The media should be the watchdog over governments and other authorities. That is completely free of political interests.
The freedom of speech is absolutely necessarily for a “free” society. If the government begins to limit this freedom, we’re heading for a dictatorship.
Of course – editors should be held responsible for what they publish.
During the past year Denmark’s seen the consequences of a rightwing paper publishing very satirical drawings of the prophet Mohammed, and some Muslim countries demanding the Danish prime minister apologizes.
Recently the large public service TV-station showed a piece on a large media corporation, who’d hired a family-father to test prostitutes and give “reviews” on a porno-site owned by the corporation.
In both cases the government cannot decide in a given case if the media can or cannot publish what they do. There are laws against racial/gender discrimination and if in doubt – take it to court. The government however must NEVER be allowed to dictate what the media publishes/broadcasts.
However – large media corporations need some kind of control, so as to ensure political/religious interests from a small group doesn’t get more attention than they should.
I agree with PVS. If a government starts to yell national security to censor the media I’ll yell “1984” right back at them…
I also agree with Imperial Samurai. Complete separation of state/media.
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Have you ever heard of the fourth branch of the government? They say media is another part of the government, only publicising what they want us to hear, only publicising what will make them look good. It's pathetic really and no I don't think it should be done. But that's the way it is. It's quite scary really living in a world where the person running it has the right to kill you if they feel like it.
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Yeah- but since when has the media been on the government's side?
Not since Clinton, if even then! Actually, the media is almost always (notice-almost) detrimental to the way the government wants things said (and that doenst necessarily mean the government is trying to feed us propaganda).
There DOES need to be a limit to the press though- and it has absolutely nothing to do with taking away the freedom of speech bullcrap that I hear so much. Some stuff cannot be told- government intelligence *cough*NYT *ahem* (not to mention anything in particular...)
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Last edited by The Black Ghost on Jul 6th, 2006 at 02:50 AM
Actually, in terms of US media, there appears to be more then one mainstream, popular media outlet that is far from critical of certain government policies. Or perhaps more correctly report from a more conservative viewpoint, thus slanting the news to greater benifit a political party that is more in line with such a stance.
Well, then there needs to be clearer guide lines as to what constitutes intelligence and state secrets - there seems, from an outside view point, to be times where "military secrets" become confused with "events or facts that might be damaging/embarrassing to the incumbent administration"
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and who told you that?
the media was in no way on clinton's side. he was hounded and harassed far more than any president, especially concerning the whole lewinski debachle.
If the media was on the government's side, no one would ever read their little gossip diary, because no one wants to hear about how smoothly the world is running.
yeah when i saw that post I was like WTF? the media was never on his side.at least not in the lewinski scandal debacle.they came down very hard on him on that.Of course the media was pretty much on his side in the Mena arkansas scandal where under the knowledge of Both Reagan and Bush during Reagans presidency,The CIA was smuggling weapons out of a small Mena arkansas airport in exchange for drugs being flown into the united states through Mena.This all went under the nose of Bill Clinton while he was governor of arkansas.It spanned through 3 presidents.None of this was investigated by the major media though.They totally ignored it.Thats why they did investigate the Monica Lewinsky scandal to try and take everybodys attention away from the REAL news of Clintons involvement in that.The media never covers REAL news.But when Clinton was running for president in 92,the Mena scandal kept surfacing through the efforts of independent investigaters.I talked all about this in detail on the conspiracy thread so if you want to see more about all that,just go to that thread.go to any library and check out the video The Clinton Chronicles.it documents all that stuff.
yup, just another right wing talking point pulled fresh from the colon.
thats the only way the myth of the bias liberal media can survive: by flatout lying.
they try to rewrite history to make the left seem devious and evil, like the classic villain in a black suit and tophat who plays with his handlebar mustache as he lets off an evil cackle. then we have the neocons, who are practically perfect in every way, but exclusively harassed by the media.
thats the only way they can think: 'me perfect, you evil'
No the government should not decide what is published, or obviously we will be heading for a dictatorship. I don´t think this is a problem in which we need to do a long discussion to decide something, or to gain some clarity over the subject, the answer is very simple.
Except when the government warns you ahead of time that it is government intelligence and you need to drop it and you publish it anyways... other than that, I agree.
Lemme change what I said and delete the word Clinton: The media is on the side people are most likely to like the media for liking.
Be lucky you have freedom's buddy or else what you just said would have sent you to death row.
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it wasnt luck that gave us our freedom, and it sure wont be bad luck that we lose it, especially through ignorance and giving credit to whatever power currently rules for that freedom, and even elevating them and our state to the status of infallability and operating in the name of god, as we see today...historically that is just the time that people lose their freedom.
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Jun 29th, 2006 10:09 PM
