and language controls the way we think. This is why cliches are bad, because there are phrases we haul out to express in a lazy fashion. Politics, it is particularly deadly. The idea finds itself in his novel, speaking in 1984 and all of that. Essay, he has this discussion about all of the ways to abuse language. Now, whenng it right the Associated Press, whose , atory i briefly recounted few years ago said in the ap style guide, the style guide that dictates how 98 of all journalists right, the style guide says we will no longer use the term illegal alien. Be illegalple cant and so on. A political is not choice, not a choice meant to shape the way we debate these subjects, because it is. Its an example of using language to control how we think, saying you cant use that term to describe this thing, because it may influence what you think. Thats what they are about, tremendous abuse of power. That happens in our own world. Orwell has some great examples. Uses the word pacification. Remember what pacification was in vietnam . The word pacify means to bring peace to. When we were pacifying in vietnam, we were bringing war to it. It is the exact opposite of what the word means. We do it in politics all the time. Is the exact opposite of the thing it describes. It controls what we think about it. In that context, it means bringing war. Examples, is everybody against the death tax . Americans are against the death tax. If you pull them on the estate tax, they are for that. It is the same. Question, youthe change the opinion. Everybody is against the death tax, because it is unfair to people when they die. Everybody is for the estate tax, because it sounds like you are soaking the man. If you are so wealthy you have an estate, certainly you can share a little bit of it. It is the same. Our view changes depending on what term we use. The politicians know this. The journalists dont always know it. When they do, they sometimes abuse it. Next time you hear a story on the death tax, estate tax, take a look at what term the journalist is using, how it might shape what people think about that whole debate. The debate surrounding abortion, whenever a state legislature in alabama or georgia passes a new law, what word do they use . A restriction. A new restriction, new abortion restriction. That is probably a fair limitingon, living a right to abortion. It is a restriction. They never call it a protection. What perspective are they writing from . Its an example of how language controls what we think about in debates. Need to be sensitive, hypersensitive to the way we talk about these issues, read about them, how journalists describe them, so the language of politics doesnt control what we think. Time,as true in orwells was true in James Callenders and, Alexander Hamilton, true in our time now. I will leave you with one final thought about the burden on all free as we think about speech. Another story about Alexander Hamilton. There are like 84 federalist papers. They say almost nothing about free speech. Thats partly because Alexander Hamilton didnt think we needed a bill of rights. He thought the constitution was a pretty good document. He resisted the idea of a bill of rights. You all probably know the story, we got a bill of rights partly as a mechanism of compromise in order to have the constitution ratified. Once we had the bill of rights, people were comfortable enough to endorse the document and it became supreme law of our land. Hamilton didnt think we needed it. 80 4, 1 of1980 the last ones, he does address the question of free speech and freedom of the press and all of that. He says it doesnt matter what any document says, what any amendment says, theres another line about parchment barriers, just because you write something down, how important is it . Context, it in this doesnt matter what an amendment to the constitution or bill of rights will say about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, anything like that. What matters is whether the people really want it. If they do, they will get it. If they dont, they wont get it. People, not what the constitution says or doesnt say. I think hes right. Im also glad there is a first amendment. Im glad they went ahead and made that compromise, just in case. Thats what he said, and i think its true. We will have free speech and weedom of the press if want it. We will still get fake news. We will get a lot of on fake news if we are vigilant and care about what we consume. Conclusion, i will say epstein didnt kill himself. [applause] thank you so much. Those lucky students. What a great storyteller you are. Thenow the drill, we see ushers with the cards walking around. I have one to get us going. Question, it works out well. He started your comments with what newspapers need to make money, because they are a business. How is a nonprofit News Organization like npr, and nonprofit has different definitions, does it distort the market for the news and reporting of the news . Newspaper ise of a to make money. It is a business. Its often been a moneylosing business. There have often been people involved in the news not because they want to make money, but because they want to influence. You will find Newspaper Publishers who are ok with taking losses in order to have a platform. It