NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS

WAIT…

_______

________

John Swinton, Chief Editorial Writer for The New York Times from 1860 – 1870, is well known for calling a spade a spade in the business of reporting. Swinton admitted to holding his writing job due to his ability to lie convincingly for those who paid him, stating no journalist would last a day if they ever wrote a word of truth. This was way back in the 1800’s.

____________

____________

” The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

~ John Swinton, Chief Editorial Writer for The New York Times from 1860 – 1870. (Throughout the American civil war.)

Swinton also attempted to have an effect upon the system of contract immigrant labor. Under this system, imported workers were brought into the country by employers who provided a minimum standard of living to them for a time. Swinton revealed the abusive nature of this system, resulting in a Congressional action, ending in amended legislation.

____________

_______