Do I understand this correctly?

[DaisyJane]

The Constitution especially carves out a "freedom of the press."

I consider that a solemn right.  So, why do we feel that the press doesn't exercise its very guaranteed right?

They have been jailed for refusing to give up sources.  But, many of us feel that they DON'T carry out their very solemn Constitutional right and power.

This is really frustrating to have such a special power be "agendaized."

DaisyJane       

[CG6468]

They're distributing the things that THEY determine we should see.

[TboneAgain]

The Constitution especially carves out a "freedom of the press."

I consider that a solemn right.  So, why do we feel that the press doesn't exercise its very guaranteed right?

They have been jailed for refusing to give up sources.  But, many of us feel that they DON'T carry out their very solemn Constitutional right and power.

This is really frustrating to have such a special power be "agendaized."

DaisyJane       

The First Amendment to the Constitution contains the language you refer to. That amendment and the next nine comprise the Bill of Rights, which was not part of the Constitution as originally submitted to the states. In general (there are a very few specific exceptions), the Bill of Rights was meant as a response by the Constitutional Convention to states that feared usurpation of what were considered to be "natural rights." That is, the Bill of Rights discusses mainly subjects that were considered by a great many to be matter-of-fact, well-known truths. For example, it was accepted in the widest sense that a man had a right to own and use a gun; but certain objections from the states led to the Second Amendment, not as a guarantor of that right, but as a descriptor of it.

In fact, the press does exercise its right, every day and all the time. Members of the press have the right to say/print/broadcast anything they want, and they have the right to NOT say/print/broadcast anything they want. So do I, and so do you.

Over the last several generations, the mainstream media (the "MSM") have become largely leftist in their outlook. This is the result of a number of factors and forces, some accidental, some natural, and some intentional. It has reached the point that what was once the US "paper of record," the NY Times, is now just a lib/prog rag, noted as much for its progressive slant on the news as it is for the news it chooses not to print at all. The same can be said for what's left of Newsweek and the Time/Warner conglomerate, all the old "major" TV networks, many cable outlets (including most especially CNN), and a majority of big-city newspapers.

The best thing that has happened in this field in generations is the internet. Suddenly, anyone and everyone can be a writer/blogger, a publisher, a video producer, able to reach hundreds of millions with a few mouse clicks. That sort of "speech" is also part of what is described in the First Amendment, and it must be jealously guarded.

[DaisyJane]

Thanks for that education!

You would THINK that the press would be rabid to tell the truth.  Isn't government the biggest target of that freedom?

The freedom to INFORM THE CITIZENS of what its government IS and IS NOT doing?  To not allow cover up or disinformation to be fed to us like baby cereal?

Is this principle not taught in journalism school?  Not to SLANT your news coverage.  I respect editorial views as long as I know that's what they are.  But these modern day talking heads lie by omission and slant by omission.  I heard some snarky reporter going after someone (wish I could remember who) to try to get him to say what she wanted to hear.  It was SO blatant.  She was visibly agitated when he wouldn't say it.

I agree that the internet has been the only saving grace for information at all these days.  I don't watch MSNBC at all and CNN very little.  I watch Fox News occasionally.  I prefer reading and radio.  TV is too scripted for me anymore.

Freedom of the press is a joke now.

DaisyJane   

[CG6468]

Journalism school teaches how to change America, not how to report the actual news.

[quiller]

Journalism school teaches how to change America, not how to report the actual news.

Thirty years ago they all wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. Heroic freedom fighters toppling corrupt regimes. Stalwart defenders of Truth, Justice, and a fat contract somewhere as an investigative journalist (the polite J-school name for muckraker and public menace).

What they got was a glut of J-school people who soon found corporate journalism is not the same as small-town newspapering and got smacked with lawsuits for trying to be the New York Slimes. Intimidated by profits falling from backing unpopular causes, these test-the-prevailing-winds prevaricators and wanna-bes gave America less than promised at a far higher cost to their own credibility.

That's why I'm a recovering journalist. That's why I go on the Internet, rather than see it rewritten and dumbed down or forgotten (for "lack of space"!). Bah. The whole sorry pack of them needs deporting, and I want to be the one putting a steel-toed boot in Chris Matthews' ass, helping him onto the next outgoing garbage-barge.

[CG6468]

Thirty years ago they all wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. Heroic freedom fighters toppling corrupt regimes. Stalwart defenders of Truth, Justice, and a fat contract somewhere as an investigative journalist (the polite J-school name for muckraker and public menace).

What they got was a glut of J-school people who soon found corporate journalism is not the same as small-town newspapering and got smacked with lawsuits for trying to be the New York Slimes. Intimidated by profits falling from backing unpopular causes, these test-the-prevailing-winds prevaricators and wanna-bes gave America less than promised at a far higher cost to their own credibility.

That's why I'm a recovering journalist. That's why I go on the Internet, rather than see it rewritten and dumbed down or forgotten (for "lack of space"!). Bah. The whole sorry pack of them needs deporting, and I want to be the one putting a steel-toed boot in Chris Matthews' ass, helping him onto the next outgoing garbage-barge.

Thank you for the information, Quiller. And now I can understand your name!

Why are the vast majority of "journalists" liberals nowadays?

[quiller]

Thank you for the information, Quiller. And now I can understand your name!

Why are the vast majority of "journalists" liberals nowadays?

