CBS's Bill Plante: Obama Administration 'Undercutting First Amendment,' 'It's State-Run Media'

this administration has the tools to reach people on their own. They don't need us as much. And to the extent that they're able to do that, they're undercutting the First Amendment, which guarantees a free press through many voices. If they put out their own material, it's state-run media.

Plante is right in his conclusions (state-run media), but his reasoning is completely wrong.

The administration -- or any other political voice (e.g., Sarah Palin seems to know how to do this) -- is perfectly free to work around the self-appointed gatekeepers to put out the message they want to spread. The job of a free press would be to analyze and critique such information and to frame it in a newsworthy fashion.

But we don't have a free press, at least among the traditional main players. They have willingly put on the yoke of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democrat party in exchange for recognition as the proper gatekeepers of information. An actual free press -- the so-called "new media" is a threat to them because it disrupts their status as part of the self-annointed elite.

What Plante is whining about really isn't the White House doing anything to the 1st Amendment, it's complaining that the priesthood is being bypassed by one of the deacons, so to speak. This is nothing more than Pravda calling TASS state-run media -- of course it was, but so was Pravda.

And here's the nub of it, Howie: this administration has the tools to reach people on their own. They don't need us as much. And to the extent that they're able to do that, they're undercutting the First Amendment, which guarantees a free press through many voices. If they put out their own material, it's state-run media.

I actually approve of this, and hope that future Repub administrations do the same. If there's an official White House web site from which official statements are issued, and which host the president's videos of his positions, then it's that much harder for the MSM to distort his positions, and much easier for people to point out such distortions by pointing to the original material.

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