Putting Jefferson's Quote On Newspapers Into Context

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Earlier this year, we took on why journalists who were quoting Thomas Jefferson's famous line: "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter" were missing the point, noting that he really meant journalism not newspapers -- and journalism isn't going away at all. However, Jay Rosen points out that the quote is actually out of context. The full Jefferson quote even more clearly makes the point that it's not physical newspapers, he's concerned about:

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." -- Thomas Jefferson

From that quote, it seems likely that Jefferson would be quite a fan of the web and the fact that news on the web was free and widely available -- contrary to the point made by most old school news folks quoting it.

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Disney Used Anonymous Online Quotes In Ads

from the as-good-as-made-up dept

You've all seen movie advertisements that include snippets of glowing quotes from critics. "Marvelous!" "Best Movie of the Year!" etc. There's been some controversy about these quotes in the past. There was an investigation into studios taking movie critic quotes completely out of context, and even a lawsuit against Sony Pictures for making up a critic and his quotes for movie ads. It appears that Disney has now been caught trying out a new tactic: using quotes from anonymous internet commenters on IMDB. These "commenters" could be, for example, Disney employees, but go under usernames like "Theedge-4" and "Mjavfc1." Apparently, that's good enough for Disney to quote them in their ads. While there's something to be said for tapping into a wider group of folks than just the big name "professional" movie critics and reviewers, this one seems pretty questionable and open to abuse -- especially given the industry's documented history of made up reviews.

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