Agreed.Even without removal, Trump is being damaged with the low information average dolt catching a few slanderous comments on the airport TV during a layover. Guy on the next seat: “I heard on TV Trump’s administration if the most corrupt in history.” “Yeah, heard that, too.”
This is what all Republicans have faced, to one degree or another, for all my lifetime (with the limited exception of President Eisenhower). The problem is caused by
- The fact that the wire services created a cartel of all major US journalism.
- The fact that “if it bleeds, it leads,” journalism promotes bad (the opposite of “in the public interest”) news which it promotes as important and “objective.” This perspective (“bias”) inherently slants journalism in favor of bigger government.
- The unanimous 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan Warren Court decision has inhibited libel suits by Republicans (exclusively, in the sense that Democrats don’t get libeled).
Journalists pretend that the First Amendment gives them, essentially, a priestly function of defining the public interest - and exploit that position exclusively for their own interest. There is one potential sovereign remedy: the journalism cartel, and the FCC and FEC which enable/empower it, must be sued under antitrust law.
And - in the teeth of the Sullivan decision - the journalism cartel must be sued for $billions in damages for libel. As Antonin Scalia explained, the Bill of Rights was carefully crafted to be a guarantee that no right of any American was, or would in future be, changed by the Constitution. Pace the Warren Court, the right to redress if libeled was untouched by 1A.
Thank you for that.
How to fight/reverse this damned situation? Who will bring the lawsuits — we damaged news consumers as a class?
Fact filled post. Thanks.
I recommend your fine web page which is a mini-educational course in itself. Learned a lot.