“Gotta wonder how many federal laws were broken by that bunch over an 8 year time span. We’ll probably never know.”
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Even if we DID know that entire administration seems to be untouchable-———thanks to the press.
The press controls everything now.
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True Dat.
Even if we DID know that entire administration seems to be untouchable-———thanks to the press.“Gotta wonder how many federal laws were broken by that bunch over an 8 year time span. We’ll probably never know.” - TADSLOS
The press controls everything now.
The First Amendment assayed to assure that journalism would be heterogeneous, so that the people could readily access opinions and facts from diverse viewpoints. Accordingly it forbids the government from homogenizing journalism.Its framers, however, could not have anticipated the developments of the Nineteenth Century. They anticipated - even promoted - 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 . . .” But they could not have anticipated the telegraph (1844) and the resulting Associated Press (and other wire services (the AP started in 1848). The virtual “meeting” of the members of the AP which the AP “wire” constitutes has had the effect which Adam Smith might have foreseen:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)After a century and a half of such “meeting,” the members of the AP have coalesced into a unified chorus of criticism of society, and of people who do essential work under real-world, bottom-line constraints in the absence of perfect knowledge such as critics can have in hindsight. So while the government is forbidden from homogenizing journalism in favor of ever more government, journalists overwhelmingly conspire via the Associated Press to produce that very result.But although the First Amendment does not forbid journalists from doing that, neither does it protect journalists from laws that do. I refer, of course, to the Sherman AntiTrust Act. Sherman authorizes civil (triple damages) as well as criminal action in court to punish that sort of thing.