is the same today with these new nonprofit News Organizations. Npr being one of them, also some investigative reporting units raising Foundation Dollars to report the news. There is an agenda behind it. We need to be aware of that. Said kley always National Review was for many years of forprofit magazine. Everybody kind of laughed at that. Bill buckley says it exists to make a point, not a prophet. Losseswilling to sustain in order to do it. It was technically a business for many years, now it is owned by a nonprofit. This is almost the opposite approach. What is here opinion of expanding the libel laws against newspapers and journalists where there is a thing of too much free speech . American libelke laws, where they are weak. I read about the uses of libel laws in other countries, like the u. K. , it gives me the shivers sometimes the way that can be abused. Laws that libel require real malfeasance, in other words, not a mere mistake and gross error at the same time. Power ofke about the language, whether you are how doting, protecting, we fight those who describe thanksgiving as Indigenous Peoples day . I hear that more connected to but what do you do . We keep calling it thanksgiving, or columbus day, and use it by that name. Indigenous peoples day strikes me as something a few people on campus want. Heres a technical question. Somebody would like you to repeat the name of orbitals essay. Politics in the english language. You will find it in any collection of George Orwells essays, because it is the most important he ever wrote. It is also free on the internet. You can look it up and get it that way. It has great general writing tips that are really good, and the second half is all about politics. I will tell you another quick story. When i was working fulltime in 1999 oral review, something, we wanted to put together a list of the 100 most important nonfiction books of the 20th century. 1999, everyone was making their 20th century lists. Mostnted to do the 100 important nonfiction books in the 20th century. Experts,ed a panel of historians, scholars, and other people. They were of the National Review flavor. The liberals were going to have their list, and we would make one of our own. I ran this project. We sent ballots to people, we had numbers, all of these equations and complicated scoring system. The results, the 100 most important nonfiction books of the 20th century. What do you think was number one . I havent heard it. Churchillson second world war, the six volume memoir of the second world war. Was the gulags are hiso by social neeson, story of the gulags in the soviet union. That was on the list, but not in the top 10. Number three was a no match to catalonia. I remember getting that result. I had heard of the book, it has risen to it has really great posthumous fame. Number four was road to serfdom. George orwells collected essays. He was two of the top five. Not bad. Commented the press was biased towards attacking president ial power. Where were they during the Obama Administration . We are still looking. Theyre currently on the campaign trail with the democratic president ial candidates. Quote liberals go into journalism to change the world. What motivates conservative kids to enter the field . Not enough do. John m. R. I. He put this in a good way when we were talking about this at dinner. Team, the best and brightest conservative and libertarian kids, what do they do professionally . Law go into business, maybe may be engineering, medicine. Thats what they do. Where does their first team go . They do some of those things. They go into academia, they go into journalism and the media. First of all, not enough conservatives and libertarian kids are going into journalism. Ultimately, thats the solution to the problem of liberal media bias, to get more and different perspectives into the newsroom. Thats what were trying to do with the Journalism Program at hillsdale college, also the college fix, and through other programs. It is hard to do. Wire those kids doing it . I would like to think that although some are idealistic and want to change the world, be a force for good, i would like to think they want to be Truth Tellers and go out and find Great Stories to convey to the rest of us. I hope thats what motivates most of them. Alle talked before about through history, journalism, and reporters would maybe put a spin on story. Its not so with the stories are telling, but what they are not telling. The fact a lot of stories are ignored by the mainstream media. Is there a precedent for that . One of the most important phenomenon to recognize is you read an article and maybe you but prior to bias, the article is the question of what stories we are going to cover. Treat benghazi as an Important News story, or use our judgment that it doesnt matter much . Stories thats of dont get covered and we never hear about, or we hear about them only in certain places. The abortion doctor, who reported on that . Not the mainstream media. They didnt report on that. Thats not a news story. Boy was that a crime story. Thats what that was. Indisputably. I dont care if you are prochoice. Rate, story selection is where the bias begins. What stories are they choosing to tell . All the news is fit to print . No. Print what they