While hundreds of thousands of Americans descended on the nation’s Capital last Saturday, a large part of America’s news media still don’t get it. The press intentionally ignored the main message that most of these protesters were giving, namely, stop the growth of government and stop spending our money. Most of the media instead chose to ignore the biggest political demonstration in Washington in years. Still the elite media and their editors (i.e. ABC news, NBC news, CBS news, NY Times, NPR, PBS et. all) continued to give more air time to their detractors. Democrat leadership together with spokesmen for the Obama Administration have labeled the ‘Tea Party’ protestors as “terrorists”, “holding Nazi signs”, “racists”, “prejudice”, “mobsters” and “angry white men.” Where was the fair and balanced reporting? Instead the editors of our local news programs would ignore the speech of hundreds of thousands of protestors (who came from all over the country) to appear in our nation’s capital. My daily newspaper (San Diego Union-Tribune) that provides news to a city of 2.3 million people didn’t even do a story on the massive protest. For other media outlets, mention of the protest was reservedly provided by their reporters. Is it any wonder why a reporter from CNN was booed by many of these same protestors on Saturday?
The major network’s preference of adhering to ‘political correctness’ as opposed to defending our and even their own free speech is startling. Last summer, the press was again silent when American radio talk show host, Michael Savage, was banned by the British government from entering that country just for expressing his conservative, political speech. The British government effectively equated the American broadcaster to a common criminal by not allowing him to travel in their country. What was Savage’s crime: expressing his 1st Amendment privilege of free speech? It is truly sad when a country that has so many long, historical ties to Great Britain would bow to the pressures of ‘political correctness.”
Why isn’t the media outraged? Why isn’t the media defending Michael Savage’s free speech rights? Considering this type of hard government action, I can’t understand why the media doesn’t understand the long term implications of such action. I cannot understand why they don’t realize their own free speech rights are ultimately at risk too! Just look what’s happened to the free speech rights of the press in Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela.
Now we hear that congress is considering giving Barack Obama and his administration emergency power over the Internet. US Senators John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe have presented a bill (S 773) before congress that will give “the president the ability to ‘declare a cyber security
emergency’ and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any ‘critical’ informa-tion network ‘in the interest of national security.’ The bill does not define a critical information network or a cyber security emergency. That definition would be left to the president.” (Mother Jones). The implication of this bill is mind boggling. While I cringe at many of the XXX sites that currently appear on the Internet, we should be deeply concerned when political free speech is limited or even squashed by an out of control government and not reported upon by a corrupt media.
It’s time we wake up to the reality of what is happening around us! Our freedoms are precious. Freedom of speech is a sacred right that the founders believed was crucial to the survival of our country … a country that has provided so much to so many.
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