Congress takes up war on reporters

From today's New York Times:

[Today] the House [of Representatives] is expected to take up a Republican resolution supporting the tracking of financial transactions and condemning the publication of the existence of the program and details of how it works. The resolution says Congress "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations in protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of the government to identify, disrupt and capture terrorists by not disclosing classified intelligence programs."
Reporter Scott Shane tells us that House Democrats are offering an alternative resolution that expresses support for the bank-record snooping, but says nothing about the media.

Most telling, however, is Shane's lead, wherein he reminds readers that President George W. Bush had announced to the world in 2001 that the bank records of terrorists would be surveilled.

Given the diminished power of the U.S. Constitution at the hands of the Bush administration, the war on the media is yet another step in the march toward authoritarianism. Whatever disdain one might have for the nation's mainstream media, your blogstress humbly urges her fellow citizens to demand more, not less, disclosure from America's news outlets. The framers had their reasons for writing a guarantee of a free press into the Constitution -- and it wasn't because they all enjoyed good press themselves.

In a letter to Edward Carrington, written in 1787, Thomas Jefferson asserted, "If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-gay robo-call

Image
Robocall - Tim Wildmon Your blogstress's friends at the American Family Association have been buying airtime from whomever will sell them a bit of that public trust to spread their customary message of hatred of queer folk. Here's a robocall that went out yesterday, presumably to any and all who ever contributed a dime to AFA. Note that the call comes from AFA founder Don Wildmon 's son, Tim . (Ever notice how some of these hate-mongering groups become a sort of full-employment plan for the founder's family?) AFA's special, "Speechless: Silencing the Christians", may soon be coming to a cable channel -- or even broadcast channel -- near you, delivered as "paid programming". If you see it scheduled in your 'hood, you may wish to mobilize against the media outlet that sold the air time to AFA. Here's the text of Brother Tim's message: Hello, this is Tim Wildmon on behalf of your American Family Association, calling to sincerely than
Read more

Speaker drama: Breaking stuff is the point, and Bannon's in the middle of it

Image
The most surprising thing about the current state of affairs in the House of Representatives — the inability of the majority party to settle on a winning House Speaker candidate — is that anyone is surprised at all.  What we’re witnessing from the far-right #NeverKevin caucus has been the plan for some time; it’s just that too many political journalists and commentators too easily dismiss or ignore the utterances of political figures deemed “fringe” by the mainstream – regardless of the power held by those supposedly fringe players.  You might think that given the prominent role played by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon in fomenting and organizing the insurrection whose two-year anniversary we mark today, political journos might pay more attention to what he’s saying to the MAGA crowd every day, but you’d be wrong. And you might surmise that major right-wing events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference might draw the interest of people tasked with coveri
Read more