When the L.A. Times and the New York Times come together, it's a pretty big deal. Here's the op/ed piece regarding last week's story on why they disclosed the government monitoring international banking records.
Here's a small piece of it, but I suggest you read the whole thing:We have correspondents today alongside troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others risk their lives in a quest to understand the terrorist threat; Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal was murdered on such a mission. We, and the people who work for us, are not neutral in the struggle against terrorism.
But the virulent hatred espoused by terrorists, judging by their literature, is directed not just against our people and our buildings. It is also aimed at our values, at our freedoms and at our faith in the self-government of an informed electorate. If the freedom of the press makes some Americans uneasy, it is anathema to the ideologists of terror.
Thirty-five years ago yesterday, in the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people."
As that sliver of judicial history reminds us, the conflict between the government's passion for secrecy and the press's drive to reveal is not of recent origin. This did not begin with the Bush administration, although the polarization of the electorate and the daunting challenge of terrorism have made the tension between press and government as clamorous as at any time since Justice Black wrote.
Both mega-papers agree they have surpressed quite a bit of information regarding fighting terrorism, and with SCOTUS' ruling regarding Gitmo Bay, which is a whole different story, there is a thread to all of this citing that too much government control needs to be monitored.
Who does that?
Could it be the press? In a day where I am hearing more news on Star Reynolds leaving The View, a show I've never seen, than the SCOTUS ruling, I get worried about news entertainment, ratings and actual news coverage that doesn't involve the word "breaking" or a cras. More newsprint went to Anderson Cooper interviewing Angelina Jolie than was necessary, although she did get a lot of time to fight for the causes she hold dear.
This on the heels of Fox and Friends anchors saying we need a Department of Censorship. As Keith Olbermann said so correctly, that's what Al Qada wants. Wouldn't that same Office of Censorship censor this blog? I don't want that at all.
¶ 7/01/2006 12:13:00 PM
