I have been on a tear lately about the threat to freedom looming in the increasing gavel-rattling at journalists being threatened with imprisonment for refusing to reveal sources when judges who claim the right to demand it. It seems to me that the press is collectively under greater attempts to suppress it through intimidation than even during the McCarthy Era Black lists of the 50s were bad. Imprisonment is undoubtedly worse.
If the press cannot talk to sources who differ with the party line, then all the public will see and hear is the party line. This is not news, but propaganda, and the type of situation upon which Americans have looked disdainfully at in dark and oppressed corners of the world.
I’ve been standing on my virtual soap box about this and hope that if I talk long enough about it, some resonance will evolve in the Blogosphere. It should. It may be grudging, but a symbiotic relationship has been emerging between reporters who are paid to go out and gather facts, and we passionate hobbyists who, for the most part, have been content to sit and opine Too date, as far as I know, no blogger has been threatened with imprisonment related to something he or she wrote, but we may not be too far back in line after the journalists.
Even if no one goes to prison, this threat has already begun to suppress the news we get, and while these incidents remain today sporadic and anecdotal, the direction this is taking should be cause for great concern among all people who care about free speech and free press. The two go hand-in-hand.
There is a second rapidly emerging factor, which to me is nearly as alarming. As judicial treatment of press becomes increasingly suppressive, a new sort of media ownership is taking increasingly broad reins. In his parting comments on PBS Now, Bill Moyers argued a compelling case that the media is increasingly controlled by ultra conservatives who prefer to further their political agendas than deliver facts. While the former seems like fair play, the latter endangers a free society, or so it seems to me.
Reporters who do not go along with their new right wing bosses' agendas are being either fired or rescheduled from drive time to graveyard shifts.
What does all this mean to bloggers?I’m not quite certain. Who cares about that tired, old traditional press? We all should and with fierce passion. If what is happening to reporters right now is ignored by bloggers, we may find ourselves next in line for interogation on who we have been talking to and what we've learned from the conversation. We also may find that the Blogosphere is the channel of last resort for people who wish to ferret out the truth and reveal it to the public.
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