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NO! Trump has declared that over and over. Along with admonitions of “fake news.”
The truth is that the press of this country are the full-time keepers of the First Amendment — of the right to the truth. The people of the press are not always successful at telling the truth, sometimes because their sources lie to them, sometimes because they are not good enough at their craft, or sometimes because they can’t step beyond the personal agendas we all have. Journalists must try to suppress such bad behavior for the sake of truth and balance.
The press, too, are often the bearers of bad news, news we often don’t want to hear. But if we are to live full and honest lives, we deserve to have the truth available to us, even though sometimes we cannot bear to look.
Tonight, I watched a fairly new movie, “Shock and Awe,” the story produced by Carl Reiner of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain’s lonely battle to tell the truth about the fast roll of the Bush Jr. administration into war in Iraq in 2003. Virtually every other major media was seduced by high level spin that Iraq was heading into nuclear capability and that with a powerful stroke the U.S.could turn Iraq toward democracy and help defend Israel and turn the nation into an oil pump for our nation.
Of course, none of that was the truth, and Knight-Ridder alone revealed as much, though they were largely ignored by most. The reason they got it right, while other media did not? Knight-Ridder worked the story hard instead of relying on government press releases and relied on mid-level government sources for their info, and not the highest level of government that had an agenda, not based upon facts but upon political aspirations and blind vengeance.
The press, when they operate independently, serve to protect the interests of the people, even from the accidental or intentional malfeasance of the government they elect.
Williams is an excellent and committed journalist, who is also clever enough to see the irony (read: comedy) in life. What he did was nothing of significance, and those who want to make this a rorshack (sp?) test on television journalists know where they can put it. Williams is much more of a journalist than some of the ciphers on CNN and FOX and elsewhere, who barely qualify as “news readers.”
Let’s get over this, NBC, and move on.
As the U.S. considers if and how to react to the Sunni-led insurrection in Iraq, I have one comment: “We CANNOT afford it!”*
The conflict in the middle east across many nations between the Sunnis and the Shiites goes back over a thousand years. If we think that the U.S. or western nations can impose a political or military solution on what is one of the world’s most long-lasting social conflicts, we have another think coming.
*We CANNOT afford to intervene, economically, politically, socially. Let’s, for once, learn from the past.
Here’s something to keep in mind as we mull over how and where to cut Federal spending.
I remember a quotation from Isaac Asimov I’d seen at the foundation museum in Gernika, Spain, site of Franco and Hitler’s carpet-bombing atrocity during the Spanish Civil War, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
All the rumblings regarding intercession in Libya have me deeply concerned. Creating a so-called “no fly zone” strikes me as equivalent to a declaration of war. All this talk of coordination with our “allies” is reminiscent of our conversations at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and of course, it was the U.S. that was really out front and accountable for what happened. We can disapprove of internal issues in Libya, provide humanitarian support, act as diplomatic intermediaries, and exert influence over Libyan assets abroad. But militarily, if we don’t learn from our mistakes of the past years, and stay out of their country, we should just fold our own tent and disappear into the desert, along with the Roman legions.
Apple Pressings 