want and it starts at assignment meetings. The dont fully understand question, but i think he will allow you to expound on it. How does your College Website work . I dont know if it is a fix or something for hillsdale. I will talk about the college fix. I founded it about 10 years ago. The idea is we find students on campuses across the country and recruit them to be journalists and train them, and get them to tell true stories about whats going on on their campuses. I have a team of professional editors who work with them. They do story assigning, mentoring, training, they get them to do real bits of journalism about threats to free speech, incidents involving political correctness, curriculum battles on campus. Until we get student reporters to write about this. Every day on the college news site, you will get new stories from students describing what is really going on. So it is a Good Platform for news every day. Separately, we offer internship programs, we try to place the most talented and eager at professional News Organizations where they can try out a career in the media and decide if they like it. We are trying to excite them about and if you aree, intellectually curious, this is a great light of work, and, in fact, you can make a decent living doing it, rumors to the contrary. There are jobs, and if you really want one, it is there for you. Erika ok. You mentioned from our history, who do you think are the most influential journalists of the 1700s . The 1700s . So i will tell you who my favorites were. Jonathan swift. You have heard of him, right . Gullivers travels. He was a journalist. He had a couple of jobs. He was an anglican bishop. Modest proposal. Has anyone read modest proposal, the greatest in satire in american english . It was a pamphlet, like thomas payne is common sense, about how to deal with the like Thomas Paynes common sense, about how to deal with poverty. It is such a good and compelling argument, we are still reading it today, so i will go with jonathan swift, and then i will say ben franklin, 1700s. Ben franklin, he was a very funny writer. Also, a master of the quip, the epigram. Phrases,these stock early to bed, early to rise. Franklin. N no pain, no gain, ben franklin wrote that. What he was doing back then, a highly, highly readable journalist. Erika would you care to comment on how some journalists would like to make themselves the story . Jim acosta. Has that had an effect on the profession, or is he just a oneoff . John there are a lot of journalists who like to be a part of the story. When that is done well, you get someone like tom wolfe, sort of the new journalism, that can be done well. Poorly, and done you get you get people who want to be stars as opposed to writers and Truth Tellers and make spectacles of themselves, and jim acosta is probably the biggest contemporary abuser of that. Toka you must have access people of other academic institutions that do what you do. Do you feel like they try to teach journalists to be more neutral or show both sides, or is it just damper torpedoes, full speed ahead to the left . Amn the torpedoes, full speed ahead to the left . Missionere is a statement which i read and i believe in. Things we started doing that i thought made sense, and one of the things we do that i think is essential is you learn journalism by doing journalism. In other words, we do not want kids sitting in the classrooms, hearing lectures from me. They get a little bit of that, but we mostly want them working on the campus newspaper and working at the campus radio station, because we want the experience to become the teacher, and journalism is a thing you learn by doing. It is like a trade that way, less a prevention and more of a trade when you think of it that way less a profession and more of a trade when you think of it that way. Journalismory of class, and intensive writing workshop. You do intensive things. We also push them out and have them engage in the practice. The other thing we do at hillsdale, journalism is not a major. It is a minor, and that has it it is proper place. Journalism should be a major nowhere, and one of the great things about hillsdale, the students will come and will major in a tradition academic subject, learning about biology or economics and history, and they can bring that into the profession with them when they are a journalist, as opposed to being a journalism major, and not knowing much about those subjects. I will give you a quick story. A few years ago, i had a young lady. She was a freshman, and she came into my office, and i asked her the question i always ask these people, what do you want to do when you grow up . What job do you want after college, five years or 10 years after college . And she said, i want to be a wall street journal reporter, which is amazingly precise, but i was delighted to hear that, because i thought i could work with this. What do you think she should major in . Journalism . Ok, so she went on and majored in economics. She minored in journalism. She became the editor of our paper, which, by the way, the Princeton Review called the number three College Newspaper in all of america. [applause] thoughhank you, even garrison no longer writes for it, and, i am not done, yes where she is working today . Erika the