Seattle Times editorial nails it: Edward R. Murrow:The Burden of Democracy

[Horse with no Name]

>>>>snip
What audiences should understand while viewing this movie is that democracy is in greater peril today than it was when McCarthy was bringing people before Congress on trumped-up charges of communism. The threat now is not a fear-induced witch hunt, but one of democracy's cornerstones: the press.
>>>>>snip
Nearly 30 years of media consolidation is beginning to derail 229 years of democracy in America. Consolidation has left news organizations in the hands of public companies beholden to Wall Street, and the public with shallow journalism that does not challenge powerful institutions.
>>>>snip
This nation needs a press that will not cower to an angry citizenry or acquiesce to elected officials. Murrow did not, and was not alone. In 1949, Ed Guthman of The Seattle Times wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series that exonerated a University of Washington professor of being a communist.
>>>snip
"We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. ... But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2002575874_gooded22.html

[newswolf56]

1. Exceptionally well said. All the more so since the "speaker" is a...

newspaper that is essentially the voice of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and is notorious for suppressing any story that might splatter mud on Seattle's allegedly spotless face.

[realFedUp]

2. Good one. nt