March 3, 2003
On February 26, President Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, expressed the displeasure of the White House at CBS’s planned airing of Dan Rather’s interview with Saddam Hussein. Fleischer said that it was just giving the enemy an opportunity to provide propaganda. There were discussions between the White House and the network regarding whom, if anyone, could appear on CBS to contradict the Iraqi dictator. At one point CBS indicated they would only give time to George W. Bush.
The media generally have a thin skin. Programs like 60 Minutes love to do investigative reporting and damning exposés on industry wrongdoing, but when someone attacks their industry, like Bernard Goldberg did in his 2002 book, Bias, they go ballistic. To some in the media, Fleischer’s comments were an attack on freedom of the press and free speech.
For example, Randy Taylor was upset a Fleischer’s statements and devoted a segment of his CFRB talk show to the subject. Taylor, who formerly ran as a candidate for the Canadian Alliance and is generally pro-American, framed the issue as an attack by the White House on freedom of the press. But was it?
The U.S. government was criticizing CBS’s decision to run the Saddam interview and was asking for time to run a rebuttal. The government was not threatening to take actions against the network for broadcasting a program that displeased them. There is nothing to prevent a government in a democratic country from merely stating that a proposed dissemination of certain material is, in the government’s opinion, contrary to the public interest, especially on the eve of a war. There was no ‘action’ taken against CBS. Plainclothes security agents did not spirit Rather or his producers away in the middle of the night, although the argument could be made that it would have been a good thing. Freedom of the press means that the press is free to express opinions that are contrary to those of the government of the day. It does not mean that the government has to agree or like those opinions. CBS and "the Dan" are still free express their anti-George Bush and occasionally anti-American diatribe. Perhaps Randy Taylor and others like him should look at what some other countries do (one of Jean Chretién’s faves--Zimbabwe would be a good example) to see what an attack on press freedom really looks like.
This same issue arose when ABC cancelled Politically Incorrect after host Bill Maher said that the 9/11 hijackers were not cowards because they flew planes into buildings whereas the Americans were because they lobbed cruise missiles at their enemies from a distance. The right to press freedom and the right to free speech does not include the right to have a network program or the right to have companies sponsor it. Bill Maher had no "right" to have a network show any more than anyone else had.
There was, however an attack on free speech last week in Canada when Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish told a Globe and Mail reporter that access to the press would be restricted on Parliament Hill if he reported her " Damn Americans — they’re all bastards". As government backbenchers in general and Parrish in particular have less power to restrict the press than a House of Commons security guard did, it is hard to take Parrish’s threat seriously. But as silly or inconsequential as it was, Parrish still is a member of the government and her conduct, even though it paled in comparison to her anti-American mutterings, was an attack on freedom of the press.
Attacks on freedom of speech and freedom of the press does happen although not as often as the media would like to believe.