In the most shocking news report yet this year, the Journal Star has revealed that people can actually say very cruel things about other people.

Of course I’m being facetious. But what the Journal Star actually reported is almost as ridiculous: that civil discourse has only recently been degraded by the invention of the Internet:

It was yet another example of how the Internet – and the anonymity it affords – has given a public stage to people’s basest thoughts, ones that in earlier eras likely never would have traveled past the watercooler, the kitchen table or the next bar stool…. [I]s a decline in civil discourse simply the price that we pay for the advance of technology?

Which “earlier era” would that be? Before the printing press? Because, as I recall, there were some pretty nasty — and anonymous, I might add — pamphlets published early in our nation’s history, over a century before the wily Internet was invented. (I’m certainly not anywhere near the first person to make such an observation. This article from USA Today is but one example.)

Let’s consider just a couple of examples. Clement Moore (of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” fame) wrote an incendiary pamphlet calling Thomas Jefferson a racist in 1804. (Journal Star columnists would never accuse someone of racism, right?) And Jefferson received further abuse from the Federalist press:

[Jefferson’s] warm appreciation of fellow deist and reputed heavy drinker Thomas Paine presented an easy target for the Federalist press. One newspaper suggested that Jefferson’s interest in agriculture must have been the reason for his willingness to be associated with such “‘manure'” (p. 77). Another publication depicted Paine as wanting Jefferson to loan him his slave Sally Hemings because he had no female companion.

Ah, the halcyon days of high civil discourse . . . the vaunted heritage of newspaper reporting. Of course, no newspapers are like that today, fortunately. Injurious stories are nowadays the exclusive domain of the blogosphere and “message boards,” or so the Journal Star would have you believe:

News organizations, struggling to find ways to keep their readers involved in an increasingly digital and interactive world, are trying to strike the right balance.

Yes, news organizations are very thoughtful and will strike the right balance. They would never fabricate stories or report a false story that could be injurious to someone’s reputation. Just ask Jayson Blair or Dan Rather.

What’s my point? I’m certainly not defending incivility. My only point is that incivility can and does happen in any medium — radio, TV (ever heard of Jerry Springer?), newspapers, and yes, even the Internet. That the Journal Star wants to single out the Internet as somehow novel or worse than any other medium in lowering civil discourse is patently baseless. Putting this “news” on the front-page and above the fold makes the Journal Star look outdated and foolish.

Tomorrow’s Journal Star investigative report: Telephones have increased rudeness!