Originally posted by: Ozoned
Originally posted by: Rainsford
I can forgive Rumsfeld for his very ironic views on the Chinese military...but his views on a free press, and the views that seem to be shared by the administration as a whole and a large majority of their supporters, are something else. I've found the quickest way to figure out the worth of an individual's views on freedom and democracy is to find out their opinion of the press. If they respond with anything that sounds even a little bit like what Rumsfeld said, I feel I can pretty much ignore anything else they have to say on those two topics, as it's pretty clear at that point that they don't really understand the concept.
Does the press get paid to disseminate their opinion/views, and to present their view of factual information, or do they do it for some greater good?
The quickest way is not always the correct way, and in this instance, totally absent of a reasonable thought process.
I don't know if you can lump the entire press into one catagory, one way or the other, but the journalists I've met really seem to believe in the concept of free press and the peoples' right to know as being the foundation of a good democracy. There are certainly better ways to make money if that's the only reason they were doing it...
Speaking of a reasonable thought process, I've actually thought about the press a lot, and the role they play in our system, and as far as I can see, it pretty much comes down to this. Our press isn't perfect, often they are quite flawed, but the alternatives are much, MUCH worse.
Based on your rather cryptic post, and everything else you've posted, I'm guessing your one of those people who thinks that the press really needs to "get behind" Bush and Co and their fight against terrorism. They need to make sure to only report pro-US news, especially about Iraq, and they need to stop giving a forum for people leaking things about intelligence and police activities, no matter what those activities are. And in conservative land, those things won't damage the role a free press plays in society.
But here's the thing, and there is really no getting around it, either you have a free press or you don't. If the press is subordinate to the government's war effort, then they aren't free in any sense of the word. This doesn't mean they shouldn't use some common sense as to balancing news with harm to the country, but it needs to be THEIR common sense. If we allow the administration to silence the media by waving the flag and talking about the war on terror, how soon before that flag waving is used to hide all sorts of things...things we'd really be better off knowing about? As much as some people hate the media for revealing the various NSA operations as of late...don't they seem like the kind of issues we need to be talking about?
In the end, it comes down to this, I'd much rather deal with the problems of a media with too much freedom than a media with not enough. I realize some people don't see it this way, but I urge them to really think things through. If there is one thing all totalitarian governments in history have done, it's silencing the media. Not all of them totally call off elections, not all of them jail or kill their political opposition, not all of them disarm their citizens, but ALL of them reign in the media. There is a reason.