We keep hearing all manner of attacks on the media (with the chief sinner being our current president, sadly), but it is important to keep a few things in mind:
1. We WILL NOT have a free republic without a strong, thriving free press. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, on and on and on... great thinkers and supporters of liberty always emphasize this point.
2. No free press made up of humans is perfect. Of course.
3. Nonetheless, the mainstream US free press does an amazing job, by and large. There are others who do it better, but not many. There are others who have a more free press, but not many.
4. Our ranking in Best Nations for a Free Press has taken a hit in the last two years, since this administration began its non-stop onslaught of attacks on our press.
5. When people accuse the mainstream press of being fatally flawed, or horrendously and hopelessly biased, don't believe them. They are not operating on facts or data.
6. Support our free press.
7. The status of our press, here in the US, where we're ranked #45 in the world for a Free Press...
https://rsf.org/en/ranking
28 comments:
The following link discusses the problems with dealing with the press today. The problem isn't with those who attack the press. The problem is the press giving us justification for distrusting them.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/how_to_read_the_news_a_guide_for_truthseekers.html
I've provided an example, in my last comment that you deleted, of journalistic malfeasance, and meant to include the egregious lies told by Walter Cronkite regarding the Tet Offensive during the Viet Nam war. Our forces were victorious, inflicting casualties on the enemy of close to ten to our one. But Cronkite chose to focus on our casualties in a manner that purposely implied we lost that battle. More recently, we see all manner of distortion regarding detained aliens who crossed the border illegally. The following link addresses some of that:
https://www.breitbart.com/california/2018/06/15/photos-inside-shelter-for-illegal-alien-children-separated-from-parents/
I can easily provide more examples of journalistic absence of integrity. Yet still, no one of whom I am aware is calling for any oppressive action against the press. Of course, the press disagrees and that's simply another example. Again, they are rating themselves, and that's no ratings that has any value to anyone but themselves and...apparently...people like you who simply wish to add another crime against Trump because you hate him so.
“against Trump because you hate him so...”
This is of course the Trump whose personal morality in speech and behavior Marshall could not abide and only voted for GOP policies that Trump would uphold.
What a shock now to see Marshall in full throated defense of the man.
This is how we destroy the moral values of our democracy: normalizing bigoted brutality and public disgraces by attacking the institutions (fallible as they have ever been) whose role is to air for the public what power wants to hide.
60 million white people have engaged in a long term project of selling out their professed faith commitments and vociferous claims of patriotism. It turns out that those who spit their allegiances at others end up spitting them out altogether.
I'm sorry Dan, that feo has chosen to now use your blog to attack me, when I tried to engage with him one-on-one at his, after he engaged in the behavior at mine you saw yourself. He hasn't the courage or integrity, so he blocked me. I will fully understand when you delete this comment. I just wanted to apologize. I will not encourage him here.
I don’t have a blog, Marshall. After being empty for six years or more, I had a two week old pop up shop at your request. You were never deleted as you do to others.
And what I offer Dan is a fair summary of your themes and assessment of the roughly 40% of Americans still supporting Trump like yourself.
If summary and assessment feel like an attack - you should check your behavior.
And, Jesus!, Marshall: you attached this man when his loving children gave him a beautiful trip to Europe! Thank about the lowest of the low!! Blind, brutalizing hypocrisy. If the truth hurts you, lying about it isn’t going to help.
*Talk not think.
I looked at the source, and didn’t see the methodology or the criteria that they used to come up with the rankings.
Clearly an unbiased, free press is vital to a free country such as ours.
I’d think that the proliferation of media would make for more freedom of the press rather than less.
The recent brouhaha where a writer was forced to resign over a story about an actress playing a trans character seems indicative of where the freedom is being limited.
Craig thinks gunning them down in the newsroom is decidedly not! a limitation on freedom.
Because, you know.... guns have rights.
The newsroom shooting had nothing to do with trying to limit the free press. But why let facts intrude.
Guns are inanimate objects, they don’t have rights. People have rights, including the constitutionally enumerated right to bear arms. But, don’t let reality intrude.
Right. Shooting reporters has no effect on reporting. We’ve already established that as your position. Now we can establish that you further fail to see logic when it’s pointed out to you.
