Recently if that means for the last 200 or more years there has been talk of corrupt, venal, idle mouthpieces of the powers that be usually called journaliars. (John Waters coinage)
Certainly reading Hilaire Belloc’s book ‘The Free Press’ (pub. 1917) he was less than sanguine about the ‘fair and balanced’ media of the day. He writes:
"Take the Marconi case. The big official papers first boycotted it for months, and then told a pack of silly lies in support of the politicians. The Free Press gave one the truth but its various organs gave the truth for very different reasons and with very different impressions. To some of the Irish papers Marconi was a comic episode, "just what one expects of Westminster"; others dreaded it for fear it should lower the value of the Irish-owned Marconi shares. "The New Age" looked at it from quite another point of view than that of the "New Witness," and the specifically Socialist Free Press pointed it out as no more than an example of what happens under Capitalist Government.
A Mahommedan paper would no doubt have called it a result of the Nazarene religion, and a Thug paper an awful example of what happens when your politicians are not Thugs.
My point is, then, that the Free Press thus starting from so many different particular standpoints has not yet produced a general organ; by which I mean that it has not produced an organ such as would command the agreement of a very great body of men, should that very great body of men be instructed on the real way in which we are governed."
Cecil Chesterton, G.K.'s brother, as editor of ‘The New Witness’ was sued by Godfrey Isaacs for criminal libel re Marconi shares and insider trading. He was found guilty and fined £100.
Everyone has an angle and Belloc thought that in order to get a comprehensive view of the state of the land you ought to read several papers and particularly those with a narrow sectional interest.
William Cobbett 100 years before that in his weekly ‘Political Register’ got in trouble with the Whigs for his article on the flogging of British soldiers by German merceneries for the refusal to pay for the issue knapsack. Newgate was his residence for two years plus a £1000 fine. His decision to defend himself was unwise. He wrote:
"Flog them; flog them; flog them! They deserve it, and a great deal more. They deserve a flogging at every meal time. 'Lash them daily, lash them duly.' What, shall the rascals dare to mutiny, and that, too, when the German Legion is so near at hand! Lash them, lash them, lash them! They deserve it. O, yes; they merit a double-tailed cat. Base dogs! What, mutiny for the sake of the price of a knapsack! Lash them! Flog them! Base rascals! Mutiny for the price of a goat's skin; and, then, upon the appearance of the German soldiers, they take a flogging as quietly as so many trunks of trees!—I do not know what sort of a place Ely is; but I really would like to know how the inhabitants looked one another in the face, while this scene was exhibiting in their town. I should like to have been able to see their faces, and to hear their observations to each other at the time. This occurrence at home will, one would hope, teach the loyal a little caution in speaking of the means which Napoleon employs (or, rather, which they say he employs), in order to get together and to discipline his conscripts…" (Political Register, 1st., July 1809).
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In a letter he describes the meeting of his enemies in the hall of the Mother of Parliaments:
Perceval met his brother-in-law Redesdale at the portal of Westminster Hall. They shook hands and gave each other joy! Chucklehead but crafty Curtis met Tierney in the Hall. 'Ah, a, ah! We have got him at last,' said Curtis. 'Poor Cobbett! Let him be bold now!' The old place-hunter answered: 'Damn him! I hope they'll squeeze him!' They did squeeze indeed; but their claws, hard as they were, did not squeeze hard enough.
‘Chucklehead’ should be revived. I bestow it on Leo Chucklehead Varadker.
Main stream media at present is the vassal of corporate and government interests of a liberal progressive nature but to offset their univocity they will have a columnist who writes against this tone. In Ireland each paper has a pet troglodyte who by the general ethos is wrong about everything. In the Irish Times that used to be John Waters but he was constructively defenestrated and now writes on substack under the style and title - johnwaters.substack.com
A lot of members of the awkward squad have ended up on substack. They now represent the sectional Free Press that Belloc wrote about and are a balance to the journaliesism of MSM.
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