Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] RM Nixon and GW Bush

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Mike Miller wrote:
> This is a great article that reviews the recent media coverage of the 
> Deep Throat revelation.  It focuses more on how our news media seem 
> happy to do whatever Bush and his team want them to do.  It's easy to 
> see how they're manipulating NPR and PBS.  It makes my blood boil!  --Mike

I see things rather differently than this article does.

My sense was that in Nixon's time that the government made obviously 
criminal efforts to suppress the "truth" from coming out.  Now it seems 
that the "truth" is all around for anyone to see and write about.  But 
they just don't want to do it.  The "problem" is not with the 
government, it is with the media.  (Excuse my use of quotes - in this 
paragraph I don't want to take sides as to whether the media is actually 
doing the right thing.)

The reason the media does it this way seems clear to me - they are 
suseptible to market pressures.  If the public don't like the stories 
that a particular media outlet is putting out, that media outlet isn't 
going to get the advertising revenue.  The First Amendment, which 
guarantees a free press, is precisely that.  Laws cannot suppress what 
it will publish, but neither can it demand that it tell the truth nor 
that it dig deep.  It has no regulation, but also no responsibility, 
save to those who might or might not buy its product.

And indeed, if you have an opinion that many people don't like, even 
then there is no bar to expressing it - it costs next to nothing to set 
up a web page, or to publish some pamphlets.  It is just that you cannot 
force people to read it, and you cannot force people to pay you for it.

Ultimately the "problem" is not with the media - it is with the people. 
 And that is the danger with any kind of government "by the people" 
because you might not like how they are thinking.

Stephen
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