Leonard Downie Jr. Quotes
Every administration I remember has tried to control its message and manage contacts with the media. As a senior editor for more than a quarter century, I frequently received complaints from administrations of both parties about coverage they considered unfavorable, along with occasional and mostly empty threats to cut off access.
Leonard Downie Jr., Journalist & Executive Editor, The Washington Post, “Obama, The Unaccountable President”,, The Washington Post, May 26, 2013
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This was her response to Sander Vanocur {618913}
Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was echoing criticisms that were made the world over and even by some in the United States. However, his solution to have the press controlled by the ruling party just changed the cast of characters who were propagandizing and distorting the truth. Lenin was not able to offer a better solution nor were others. However, with enough affluence the capitalist society produced enough different publishers all competing that one did not dominate public opinion. With technology of TV and the Internet, the bar to entry is so small that almost anyone can be a publisher and find an interested market. In a way technology has solved much of the problem for capitalistic and totalitarian societies alike. In the latter, even censorship is not easy or feasible on a large scale.
Ailes suggested plan was not implemented by President Nixon. However. Ailes, an arch conservative who has always believed the media was biased against conservatism, later implemented his idea very successfully. This idea was the intellectual forerunner" to Fox News, which Ailes launched as a "fair and balanced" news network in 1996. The Nixon Administration however, concerned about the extremes of many of his recommendations finally fired him, which turned out to be very positive for Ailes career thereafter.
At the time, there were few who saw the significance and many dismissed it as left wing intellectual paranoia. By the end it the 29th century it was the right wing which carried this mantra.
Leonard "Len" Downie Jr., the American journalist, was Executive Editor of The Washington Post from 1991 to 2008. He worked in the Post newsroom for 44 years as Executive Editor, Managing Editor, National Editor, London correspondent, Assistant Managing Editor for Metropolitan News, Deputy Metropolitan Editor, and as an award winning investigative and local reporter. Downie became Executive Editor upon the retirement of Ben Bradlee. During Downie's tenure as Executive Editor, The Washington Post won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper has won during the term of a single Executive Editor, including three Pulitzer Gold Medals for Public Service. Downie currently serves as Vice President At Large at the Washington Post Company, as Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and as a member of several advisory boards associated with journalism and public affairs.
