Let’s say you’re a power-drunk government official who wants to suppress a news story that might embarrass the government and call your position into question.
Has there ever been a better time for doing that, than this?
Recently Australian police, armed with warrants, raided the offices of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia’s equivalent of PBS), seizing files and computers, looking for evidence that an editor and two reporters broke some law when they reported that in 2017, some Australian soldiers in Afghanistan killed unarmed civilians (https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/Australian-police-raid-public-broadcaster-seize-13938095.php). Someone, it seems, wants to track down whoever were the sources for that story and make them sorry for it.
We would not like to see this happen in America. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution, and by long tradition.
Our problem is that our “free and independent press” has abused its freedom and turned itself into a 24/7/365 shill for the Democrat Party. Time and again we catch them making up stories, embellishing stories, leaving things out, putting things in–and then having to walk it all backwards once it’s been demonstrated that those stories aren’t true. Think Jussie Smollet, the Covington kids, and “Trump’s a Russian agent!”–all crapola. All designed to help the Far Left Crazy take over the country.
Consequently, tens of millions of Americans don’t trust the mainstream nooze media to tell the truth about anything–only because they’ve been caught lying so many times. All they ever do, anymore, is to attack Donald Trump and anyone who stands with him. All they want to do is drive the president out of office. Because their candidate, Hillary Clinton, didn’t win in 2016. Hence more than two years of wall-to-wall “Russian collusion” coverage… which turned out to be false. Even now they haven’t let it drop.
So who’s going to shed a tear if government agents raid, say, the Washington Post’s editorial offices? Who’s going to believe the New York Times, if their offices get raided?
A free press is a vital component of a free republic. But the press in our country has all but pissed away its freedom–voluntarily, to gain a political end. The government didn’t turn them into Pravda. They turned themselves into Pravda.
At this point you might want to ask me, “Well, what do we do about it? How do we fix the problem? How do we get our free press back?”
I think the noozies have to fix it themselves–and soon.
