Stop the Presses! The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution By Joseph Farah (WND Books 273 pages, $37.95)
There was a time, in the bad old days, when the people of North America were subjected to very limited sources of news. Influential publications like the N.Y. Times, and massive electronic networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, had a veritable monopoly on what the population saw, heard and read. An outgrowth of this reality was that many important issues, including abortion and homosexuality, were given skewed – that is to say, left-liberal – treatments.
Thankfully, those days have pretty well come to an end. The advent of the personal computer and the internet have meant that virtually any individual can become his own “printing press” and reach anyone else in the world who has access to those tools. It has thus become more difficult to suppress or distort the truth.
Who better to recount the still-brief history of the new media revolution than Joseph Farah, a man who, along with Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh, has been instrumental in fuelling it and consequently, greatly impacting the social, cultural and political spheres of society.
Farah’s book is at once a sometimes-serious, sometimes-humourous, sometimes-searing account of not only how his own entity, WorldNetDaily, rose to become the largest independent news service on the internet, but how the original mission of the free press – to serve as a fourth estate to keep the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in check – is being reclaimed.
That mission has long been lost by what Farah derisively calls the “lamestream” media, as evidenced by a study that reveals U.S. news editors believe the function of the press is to act as a “news explainer.” This fact leaves Farah stunned: “Do you believe that? … Newspaper editors don’t think their job is to report the news. They believe their job is to explain it to their stupid readers.”
But that reality has also created a breach into which Farah and others have stepped. It’s all capably and entertainingly explained in Stop the Presses!, a must read for anyone concerned with media bias and the future of the media field. The book also serves as a salve and motivator for anyone frustrated by the media’s scandalously poor or biased reporting on social issues.
We still have a way to go in Canada. While there are a number of bright spots and alternative sources of news or news aggregators here – including LifeSite.net, NationalNewsWatch.com, Bourque.com and a number of influential blogs and individuals such as Michael Coren and David Warren – these have not yet achieved the kind of impact claimed by Limbaugh, Farah, Drudge and others south of the border. There is much work still to be done. Reading Farah’s book is a good start for anyone contemplating doing more to affect the future of perhaps the most important of the elements determining the state of our society.
