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posted by martyb on Friday November 23 2018, @07:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the disinvite dept.

Free press isn't free under White House's onerous rules (Editorial)

Muzzling the press is chapter one in the authoritarian ruler's playbook. By the Founders' design, the president of the United States is not a king or dictator. He doesn't control the media, or get to decide which reporters are assigned to cover him.

A free press isn't free if the government imposes rules on what reporters can ask and how they must ask it. That violates the First Amendment. Period.

Banning reporters from asking follow-up questions or challenging the president's statements, under threat of taking away their access to the White House, hobbles the watchdog function of the media. White House reporters will be looking over their shoulders, calibrating the consequences, every time they ask tough questions. Meanwhile, the president will be able to dodge accountability and lie to the American people with even more impunity.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 23 2018, @11:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 23 2018, @11:37PM (#765732)

    ...Most nationalism is born out of the fear of being taken over so people look to "their strong guy" and are led more by emotion than reason.

    Marxism in Our Time [wsws.org]:

    The elimination of competition by monopoly marks the beginning of the decay of capitalist society. Competition was the creative mainspring of capitalism and the historical justification of the capitalist. By the same token the elimination of competition marks the transformation of stockholders into social parasites. Competition had to have certain liberties, a liberal atmosphere, a regime of democracy, of commercial cosmopolitanism. Monopoly needs as authoritative a government as possible, tariff walls, “its own” sources of raw materials and arenas of marketing (colonies). The last word in the decay of monopolistic capital is fascism.

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