Additionally hilarious and comic nonsense news is in Baltimore.
Here, lawyers for the Tribune Company in Chicago, which own the Baltimore Sun, have charged the Republican governor of Maryland, Robert Ehrlich, with violating what they termed "free speech protections that guarantee equal treatment for members of the news media."
This was occasioned because Gov. Ehrlich, after two years of what he recalled as repeatedly hostile, inaccurate or made-up writing by Sun political reporter David Nitkin and columnist Michael Olesker, took action. He directed all of his administration's press officers to cut off all relations with Nitkin and Olesker (though not with other Sun reporters).
Ehrlich's press secretary, Greg Massoni, explained:
"This action in no way denies Olesker and Nitkin any freedom to write what they please. But there is no constitutional requirement that we help them!"
If the Tribune Company is so asinine as to sue the governor – and such lawsuit is not immediately hurled out of court in summary judgment – I believe that I should surely go to that same court and file suit against President George W. Bush. For four years he has only once recognized me for a question. (His answer evoked ridicule in Newsweek).
Moreover, when I attended last December's White House Christmas Party for White House correspondents, Mr. Bush welcomed me by saying:
"Here comes the troublemaker!"
The fact that I was secretly delighted, and the fact that his press secretary, Scott McClellan, always recognizes me for questions at his daily news briefings, I confess, would inhibit me from suing the president.
There is also my great desire not to resemble in any way this latest legal idiocy of the Tribune Company and its property in Baltimore.
Both the Sun and its fellow left-wing daily, the Washington Post, published furiously self-serving editorials "SHOOTING MESSENGERS" and "MR. EHRLICH'S GAG ORDER."
But Gov. Ehrlich admits, enthusiastically, that he no longer reads either of these papers – like a growing number of his constituents, as evidenced in their current circulation losses.
Instead, the governor regularly appears on talk radio, which, with the Internet, are the New Media, as distinct from the Old Big Media – which gives one 1 percent of its product to public expression, while we give 40 percent.
Les Kinsolving hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore.
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Judge Hears Sun's Arguments Against Governor's Ban
Gov. Likely Has Right To Prohibit Officials Talking To Sun, Judge Says
POSTED: 3:48 pm EST January 28, 2005
BALTIMORE -- A federal judge on Friday suggested that Gov. Robert Ehrlich likely has a right to prohibit his staff from talking to two writers for The (Baltimore) Sun.
The judge told the newspaper's attorneys that the governor has the same right any citizen has -- to stop "associating with citizens he doesn't want to associate with."