wall street journal. A Great Success story. Do you have any comments on international press, bbc, sky news . Do not read a lot of the british press. I do get some british newspapers from time to time. I like the guardian a lot, which is kind of a left of center, and i enjoy their cultural reporting, and open but the telegraph, which is a right of center, also good, harder to read. Their pay wall is tougher to penetrate. Do i will say this, but i not have a lot of experience with the foreign press, and i will say one thing. I hope we can get into the habit of paying for journalism again, right . Over the last generation, we have gotten the idea that journalism is free, right, that you can Read Everything online for nothing, and newspapers and magazines are trying to figure out how to solve this problem, how to get people to pay for good writing again, and National Review has been doing this. The wall street journal is mostly behind a pay wall right now, and if you want Good Journalism, and you recognize the fact that the purpose of a newspaper is to make money, if you want Good Journalism, youre going to have to pay for it again, and i hope you are willing to, because if you do not, you will not get it. So maybe that is a thing to think about area if you let your hometown so maybe that is a thing to think about. If you let your hometown newspaper subscription lapse, which i did a few years ago, because the quality was diminishing. Is there something i can subscribe to that you find rewarding . I would love to see us get into the habit of that again. I find it amusing. I will post an article of mine on twitter, something i have written for the National Review or other, and someone will say, i cannot read it. It is behind the pay wall, and the implication is, how dare you do Something Like that, and i always say, well, have you considered a subscription, but i would like to see us pay for journalism again. Erika earlier, we were speaking a fair amount about Alexander Hamilton. Have you seen the musical, and if so, what did you think . I have not, but i gather it deals with the affair. Is that correct . Yes, so i have heard that. Is james calendar a character . No and a yes, so the answer is i do not know, but the play hamilton does deal with that controversy. There is a book by it is a New York Times columnist william safire, and you guys might remember him. A greatbut was columnist for the New York Times, and this was about the journalism of this period, and it talks about the hamilton affair. It talks about jefferson and hemmings and james calendar is a major character, so it is a work of fiction and takes some liberties with what happened, but it is actually safire is very conscientious to stick to the facts of history as we know them, and he sort of rights in the silences and uses his in thetions writes silences and uses his imagination and gives us an idea of what that period was like. 95 of the news media is owned by six corporations. Is there too much amalgamation . Ofall understand the benefit consolidating from a financial point of view, but does that have an effect, perhaps . John i have not heard that figure, so i do not i would want to fact check that, frankly, but i dont know. I do think it should be easier for tv stations too newspapers and vice versa. I think that would be good for the health of the media, and right now, there are some rules against that. It is anw to restrict this sort of concentrations of power and influence, but i think, given the state of the media, it might be good to let some experimentation with that take place. I would be for a little more consolidation, but i am spit bawling here. Here. T balling erika if you only had half an hour a day to get your national news, what are the top three news sources you would recommend . The wall street journal every day. I especially like the editorial section, but i read the whole thing. I checked out National Review, partly because it is my employer, but i think it is a good product. Especially, the magazine, i think, is very good, and i read the New York Times every day. I like to know what it is saying. I also think it is reporting on affairs andforeign several other subjects is quite good, and it remains, for all of its problems, it remains a Great American newspaper that we cannot ignore, so those are three stops i make every day. Erika ok. Nice wrap up. Thank you very much for coming, john miller. [applause] we will see you next month for nick adams. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer tonight on cspan, at 9 10 p. M. Eastern, Justin Pearson speaking to the Federalist Society about occupation laws. He believes the laws are unnecessary and seeks to overturn them. I have personally spoken to people who have been arrested and prosecuted for the crime of ty to. Ive also personally spoken to people who have been prosecuted for the crime of reading hair. Live, afar from where i few years ago, swat teams, full swat teams rated barbershops on the suspicion of unlicensed barbering. This is what happened o happens when you have these laws. They lead to interaction with the police and sometimes things go far astray. I want to give you an example. As i mentioned before, people have been arrested for the crime of braiding hair. One individual