George Sontag
On Wednesday this week, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression announced that the Obama administration had won the Jefferson Muzzle award for restricting free press. This is an award handed out every April since 1992 “as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment.” The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression announced that the US Justice Dept. had topped this years list. The White House Press Office was listed in the second slot among this year’s “winners,” trailed immediately by a third-place tie between the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.
It isn’t unusual for the free-speech loving organization named in honor of the third president of the US to condemn federal agencies for infringing on the constitutional rights of American citizens, but the Obama administration swept this year’s honors, undoubtedly lending further credence to allegations that the White House has ravaged First Amendment-protected freedoms by interfering and attempting to influence even the most venerable mainstream press outlets in the country.
The organization said that, "when the government hasn’t been hounding journalists for speaking to sources, it’s been influencing the way the world sees its news to a certain degree." Another group agrees, Reporters Without Borders’ annual Freedom Index report ranked the United States 46th in the world regarding freedom of information. David Cuillier, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists, stated that he agreed with the report’s findings and believes the journalism climate in the United States continues to get worse.
A plan by the Federal Communications Commission to study how news organizations select stories has prompted plenty of public opposition. “This is an extremely troubling and dangerous development that represents the latest in an ongoing assault on the Constitution by the Obama administration,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ. “Now we see the heavy hand of the Obama administration poised to interfere with the First Amendment rights of journalists,” Sekulow said. “It’s clear that the Obama administration is only interested in utilizing intimidation tactics – at the expense of Americans and the Constitution. The federal government has no place attempting to control the media, using the unconstitutional actions of repressive regimes to squelch free speech.”
The writers of a new book "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA" want a socialist America, one that would have "a democratic media" controlled by those who can "influence mass culture." So far, we have a media controlled by the government, labor unions and other left-leaning special interest groups that are miraculously(sic) entirely free of bias. However, the biggest difference between the media today and the media under a socialist system will be “what gets covered,”according to the authors. Politicians always have lied, to be sure. But the media was there to, if not serve as an impartial referee, at least hold the players to some sort of standard. No more.
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