" newspapers are “poison shops,” and Vignon piles on: The newspaper, instead of being a sacred mission, has become an arm for the political parties; and from that it became a commercial enterprise; and like all commercial enterprises it knows neither faith nor law. Every newspaper, as Blondet puts it, is a shop where one sells to the public words in whatever color it likes . . . all newspapers will in due course be cowardly, hypocritical, shameless, mendacious, murderous; they will kill ideas, systems, men, and will thrive from doing so. "

― Peter Brooks , Balzac's Lives