The press at war

Whatever happened to a patriotic press? James Q. Wilson explores “The press at war” in the forthcoming issue of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. OpinionJournal has posted Professor Wilson’s essay in its entirety this morning. Here is the concluding paragraph of Professor Wilson’s essay:

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.

For an illustration of Professor Wilson’s thesis from this morning’s paper, see “The Strib prepares for a Democratic victory.”

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