Posted on 12/09/2008 9:11:09 AM PST by lakeprincess
The MSM is also going broke, with 15,000 layoffs and buyouts in 2008 in newspapers alone. Some propose a federal bailout for struggling media, a notion met with some fierce opposition by those who say it would compromise credibility and possibly First Amendment rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Why not? Logic states any and every business should get bailout money.
How can one be for the bailout of some, and against the bailout of others?
You either support or oppose the notion.
Bailouts have no logical end.
If bailouts are good for Wall Street, they are good for absolutely anything else.
Way to go, Paulson!
How can the Washington Times use the term “MSM”?
They are a part of the mainstream media..
Government will bail out their favorite propagandists.
Lies and deception have no consequence. We should be used to that approach. Thats why we have quit buying papers. Has nothing to do with the credit crunch.
They’ll probably get it if they just purge the last remaining remnants of their staff who are critical of the Obama administration. Almost worked for Gov. Blag, right? He just got a bit too greedy.
THAT'S rich!
The Demo’s and BO’s friends cannot nationalize something they already own.
The National Media is already a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
This is much worse than when the Federalist tried to silence the Newspapers, at that time they had no intention of destroying the U.S. Only controlling it, and stifling criticism with the “Alien & Sedition Act”. That failed.
If this means a total revolt, Bring It On!
Is this a little testing of the waters?
A bailout to the MSM would be like giving the car keys to a drunk teenager.
“Is this a little testing of the waters?”
You mean, like a step toward nationalizing everything?
Barack Hussein Chavez Obama.
Doesn’t surprise me.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan wrote his own waggish take on a bailout, noting, “We want to be next,” saying President-elect Barack Obama “owes us.”
Now that’s a funny guy!!!
Yew BETCHA!!!
The mediots and their MSM controllers sold out totally to elect Zer0.
Without the rabid and biased support of the mediots throughout America, Obama would again be a junior $inator voting present in 2009.
There had to be some big time closed door deals to have the mediots in bed with Zer0!
However, the Zer0 has a longtime record of throwing supporters under his bus after he has used them like a dirty kleenix. The current governor of Illinois is finding that out.
So Zer0 may just let them die off and start his own Ministry of Propaganda.
They can get it indirectly through ad revenue.
He will just change the Hood Ornament.....so to speak...
Register-L.A. Times talks reported ( Southern California News )
AND:
US media in deep financial crisis (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)
AND:
Tribune Files for Bankruptcy Protection
And of course Los Angeles Tribune is a part of the Tribune....
As Kudlow says...Bailout Nation ...coming to your neighborhood.
The Bill of Rights was intended as a minimal accounting of the rights of the people. To restrict freedom of the press to specific people or to specific communications technology is to abuse the First Amendment by using it as a ceiling, rather than a floor, on the rights of the people.
- It would be no different from NPR or PBS if they did. And actually of a piece with the assignment of radio channel broadcast licenses on the premise that the broadcaster will "serve the public interest" by broadcasting Associated Press journalism. And of a piece with McCain-Feingold limits on who can criticize politicians at election time.
- All of the above would be recognized as being unconstitutional by any mind not clouded by the propaganda to the effect that "the freedom of the press" refers to privileges of Associated Press journalism specifically.
Journalism as we know it does not trace back to the time of the ratification of the First Amendment, but only to the founding of the Associated Press in 1848. The openly partisan and fiercely independent "newspapers" of the founding era would never have countenanced, let alone promoted, the idea that a competing newspaper was objective. And, lacking a source of news not in principle accessible to the general public by any other means than reading the newspapers, founding era newspapers were more about political commentary than about news. The dominance of the monopolistic (found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1945) Associated Press reversed all of that, creating journalism as we know it.
"The freedom of the press" in the First Amendment properly should be understood as the right of the people, not any special privilege of the members of the Associated Press, to spend money to apply technology to their efforts to promote their own political (and other) opinions. To assign that freedom to specific individuals rather than to the people would be to make "the press" into a title of nobility in violation of Section 9 of Article I. And since Section 8 of Article 1 specifically gives the government the authority "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries," limiting the meaning of "the press" to the literal Eighteenth Century printing press arbitrarily assumes that the ratifiers of the First Amendment intended to limit their own and their posterity's freedom to use new communication technology (and which technology specifically? The radio but not the high speed printing press? The television but not the telephone? The internet but not the photocopier?).
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