I was a U.S. Navy journalist after I first worked for a daily newspaper, and returned to civuilian news work after my discharge. Since 1973, I've seen an endless parade of poseurs and wanna-bes, combined with halfwit TV trash spewing mindless agitprop. "Meet the Press" became "Meet the Mouthbreathers." Bah.

Why are they liberals? Because conservatives are silenced on American campuses. The same gutless wonders who remained in school during Vietnam became the treason-spewing internationalists who couldn't wait to embrace the suckitude of the United Nations. THEY in turn taught today's J-schoolers. It's the only language allowed. Never speak ill of the Party of Parasites...or else your Newspaper Union steward will get very cross with you.....

[keyboarder]

I was a U.S. Navy journalist after I first worked for a daily newspaper, and returned to civuilian news work after my discharge. Since 1973, I've seen an endless parade of poseurs and wanna-bes, combined with halfwit TV trash spewing mindless agitprop. "Meet the Press" became "Meet the Mouthbreathers." Bah.

Why are they liberals? Because conservatives are silenced on American campuses. The same gutless wonders who remained in school during Vietnam became the treason-spewing internationalists who couldn't wait to embrace the suckitude of the United Nations. THEY in turn taught today's J-schoolers. It's the only language allowed. Never speak ill of the Party of Parasites...or else your Newspaper Union steward will get very cross with you.....

Journalism sticks out all over you!  The good kind anyway.   

[quiller]

Journalism sticks out all over you!  The good kind anyway.   

To answer how I got my screen name....



No, I do not write good journalism. I prided myself on being the county version of Hunter S. Thompson --- gonzo hard-charger and political novice who got sucked into Demo-lite politics and betrayed by a GOP congressman for daring to quote him verbatim. Screw them all.

I would be fired in ten seconds flat if I were ever hired by corporate newspapers. I've worked for privately-held and then corporate (Thomson, now owners of Reuters) and believe they would sooner sell their own readers into bondage rather than offend major advertisers or prominent politicians. Vagabonds, drunks, letches and freaks were the norm. That and two suicides on the lower staff, caused by ruinous shortsightedness during a strike situation.

[keyboarder]

To answer how I got my screen name....



No, I do not write good journalism. I prided myself on being the county version of Hunter S. Thompson --- gonzo hard-charger and political novice who got sucked into Demo-lite politics and betrayed by a GOP congressman for daring to quote him verbatim. Screw them all.

I would be fired in ten seconds flat if I were ever hired by corporate newspapers. I've worked for privately-held and then corporate (Thomson, now owners of Reuters) and believe they would sooner sell their own readers into bondage rather than offend major advertisers or prominent politicians. Vagabonds, drunks, letches and freaks were the norm. That and two suicides on the lower staff, caused by ruinous shortsightedness during a strike situation.

Good journalism to me is truthful.  Maybe it is not in demand by LSM but like you said, "screw them". 

Always say what you mean and mean what you say.  I'm having trouble today getting my point across but I can assure you that I mean well. 

While I'm at it, and talking about news worth reporting, there was a time in the history of the world that reporting the truth was completely banned so as to keep a certain population in the dark as to the evil attempts of a dictator to control said populations.  Needless to say I'm referring to Hitler and that terrible time in our history.

Archived footage of that terrible time shows the faces of people who were just in awe of their "leader".  They knew only what the Nazis wanted them to know.  Look at some of this history and relate it to what's going on here in our country now.  It all started from a time in Germany that was teetering on total collapse of their economy which made it an easy target for an eloquent speaker to come in and brainwash everyone into thinking that he had the answers to all the ills of their day.

To me, this period in history should stand out as a mirror of actions to be forever repealed, especially as to the sequestering of the news.  Some then went thru great peril to expose horrific actions to the world. 

[DaisyJane]

Very interesting, quiller.

DaisyJane     

[quiller]

Very interesting, quiller.

DaisyJane     

Sorry to hear you say that. At no time do I claim myself superior to anyone except Al Gore and John Kerry in military service.

When I underwent training, I was roughly a month behind Al Gore in that same military journalism school, and heard instructors still laughing at that putz as they taught me (and a whole bunch of others) how to string together a cogent sentence and story. I'd had civilian experience, and had already been on a Vietnam cruise, so I probably laughed harder than others at those tales of the "Senator's Son" referred to in Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Later on I learned the phrase, "All hat, no cattle." Fortunate Son, indeed....

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/creedence-clearwater-revival-songs/

Interesting? Maybe so. It didn't kill me. It was also a time of the draft and millions of my fellow Americans also dealt with that. And despite the micromanagement of the reptile Johnson who which killed 57,000 people on the Democrats' watch, I had the grace of God to not get sunk and drowned, or blown up in some rice paddy.

Men on the Forrestal and America were not that fortunate. VA hospitals are overrun by others who also lost limbs or more. And let me tell you, everybody respects a War Two vet. That is just the way it is.

Bluntly stated: I don't know if I would have had the guts to get off that boat at Normandy, or followed in the footsteps of Ernie Pyle, a true hero in combat reporting (albeit civilian under military supervision). I do know I would have considered myself overly-protected --- as was Fortunate Son, who got a Green Zone job lying to the national news media and building a political future for himself in that bargain.

As for Kerry: did you know he served in Vietnam? No? You should catsup with the news.