Freedom of the press is absolutely essential in keeping a country free. Any country, including the United States. There is no possible way any free country, including the United States, can remain free if the press is not free.
No country can be free unless the press is able to report, investigate, question, criticize, refute, expose and editorialize free from government influence, interference and direction. A free press is the foundation upon which a free country is built, the air it breathes, the beating heart that keeps it alive. Freedom cannot live without a free press. In a free country, the government has no business in the newsrooms of the nation, none whatsoever...that’s none whatsoever.
It doesn’t get any more basic than that, it really doesn’t.
The Obama administration attempted a direct, frontal assault on freedom of the press in the United States a few days ago, got caught, got rebuffed by the American people and withdrew a proposal that would have placed government agents in radio, television and print newsrooms all across the country to investigate how and why journalists decide to cover and run certain events and stories and how and why they decide not to cover and run others, starting with a pilot project in Columbia, South Carolina, this spring.
The project was to be conducted by the Federal Communications Commission...its ostensible purpose was to “identify and understand the critical information needs of the American public, with special emphasis on vulnerable, disadvantaged populations”. Its real purpose was far more sinister, however. Its real purpose was to use the information gathered to regulate and control the stories and events journalists cover and run in the first place and to regulate and control what they say about them in the second...to keep Americans ignorant and uninformed and docile about all manner of things...to employ the press as cheerleaders...to cover up Obama’s transgressions, failures, crimes...to enable Obama and his minions and fellow travellers to carry out their destructive, anti-American agenda...to close Americans eyes, shut their minds and shut them up...to neuter and effectively eliminate the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States...to take away journalists and media outlets independence and place them under government control...to destroy freedom of the press in the United States.
Fortunately, the American people got wind of the proposal and the ensuing backlash forced it to be withdrawn. For now.
Make no mistake, it will be back in one form or another before long.
Make no mistake, just because Americans won this victory and kept their press free for the time being they haven’t won the war by a long shot and freedom of the press will be under attack by Obama and his minions and fellow travellers as long as he remains in office.
Why?
In the end, it all has to do with the C word.
Control.
Obama and his minions and fellow travellers want to control every aspect of American’s lives, to take full power unto themselves to determine and enforce how Americans think and act, to take away their freedom and replace it with government authority and mandates and regulations. To do that they have to get rid of the free press, which is what they were trying to do with this contemptible proposal.
That’s the other C word, by the way.
Contempt.
Nothing can show just how much contempt Obama and his minions and fellow travellers really have for America and Americans, for their values, laws, history and institutions, than this cockamamie attempt to destroy freedom of the press in the United States.
Like I said, they’ll try again, you can be sure of that.
That’s their ideology and its about as anti-American and anti-freedom as you can get.
Yours sincerely,
Jerry Philipson
Comox, British Columbia, Canada
