SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.
From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:
It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.
It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.
A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.
Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.
Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.
[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.
To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.
While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.
History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.
It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:58PM (2 children)
QED.
You're making his point for him. The truth is never balanced, it is absolute. The problem is knowing what is the truth is.
You are following the democrat herd and rejecting BK based on an unsubstantiated accusation of something a drunk teenager did 35 year ago.
There are far better reasons to disqualify him*, but this insane focus on a single unprovable accusation will probably put him in office when it is dismissed. You would almost think it had been planned by his supporters.
*duckduckgo Kavanaugh perjury and start reading.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:50AM
[follows instructions, reads]
Well, seems that's more of same.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-perjury-claims-totally-baseless/ [nationalreview.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:17AM
There's plenty of provable stuff on Kavanaugh that shows he's not good Supreme Court material. He even provides some of it himself.
You're the one with the "insane focus on a single unprovable accusation".
Go troll elsewhere.