the promise of "freedom of the press" is nothing

[rodeodance]

worth reading it all.


Editorial: Bush in the bully pulpit
An editorial
............

Just as it would be wrong for the media to censor Bush, it is equally wrong for the media to allow the madness of this modern-day King George to infect the discourse without the immediate application of the antidote of truth.

Handing the bully pulpit over to a president who has repeatedly misused his position to deceive the Congress and the American people is not journalism; it is stenography.

And make no mistake: A "free" press that practices stenography to power is no different from the "kept" press of a totalitarian state.

Indeed, the promise of "freedom of the press" is nothing more than a meaningless clause in a disposable document if journalists do not use the freedom they have been afforded by the Constitution to challenge the status quo.

.............

There is a dawning realization that what's wrong with America is not just the fault of an incompetent and deceptive president, nor of a cowardly and dysfunctional Congress. The founders established a free press to keep watch on the executive branch particularly in a time of war. No less a figure than James Madison warned, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."........

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/editorial/index.php?ntid=114813

[PATRICK]

1. The best little whores of Babylon

exposed this outrage many times such as in the humiliating disastrous Bush debate performance accompanied by the earphone evidence that cried in vain for attention. In the papers, the bald respect given for the doofus performance was a simple as calmly saying 2+2=5 and expecting the becalmed readership to be math illiterate enough not to notice. When it comes to not being uppity, controversial, disrespectful, or MIA in journalistic duties, nothing is more castrated than US news media so long as it dealing with bullying rogue corporations, fierce revenge takers from the RW and people who write LTTE's that can't spell.

This was a crucial failure in 2000 that actually exposed decades of corporate malfeasance in fraudulent journalism and the probable critical incapacity of such owned journalism from serving any national interest other than their own even and especially if it means destroying democratic institutions such as the "free press" itself.

Nothing new and the mere squeaks of admission have not changed the state of affairs or fortunes of the most offensive courtesans. Yet. In fact the peep of some calls for inner change are as pathetic as anything they have done yet. The cowardly quiet and minuscule retreat behind the skirts of the Democratic power majority(power means adjudicator of news even if they hate Democrats) is as weaselly and revealing as any crime they have committed.

[madrchsod]

2. freedom of the press is for those who own the press

and they have to sell soap to publish. the reason that they hate the internet is that we are our own press. ask them about craigslist....