Thursday, June 28, 2012
Thank goodness for the First Amendment
We just returned from Britain, where there is chilling discussion about imposing more regulation on the press. The occasion is a probe into reporters’ news practices and relationships between particular politicians and the media.
The entire series of events demonstrates why our First Amendment guarantee of press freedom is so important.
The probe resulted from the revelation of unethical and illegal practices by a single British tabloid, The News of the World. Given the limited scope of the scandal, the investigation should be one of limited public interest.
But the News of the World was one of many news outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch, so anti-Murdoch politicians and rival media are seizing the opportunity to escalate their long-standing vendetta against him. These politicians and rival media are disproportionately on the left side of the political spectrum, and they find Murdoch distasteful because several of his leading outlets (e.g., the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, New York Post) have conservative editorial policies. (Those outlets are untouched by the scandal.) Moreover, the British investigation has focused on relationships between reporters and two figures much-loathed by the Left: Prime Minister David Cameron and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Source
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
20 comments:
Don't believe that the socialist left won't circumvent the First Amendment. As has been stated recently by the press 'what won't Obama stoop to with Presidential fiat once he is no longer running for president'. He does not believe that the constitution applies to him if he can't control congress. Heaven help the US if he gets to appoint another Supreme Court judge.
Just be happy america won the revolution otherwise we would be subject to these stupid regulations
"The entire series of events demonstrates why our First Amendment guarantee of press freedom is so important..."
Yes, but freedom to do what? Is the press free to become political operatives disguised as journalists, as the US MSM routinely does? Are they free to lie, distort, misinform, manipulate, and fabricate the news?
Freedom is a truly wonderful thing, but too much of anything always turns out bad, because with total freedom comes total abuse.
There can be corruption and corrupt practices in the press/media just as in government or elsewhere, and there must be a means of curbing it within the law or a Constitution.
Re: Just be happy america won the revolution otherwise we would be subject to these stupid regulations
The current administration has just about undone all that work of building the country on the right principles. Threw out one king 200+ years ago just to elect another!
So despite what we were told the SOVIET UNION isnt dead after all
So the fact that Rupert Murdoch's employees were essentially wiretapping phones, that's OK with you? (You know, what in America would be invasion of privacy at the very least.)
I suppose I could also bring up the 4th Amendment "unreasonable search and seizure" thing, but they weren't the government, were they? You're fine with it when it's done by a news organization?
@Nameless Cynic, It’s no worse than NBC editing tapes of Zimmerman (more than once), Romney, and Sandusky. I still would not recommend they be controlled and edited for content by the government, even though their unethical behavior gives a homosexual pedophile Sandusky grounds for an appeal of his conviction.
Nameless Cynic,... what does Murdoch have to do with an American media that grossly abuses it's unlimited Constitutional protections? Members of the MSM have been caught doing far worse things than what Murdoch's done.
BTW, if you think phones, PC's, emails, texts, etc. are not being taped here, you must be running low on Kool-Aid.
Nobody wants a press which acts criminally or unethically. But when some limited excesses by one media outlet is used as a pretext for a crackdown on media generally I think most thinking people would be concerned.
Anything which hampers the ability of the press to investigate, analyse or expose matters is of concern.
Here in Australia we have a current political frenzy simply because one (very wealthy) woman wants a substantial stake in a struggling newspaper-owning company. They are even talking about new legislation they are so worried about what she might do...
Of course, the most interesting thing here is the complete lack of facts regarding the issue.
There is a "chilling discussion about imposing more regulation on the press." Essentially the same discussion that occurred here in America every time another report came out that cast Bush in a bad light.
Except, of course, that in the UK, it's in response to actual criminal activity by a "news" organization. So, because they broke the law, they're being investigated.
That whole "chilling discussion" thing stems from this, incidentally. One person, making unsubstatiated allegations about Lord Justice Leveson, the guy in charge of the investigation.
Nameless Cynic:
The fact is that when Rupert Murdoch looked at that company in his portfolio and decided that its behavior was so unacceptable that he took the highly unusual step of shutting it down with prejudice. He didn't make a big show of firing the perpetrators and try to weather the storm and rebuild that business, instead he made them into an example by giving them a corporate death penalty.
How different from companies like MSNBC who while not doing something quite as overtly illegal have still used their "creative editing" to fabricate complete lies for their newscasts and when inevitably they are caught out refuse to clean their house of those liars.
BTW, if you think that's only a problem at NBC try asking Ford about what happened to the people from CBS who added pyrotechnics to a report where they purportedly were showing how a side impact to a Ford pickup could cause an explosion of the gas tank.
I see namless troll has no reply to that.
He thinks just because he made it up that we will believe it that there was a serious national discussion on limiting the press whenever there was a negative story about Bush? Namless troll is mentally damaged.
Oh, no. I don't think it's just a problem at MSNBC by any means.
And in saying "The fact is that when Rupert Murdoch looked at that company in his portfolio and decided that its behavior was so unacceptable that he took the highly unusual step of shutting it down with prejudice," you have an interesting view of the timeline there.
The phone hacking scandal came to light in America in 2005, when Sen Lautenberg wrote the Attorney General to complain that News Corp was hacking computers in New Jersey. Then in London in 2006, an editor and a PI went to jail for hacking the phones of the Royal Family.
The investigations started then, but Scotland Yard for some reason chose to hush it up.
The whole scandal started going truly public in 2009, some two years before Murdoch decided to close it. And it wasn't ethical concerns - it was the fact that there was an ongoing advertiser boycott and the paper was hemorrhaging money.
Sorry, Anon 4:17, I was busy with the first idiot.
See, you may not be able to remember that far back, but after 9/11, the righties decided that any kind of criticism of Bush was treason. Weirdly enough, though, some people can actually remember things.
2 + 2 is 5.
2 + 2 is 5.
Just keep repeating that.
Blind Cynic 5:01, pretty weak "evidence" of treason charges by the right. One WSJ article in an opinion section and unidentified accusations of it? Wow that's weak, your two pieces of 'evidence' suck.
Ah, Anon 2:16. I see your reading skills are weaker than your logic.
And you have the memory of a goldfish. (You know, swimming around the bowl, saying to himself "Swimming... swimming... hey, look! A castle!... Swimming... swimming... hey, look! A castle!...")
Here. Let's do an experiment. I'm going to teach you to use Google. I know it sounds complicated, but I think you're up to the challenge.
First, you go to Google. (You can probably just click on the word "Google" and it'll take you there, unless your mom put some serious child safety locks on your browser.)
Now, there should be a blank box in the middle, just under the logo. Click there, and then type the words liberal treason wartime president. Try hard to spell them right.
Now click "Google search."
I'll let you take it from there.
(Did that come across as condescending? I'm told that I do, sometimes...)
Nameless Cynic - you have an interesting view of the timeline there.
Not actually, of course the accusations started coming out much earlier. Finding out the truth behind the accusations isn't going to happen overnight especially when the source of the accusation also has an axe or two to grind which makes the initial accusation less credible.
The difference is still that Murdock applied a much more severe penalty (costing him a lot of money) than his detractors (i.e.: competitors) do when they are caught out.
I credit Murdock with at least taking steps to show that such behavior is not acceptable while his competitors are still wallowing in their own filth.
I would bet that at the current time the people working for Murdock owned news outlets are more concerned about their behavior than the people working for MSNBC because the people working for Murdock have seen the cost of that kind of activity while the leadership at MSNBC is obviously still in denial and refusing to clean house.
Post a Comment