I agree that a gun has no rights. And therefore needs severe limitations in modern times. You say it, but you act as if guns have rights. Like the fellas that think corporations have rights like persons..
In other words, you really need to lett reality intrude upon you, Craig.
Craig illustrates why a free, professionally trained press can keep us from becoming an active fascist country. When millions are committed to lies to defend group privilege over others, only those dedicated to truth telling keep the dogs of legalized brutality at bay.
Perhaps if you read my comments rather than read your biases into them...
The reality is, the shooter in MD was not attempting to silence or limit a free press. While it will affect those involved, there is no way to predict how it will affect them.
Of course I’ve never said or acted as if guns ane anything but inanimate objects, but why let reality intrude on a good personal attack.
If this is what happens when respectful, on topic comments are made, then I guess we know who wants to limit free expression.
Liberty Valance and his gang barge into the Shinbone Star and destroy the press and beat up Dutton Peabody, leaving him for dead. That's not interfering with a free press. That's interfering with the Shinbone Star. But now that Ramos...I mean...Valance is no more a threat, the Star is still free. It always was, even when Ramos shot five dead. One attack on one specific location does not constitute and assault on the freedom of the press.
Craig, you’ve said to me on numerous occasions, and just here as well, that I could not know what you are thinking. And my response is that Inhave read years of your writing, thoughts, avoidances, dodges, disgust, etc.
Which indicates that the amount of material I have that provides insight into you is thousands of times more in content than you have in knowing what is in the shooter’s mind - or, more pertinent - what are his motivations. How many words do you have from? Do you have his diary? No. Do you have eight years of reading various of his blog posts and a thousand pieces of his comments? No.
So when you say, “The reality is, the shooter in MD was not attempting to silence or limit a free press”, how in the hell are you not totally making it up in order to divert from the real point?
And when you say, “While it will affect those involved, there is no way to predict how it will affect them”, the only inference is that you are opposing the idea that it depresses freedom with the idea that it gives freedom wings.
Such is the brutalizing fantasies of those who unconsciously wish there were still natives to slaughter and niggers to auction.
Feo, your free psychoanalysis is worth less than it’s cost.
The fact is that the MD shooter was not trying to silence “the free press”. The fact is that this attack might galvanize the survivors toward positive action. The fact is that you’re just imposing your biases and prejudices on others.
The fact that you just make stuff up about those you hate, isn’t my problem. The fact is that you can’t back up anything you’ve fantasized with actual quotes, you’d just as soon bully your way through life.
If Art or I had made the last comment, we’d already be banned.
That’s because conversations about our history of brutalizing opression and relations to the beautiful and talented communities that were and are the objects of our oppression is not safe in your hands... because it is not honored by you.
But deleting? That you’re an expert on.
I'm sure Dan will be totally geeked about how this is turning out.
Dan has long been impressed with the *Christian forces arrayed against truth telling.
Dan,
Not that you aren’t saying this, but it seems strange to lump the various complaints about the press into one general post.
While Trump’s issues with the press are loud and prominent, He doesn’t seem to have a problem with “the press” in general, but with specific reporters or organizations that he feels are reporting things that are false ( to be fair, some of the reports are false or misleading). But he’s more calling for reporting the truth (clearly he doesn’t like truth that makes him look bad, but who does?), than for limiting freedom of the press.
While, we see much more direct pressure from others that are also troubling.
I would hope that your reverence for a free press doesn’t extend to freedom to report falsehoods or would absolve reporters from accurate and unbiased reporting.
And then of course, there's these:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/04/25/ny-times-reporter-admits-trump-is-better-than-obama-at-several-things-involving-the-media
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/abc-politics-trump-more-open/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/media-admits-trump-more-accessible-than-obama-not-shy-about-talking
The above, three different sources, all indicate that Trump is no enemy of a free press. Quite the contrary, it seems.
I think the advent of people on the hard news side of things taking to social media in a partisan way, or to spread inaccurate information doesn’t help.
“An assault revolver with high-capacity magazines and a revolver were recovered at the scene.”
Maybe if news outlets stopped saying things like this...
Craig: “He doesn’t seem to have a problem with “the press” in general... But he’s more calling for reporting the truth... than for limiting freedom of the press.”
Trump: "With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!"
Trump: "Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked," he tweeted. "Not fair to public!"
“At a photo-op with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump added that "it is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write"
“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
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