Posted on 10/29/2020 8:08:40 AM PDT by rustyweiss74
TRUMP: “There’s a guy who gets caught and the media doesn’t want to write about it. You know what they call it? Not freedom of the press, suppression of the press. We don’t have freedom of the press. You know what? You understand that? We don’t have freedom of the press, we have suppression of the press, and there’s never been a time when it’s more obvious than right now. Is that right? Is that right, Charlie?”
I don’t think it’s suppression of the press, but suppression of the news that Americans have a right to know about.
Amen
suppression BY the press is more accurate
We pretty much all know it, so what can be done?
Yes, suppression BY the ‘press’....
If anyone from the Trump administration is listening, here’s a suggestion.
Liken the Mainstream Media to include Social Media to professional wrestling.
Professional wrestlers are superb athletes, I would not want to get in the ring with any of them. However, the outcomes are scripted. It’s entertainment with a carefully crafted storyline that makes viewers pull for the “good guy” and despise the “bad guy”.
The MSN is exactly like professional wrestling. “Don’t bother me with facts or the truth, we have script we have to follow.” We’ve already decided on who the bad guy is (Trump) and we have our good guys (anyone not a Republican). Why don’t the viewer just get on board with that”
There in lies the issue, people have realized, subconsciously perhaps, that the news is scripted and aren’t paying attention. The press is going nuts trying to figure out why folks don’t pay attention to them anymore.
The Babylon Bee should put out a story about the WWE looking to buy CNN, ABC, CBS, or NBC. Push it as the WWE looking to on-board the journalists for their script writing talents.
Rather than the news, refer to them as the “scripted news”, and the MSN as the “professional wrestling of journalism.”
Suppression BY the press.
Two major factors:My bottom line is that the political homogeneity of journalism, combined with the suppression of the threat of libel, creates the “unfreedom” of the press. It is actually too much freedom - really, assumption of the mantle of an established priesthood - which creates our present predicament.
- the wire Services - all of them - inherently tend to homogenize journalism:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)The AP Stylebook is an exemplar of that tendency.
- The threat of libel suits was the only thing that constrained journalists (who were always politically united by their preference for bad news and the fact that Democrats also exploit bad news) from treating Republicans the way they now treat Trump. The unanimous 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan SCOTUS decision - overturning all prior jurisprudence - claimed that the First Amendment constrained libel suits by officials.
The solution, IMHO, is to sanction the wire services and their members/subscribers by making them strictly accountable for any libel they commit against public officials. That doesn’t risk collateral damage to the likes of FR, but defangs “the media” as we have come to know it.
The other factor to consider in bringing “the media” to heel is the FCC.The FCC is fundamentally illegitimate from a First Amendment perspective.
A libel suit should be brought naming the FCC for being responsible for the unbalanced nature of broadcast political information.
Every Twitter and ZBurg suppression just animates the right even more.
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