“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

The words, attributed to John Swindon by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais were supposedly uttered sometimes in 1880.

Nowadays, back in 2019, more and more people blame the MSM – main street media, for the sorry state the contemporary society finds itself in.
In fact, those who consider the media to be the source of all evil have been numerous, and focused, enough to elect somebody from their ranks to the highest office in Washington…

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not naive enough to pretend that journalism is any different from any other human activity.

And this is exactly my point.
Journalists are humans. Like all of us.
There is no way that they’ll behave any different than the rest of us.
The day to day practice provides ample proof that far too many of us currently “are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes”. Sometimes even without being aware of it… but that is another issue.
While it is true that too many of the journalists function as “intellectual prostitutes”, the same thing is valid for the members of too many other professions.

Then why do we – all of ‘us’, demand that journalists behave any differently from the rest of us?
Why do we accuse them for not being saints when we are sinners ourselves?
Our sins are lighter? Have less impact?

Are we so thick in our vehemence against journalists that we are deaf to Swindon’s real message?

“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

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