You Want the Truth? 309 Million Citizen Journalists Couldn’t Handle the Truth!

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Mandeville, LA – Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published on June 18, 2012 at 12:48pm

Exclusive Audio and Transcript – Let me say to you, what I find alarming about this is there are conservatives out there that seem not to care about the credibility factor.  At the end of the day, what is credibility?  It is adherence to or elevation of and devotion to what?  The truth.  That’s what credibility is.  You’re credible because people believe you to be honest.  It may not be a direct act of dishonesty to misquote something, but at some level, if you’re going to have a return to virtues, then the virtue of truth and of honest is, I would think, is one of those you must aspire to. Check out today’s Daily Clip and transcript for more…Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I just played Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech as another reference point in what I was just talking about, about the 309 million citizen journalists out there that Sarah Palin was droning on about at some conference over the weekend.  I just informed AG, a fact that you did not know, that there is no source for Henry’s speech.  You were shocked when I told you that.

AG:  I was.  I expected them to take down what is such an important quote in our history.

Mike:  I say there’s no source because Henry didn’t write his speeches down.  There was no stenographer there at St. John’s Church in March of 1775 when he gave the speech.  There are no notes that survived.  There are some eyewitness accounts of people that claimed to have heard what I just played for you, but the most reliable book on Henry you’ll ever get is written by a man named Moses Coit Tyler.  Coit Tyler wrote about four books in his series called The American Statesman, right around the time of 1892 or so, the turn of the century.

The first book about Henry was written by an attorney general by the name of William Wirt.  It’s called Sketches in the Life of Patrick Henry.  Wirt just quoted it as though he was drawing it from some fountain or from some source document.  There was no document.  There was a letter that was written, and I don’t have Tyler’s book in front of me.  There was a letter that was written years after the speech was given where someone that was in attendance and witnessed it said, This is what I think I heard.  So he wrote it down.

The point is, and I was talking earlier about the truth about Tyler.  If you’ve never heard the Tyler quote, it’s the one where — if you’re not following my Twitter feed, you don’t have this.  I tweeted it out for you people.  AG, there are about eight people following me over the weekend.  You have to do the plug again to get us back at 100 a day.  “Great nations rise and fall.  People go from bondage to spiritual truth to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, complacency to apathy, apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage, “ reportedly by Scottish philosopher Tyler, BS.  It did not come from Tyler’s pen.

The only reason I brought it up was to say that if you have 309 million reporters out there, are you getting more information or are you getting more misinformation?  Another listener, who apparently is intrigued by my conversation, I appreciate that, points out that one of the greatest statements, and it’s repeated every single solitary day, one of the greatest misstatements and misrepresentations on our hallowed internet with our hallowed 309 million citizen brigade of citizen journalists, is this BS that basically comprises the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, that the right of free speech is absolute for every American and no government in the entire land can usurp it or infringe upon it because it’s in the Constitution.  That’s a pile.  That’s an absolute pile.  Yet it’s repeated over and over and over again.

I still get letters about it.  As a matter of fact, I’m probably going to get some right now.  It’s called the Incorporation Doctrine.  This is American mythology.  This stuff was made up in the early part of the 20th Century, this incorporation crap.  Yet it is repeated, writ large, as if it is the truth.  It is not.  How many times have you heard, [mocking] “Where are our personal rights?”  You have rights that were reserved to the people and to the states where the general government could not infringe upon them is what you have.

Mike in Colorado, you are next.  How are you, sir?

Caller Mike:  Good, Mike.  How are you doing this morning?

Mike:  I’m good, sir.  Thank you.

Caller Mike:  The song here about the cool summer, it’s a hot summer out here in Colorado Springs.  We’ve got wildfires everywhere.  It’s a little bit rough for us right now, but fun song to hear in the morning anyway.  I was telling the screener, my mother-in-law is the queen of sending out crap.  I almost put it on auto delete anymore.  It seems like every other day, I get an email from her saying — there was one going around about a one percent tax they’re going to put on your Social Security, and this new Navy stealth airplane that’s going to be built using taxpayer dollars.  It’s all complete BS.  The fact is, all these stories by the 309 million brigade of reporters, there’s basically no credibility.  There’s no way to back it up really, unless you do a bunch of research, and that’s the whole point of having a media.

Mike:  Well, it’s the point of journalism.  Let me say to you, what I find alarming about this is there are conservatives out there that seem not to care about the credibility factor.  At the end of the day, what is credibility, Michael?  It is adherence to or elevation of and devotion to what?  The truth.  That’s what credibility is.  You’re credible because people believe you to be honest.  It may not be a direct act of dishonesty to misquote something, but at some level, if you’re going to have a return to virtues, then the virtue of truth and of honest is, I would think, is one of those you must aspire to.  So the same media that is bludgeoned with a club every single solitary day is being the biggest communist of promoters and touters, of socialist garbage BS, are then to be supplanted by and then I guess replaced by, the army of 309 million citizens that has been out there misquoting this guy named Tytler for the last 15 years, and the same crowd that misquotes the Bill of Rights, the same crowd that misquotes this, that and the other.

I’m not trying to vilify or demonize here.  Please do not misunderstand.  I am simply asserting here that there — to just say that there can’t be a media and it has to be replaced by the citizenry, I think, is as preposterous and ridiculous as saying that the only media is the liberal media.  There is ample rightwing, if you want to call it, or conservative media out there.  What I’ve seen and what we’ve reported here on this program and read about, the conservative media is no more diligent in its reporting of the facts.  It runs willy-nilly and loose with the truth often.  If you’re promoting opinion, that’s different.  When your opinion contains statements of facts that ultimately cannot be substantiated and cannot be sourced out, then what makes that media better than the one that you currently decry?

Caller Mike:  Absolutely.  Anytime I get an email like that, first of all, there’s no repercussions for putting crap out there like that.  There’s probably some motive behind it, and that’s the bottom line, but there are no repercussions for putting material that’s not factually true out on the internet.  Secondly, anytime there’s, at the bottom of the email, “If you agree with this, please forward on,” that’s a guarantee —

Mike:  No, the ones I love, “If you don’t forward this on, you’re a communist traitor.”  Do you get those often?

Caller Mike:  All the time.

Mike:  [mocking] “If you don’t forward this on, then ask to be removed from this list.”  Um, I didn’t ask to be put on the list to start with.

Caller Mike:  It’s crazy.  It’s out of control.  That’s the way it is.  Secondly, anything Sarah Palin says, I immediately disregard altogether.  That’s probably the best lesson out of all this.

Mike:  Here’s the best comment I have so far from the Twitter feed about this.  Alan writes, “Mike, you have to admit, Palin was looking pretty hot in that video from this weekend.”  I’ll grant you that, Alan.  You’re right.  Spot on, brother.

End Mike Church Show Transcript