by NW Spotlight
Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell recently spoke at the Accuracy In Media” (AIM) conference in Washington, D.C. Caddell worked on the McGovern campaign, the Carter campaign, and for Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Jerry Brown.
Highlights of Pat Caddell’s AIM speech
Following up on a Gallup poll [1] that shows distrust in the media is at a new high, Caddell expressed great concern about the state of the media in America “I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not.”
Caddell concluded his talk with this warning “The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people. And it is a threat to the very future of this country if that—we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about.”
For a worthwhile read of the full transcript, click here [2].