When the press becomes nothing more than an arm of the government, you know your country is in trouble.
Apparently, ABC News is happy to prostitute its services for the sake of government propaganda. According to the Drudge Report, ABC will be airing a special report entitled “Prescription for America” from the East Room of the White House. This program will promote the President’s health care agenda, and opposing voices will be entirely excluded.
Let’s just leave aside the complicated issue of health care reform for a minute. Even if you are a die-hard Obama supporter on that issue, can’t you agree that when the press does something like this, we are entering into dangerous territory? When press and state get so mixed up that it becomes difficult to distinguish one from the other, government takes one more giant leap away from accountability to the public. Propaganda has long been a tool used by totalitarian regimes to silence opposition and deceive the public.
What is so tragic about this is that ABC News is volunteering for the job.
June 17, 2009 at 3:26 pm |
As you may have noticed lately, I’ve taken up quoting our Founding Fathers as much as possilble; hoping to bring back some of their wisdom. Here’s a fitting one for you!
“[Tyranny cannot be safe] without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”
James Madison, In his autobiography
or do you prefer
“No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its SYCOPHANTS or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson to George Washington
June 17, 2009 at 10:48 pm |
Good words. To this point, we have not seen government coercion of the media (the inappropriately named “Fairness Doctrine” seems to be off the President’s radar at least for now). And that is certainly a plus.
But when the major media outlets of a free press allow their ideology to dictate the nature of their reporting (as it has done in Obama’s favor for at least two years now), the practical result is not much different or better than a state-run media.