Sunday, November 4, 2012

And the #BlockReuters List Continues

If you missed the reason for the #BlockReuters movement, then please take a look at my prior post, which also includes the initial list of those who have blocked Reuters on Twitter. Please remember to follow @ToddKincannon; see my prior post as to why. Also, follow @ConservativePA whose work allowed this post to be made hours earlier than otherwise. Thanks, Ken Carroll @KenInEastman

"I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses nor pursue measures by which they may profit and then profit by their measures." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Rutledge




“The average newspaper has the intelligence of a hillbilly, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a claim-jumper, the information of a high-school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer.” - H. L. Mencken



“We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation.” - Warren G. Harding 



“What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.” - Plato



“Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood--the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” - Theodore Roosevelt



If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. - George Washington 



“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” - Winston Churchill



“Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini’s success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time." - Ronald Reagan 



“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.  There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization:  Come here to this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” - Ronald Reagan



“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man.” - Mark Twain



“If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams



“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” - John Stuart Mill 



“Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.” - Harry Emerson Fosdick



“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

Todd Kincannon is Right to Say 'Block Reuters'

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell. June 11, 1807.

And the steady drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . becomes an intolerable steady stream. 
Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale: (1805) [c...
Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale: (1805)
[cropped] (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is the debt of the media to truth? Do you believe that media has a higher requirement to the truth than the town gossip? If so, do we have a responsibility to hold the media to the required standard?

Representative democracy requires an active and honest press. With three days remaining before the most important US Presidential election in my lifetime, Reuters has embraced partisanship over truth. For the details, visit Twitchy Media.

Never one to sit idly while there is a cause to be undertaken and conservative mischief to be made, South Carolinian Todd Kincannon (@ToddKincannon) has combined social media and the good old-fashioned boycott with the #BlockReuters hashtag.

Kincannon is enlisting people on Twitter to block tweets from Reuters. I'm sure the term 'censorship' will be tossed around, but of the two alternatives to the moderates' favorite answer (doing absolutely nothing), #BlockReuters is far less violent than the other alternative.

I encourage you to block Reuters because it does two things of importance. First, it will show Reuters that there is a cost to abandoning even the pretense of neutrality. Tolerating half-truths, myths and opinion-as-news from the press has led to . . . surprise! . . . More half-truths, myths and opinion-as-news. There is an unassailable argument that tolerating and financially rewarding crap leads to more crap.

Second, it will draw attention to what Reuters has done in its headline that blurs a major mistake by President Obama (the 'revenge' statement) by accusing Governor Romney of the same thing. Reuters ignores the troublesome fact that Governor Romney merely quoted Obama's remark. Not exactly a truthful representation from Reuters.

Kincannon wisely suggests that those who feel strongly about blocking Reuters would benefit from following others of similar sentiment and commitment on Twitter. I agree and so to facilitate that, with Mr. Kincannon's permission, I have compiled the list of those he has listed on Twitter as blocking Reuters. The names are in the order in which they were mentioned.

As more names become available, I will amend the list. To make the list easier to use, I've tossed in some quotations as placeholders to break up the list.

@marcfollana @zanshi1 @Sassy_Gator_Gal @TimothyODonnel2  @debwilliams  
@TOProject @jfgroves @JoeFL65 @Robinsbodybyvi @Nel_Mezzo
@MusicCityVic @Whatwesettlefor @triplerbailbond @ChasBrowning @TedBlurnEsq
@justjeryl @packersredwings @cajunkate @deebs001 @redriverranch 
@thx4obombing @Jerruh @JVinDC @TFinn82 @tfinefine 

@theforgetler @marshallsheldon @oldgeekgal @Mylissa11 @CoolPapa68
@bwilsford @Shan1419 @bostonrandy @uwsp46 @Joe_Pasquini 
@badfr0g @InversMedia @triplerbailbond @SteveWightman1 @jennanjack 


“The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.” - Herbert Agar





“Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.” - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary 



“As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.” - Josh Billings


 @dcurrya @sandals1112 @KleptoBek @JohnVassNascar @ggg217 

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” - Niels Bohr



“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.” - Winston Churchill



“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.” - Confucius



A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both. - James Madison 



“Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.” - Joseph Pulitzer



“Public opinion, in relation to government and its policy, is as much divided and diversified, as are the interests of the community; and the press, instead of being the organ of the whole, is usually but the organ of these various and diversified interests respectively; or rather, of the parties growing out of them.” - John C. Calhoun



“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, - you can never have both.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson



“For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it." - Patrick Henry



“Craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked.” - Thomas Fuller

 
 @TXretNavyChief @westcyn @Djell4jc @SteveMEllis @Tea4Freedom 
@ttaylorfitness @RodneyHamptonPC @Robbieslife @BobbyCampbell68 @bkruthy65 
@Smalltalkwitht @Machinetoolsale @WellThought_Out @roncisneros @SMiddlebrook62 


“The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients.” - Eric Hoffer



“What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?” - Ralph Waldo Emerson



“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” - Thomas H. Huxley

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