Role of the Press: 2
views of the news media
View #1: We don't "make" news - we only "report" it, so if our news item is
likely to create waves, you can forget it: We will be silenced, and if you are
getting assaulted by governmental tyranny, you're on your own,
bub.
View #2: "Free press doctrine lionized the press as the prime defender of
public liberty in its role as a bulwark against governmental
tyranny."
ISSN 1062-7421
Vol. 12 No. 2 (February 2002) pp. 79-83.
THE FOUNDING OF AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PRESS LIBERTY, 1640-1800 by Robert W.
T. Martin. New York: New York University Press, 2001. 238 pp. Cloth $40.00.
ISBN: 0-8147-5655-7
Question: Seeing as
these are two diametrically opposing views, which view do you
support?
A) View #1 - TRANSLATION: We don't
believe in free press.
B) View #2 - TRANSLATION: We do
believe in free exercise of speech -come what may -to keep citizens out of harms
way.
C) "We report on 'what we want to and
are not pressured by citizens wanting stories done." TRANSLATION: This uses
"weasel words" to basically say that they support squelching of free press by
big government interests, and the citizens are fair game -like in Communist and
oppressive regimes -where the press is not free to defend citizens against
oppressive government.
Gordon Wayne Watts
http://GordonWatts.com
BS, The Florida State University, Biological & Chemical
Sciences,
double major with honors
AS, United Electronics
Institute, Valedictorian
ALWAYS
FAITHFUL - To God
Gordon Wayne
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Truth is the strongest, most stable
force in the Universe.
Truth does not change because you disbelieve
it!
TRUTH
doesn't bend to the will of tyrants.
Gordon Wayne
Watts
Get Truth.
"First, they [Nazis] came for the
Jews. I was silent. I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists. I was
silent. I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. I was
silent. I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me. There was no one left
to speak for me." (Martin Niemoller, given credit for a quotation in The
Harper Religious and Inspirational Quotation Companion, ed. Margaret Pepper
(New York: Harper &Row, 1989), 429 -as cited on page 44, note 17, of
Religious Cleansing in the American Republic, by Keith A. Fornier,
Copyright 1993, by Liberty, Life, and Family Publications.
(Actually, they may not have
come for the Jews first, as it's far more likely they came for the prisoners,
mentally handicapped, and other so-called "inferiors" first -as historians tell
us -so they could get "practiced up;" But, they did come for them
-due to the silence of their neighbors -and due, in part, to their own silence.
So the general idea is correct: "Speak up now, or forever hold your
peace." --Gordon)
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