Philadelphia "inquirer" and "Daily News" File Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

**The media as the “5th estate” is necessary.**
The Print press can no longer be the Constitutional Watchdog, as they have become the political LAPDOG.

The Press has lost the ability to tell the difference between Opinion and FACT. With 2 Bankruptcies to prove it.

the strata of

first estate, Lords Spiritual - the clergy in France and the heads of the church in Britain

Lords Temporal, second estate - the nobility in France and the peerage in Britain
third estate, Commons - the common people

fourth estate - the press, including journalists, newspaper writers, photographers

have no application here. Here, there is only "the governments" (of various jurisdictions, including the federal one) and "the people." I held back from discussing the First Amendment because the term "the press" has been distorted by those who claim that they have special rights not contemplated in the Constitution. "The freedom of . . . the press" is not a right only of those who own presses now, it is the right of the people to spend their own money to buy presses at their own pleasure. Indeed, those of us who own computers and printers, or photocopiers, may be said to own presses. So the claim that only journalists are "the press" is fatuous. Indeed, the newspapers of the founding era were distinctly different from those with which we are familiar - to such an extent that those who today style themselves as "the press" would not recognize any of the printers of the newspapers of the founding era as being members of their "press." Because implicit acceptance of the objectivity of all other journalists was not a staple of the Eighteenth Century newspaper. That is an artifact of the telegraph and the Associated Press (founded 1848), which probably no framer of the Constitution or Bill of Rights survived to see.
The claim that the framers of the Constitution did not foresee technologies such as the radio and the internet can be countered by reference to Article 1 Section 8 which explicitly provides that Congress has the authority
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
which certainly authorizes the reader of the Constitution to assert that in fact the framers did foresee and promote progress in technology "useful" for publicizing information and opinions. The fear of the Federalists who opposed the inclusion of a bill of rights in the Constitution was that it would not cover every right which was (they held) implied by the body of the Constitution - and that opponents of liberty would use the Bill of Rights not as a floor but a ceiling on the rights of the people. And when people suggest that liberty does not apply to the use of technologies not mentioned in the First Amendment that is precisely what they are doing. Hence, my point that an appeal to the First Amendment may ironically not be the best way to vindicate the right of the people to promote our opinions by use of post-Eighteenth Century technologies, to the limits of our own purses and predilections. And the collateral right of the people to attend to, or at their own pleasure to ignore, any such efforts.
ACLJ ready to do battle against 'Fairness Doctrine'
And from my POV the problem we should be addressing is precisely how to get that issue before SCOTUS, and precisely what remedy we can seek in such action. It is not clear to me that waiting for some "fairness doctrine" assault to fully form is prudent. It seems to me that there should be torts to be found in any and all operations (and in some inactions) of the Federal Election Commission, for example. Because campaign finance regulation is censorship.

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