"...or of the press..."
It's a source of great unhappiness to Donald Trump that he can't order his secret police to kill inconvenient journalists, as his boss in Moscow does. What he can do, and regularly does, is stir up his knuckle-dragging Trumpanzees to violence. If they succeed, he will emulate Jones, Limbaugh et al. and disavow all responsibility -- "just exercising free speech here." And I'm very much afraid it's a matter of time -- they have more firepower than Putin's thugs, and they're a lot more mentally unstable. This week a man in California was arrested for making threats against the staff of the Boston Globe which the FBI found credible, and April Ryan of National Urban Radio has felt compelled to hire bodyguards.
Not that Republicans care about the Founders except as graven images to be worshipped, but they thought the news media important enough to mention in the First Amendment as something the Congress should never try to regulate, along with religion and free speech generally. They would be disappointed at the spoonfuls of fact provided by networks and websites in between pill commercials, and downright shocked by the number of Americans who don't care, which probably exceeds the number mesmerized by propaganda and conspiracy gibberish. I have a lot of problems with the mainstream media, their both-siderism, frequent pandering and lack of moral compass (not to mention hourly assaults on English), but it would be infinitely worse if they went away. We are fortunate that journalists (reporters if they prefer) are a tough lot, venturing into places the cautious would never go to try to make sense of Yemen, Syria, Myanmar, Gaza, and the White House briefing room.
This will get worse until Trump is gone. He needs someone to blame for his manifest incompetence, probable treason and growing unpopularity (the latest ABC poll numbers are gob-stopping), and to amplify his lawyer's assertion that "truth is not truth." The press has had a rifle-sight on its back at least since the Republican National Convention of 1964, but this is the time for the Kevlar vests. I have no money, but I subscribe to as many online papers as I can because they're under assault from every direction -- even their newsprint is more expensive because of Trump's idiot tariff fuckery and Canadian retaliation. And every day it gets worse -- now Lester Holt and NBC stand accused of "editing" the interview where Trump admitted to firing James Comey to stop the Russia investigation, also known as obstruction of justice. Oh, and Russia, if you're listening...relax. It was China that hacked Hillary Clinton's emails. This is why we need The Press -- somebody has to fact-check the lies on a tweet-by-tweet basis, if only to keep us sane.
Not that Republicans care about the Founders except as graven images to be worshipped, but they thought the news media important enough to mention in the First Amendment as something the Congress should never try to regulate, along with religion and free speech generally. They would be disappointed at the spoonfuls of fact provided by networks and websites in between pill commercials, and downright shocked by the number of Americans who don't care, which probably exceeds the number mesmerized by propaganda and conspiracy gibberish. I have a lot of problems with the mainstream media, their both-siderism, frequent pandering and lack of moral compass (not to mention hourly assaults on English), but it would be infinitely worse if they went away. We are fortunate that journalists (reporters if they prefer) are a tough lot, venturing into places the cautious would never go to try to make sense of Yemen, Syria, Myanmar, Gaza, and the White House briefing room.
This will get worse until Trump is gone. He needs someone to blame for his manifest incompetence, probable treason and growing unpopularity (the latest ABC poll numbers are gob-stopping), and to amplify his lawyer's assertion that "truth is not truth." The press has had a rifle-sight on its back at least since the Republican National Convention of 1964, but this is the time for the Kevlar vests. I have no money, but I subscribe to as many online papers as I can because they're under assault from every direction -- even their newsprint is more expensive because of Trump's idiot tariff fuckery and Canadian retaliation. And every day it gets worse -- now Lester Holt and NBC stand accused of "editing" the interview where Trump admitted to firing James Comey to stop the Russia investigation, also known as obstruction of justice. Oh, and Russia, if you're listening...relax. It was China that hacked Hillary Clinton's emails. This is why we need The Press -- somebody has to fact-check the lies on a tweet-by-tweet basis, if only to keep us sane.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 1:16 PM
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