Freedom of the Press???

[Joseph Patrick]

From Joseph Patrick...aka Gerry Milligan
I guess that living in Jordan, with it's proximity to Israel and watching English news from both Israeli and Jordanian governmental news outlets, I learned to discern truth from fake news. While not 100% proficient at my discernment, it has helped me when I watch MSNBC, CNN and Fox news services. While none of them are perfect, we need to make sure we have a free press and avoid the muzzling that our current administration is attempting.

[Haruo]

The police statement in North Dakota, "From now on the police will tell you what is or is not news" struck me as much more ominous than the exclusion of a few major news organizations from Trump's press conference. The latter I can simply put down to the guy's penchant for spite; the former has the potential to make (literally) a police state of our republican democracy.

[William Thornton]

[Haruo]

[William Thornton]

Coal or correspondents...guns or butter. Coal and guns sounds very masculine.

Did a summer mission trip to WV one year. The host church had a guy who was in charge of the explosives for "mountain top" removal coal mining. They were doing a blast that week and I asked to view it. He agreed but management nixed the idea.

[JE Pettibone]

[Haruo]

Seriously, "muzzling" may be the wrong word, but are you guys (Ed and William) really oblivious to the efforts the administration (and #45, as we now call him, himself) have been making to illegitimize and sideline "the press" in the sense of CNN, BBC and the NYTimes? Are you unaware that for the president not to attend the WHCA dinner is an attempt to make the reporting industry feel less-than?

[JE Pettibone]

[William Thornton]

Trump has the means to go directly to news consumers without the filter of the media. The media can do the same. Let them both make their case.

[Jim]

Journalism has changed drastically during the last generation or so.  Where once a reporter’s job was to simply report (front-page stuff with no bylines), now it is to report and in the same piece also interpret what the “facts” mean, always within the context of the institution’s agenda, the assumption being that the great unwashed (people like me) lack the sophistication to either understand the facts or decide what they entail.  During the recent campaigns, even the great unwashed recognized the flagrant effort of most of the media to see that Trump was painted as a hopeless ignorant troll, while Hillary was glamorized (no matter her stupid mistakes, not to mention secret servers) as the maid in shining armor to put the arrogant WASPM in his place and crack the glass ceiling.  Trump decided to outflank the media and go directly to the people with both the rallies the media were forced to cover because of their hugeness and by tweeting his positions, such as they were. He was helped by the inordinate dishonesty of the media (remember CNN’s debates in which Hillary was fed the proper material ahead of time).  The Russkies (at least some say) hacked the DNC and divulged the dishonesty of that body regarding the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, whom it bushwhacked successfully in favor of the maid in the empty pants-suit.  To satisfy its drive toward diversity, the DNC has just elected a Latino-American, Tom Perez, as its head and a black American-Muslim as his deputy.  The deputy, Congressman Keith Ellison, was once a huge supporter of NOI and its head honcho, Louis “Calypso Louie” Farrakhan, but is now a Sunni (same as Baghdadi) unless he's switched to Shiite or something else Muslim since 2007. Stay tuned to see how that combination makes politics doubly entertaining.
 

[Haruo]

You ought to start a newspaper, Jim. "He used to be a papist, like Mussolini and the IRA, but now he's still one unless he's changed to Protestant (same as David Koresh)."

[Dave Roberts]

[Haruo]

[William Thornton]

[Dave Roberts]

[Sandy]

The last president who publicly went to war with the press was Richard Nixon. Trump is already losing his war with the media.

Most conservatives interpret anything negative about the politicians they admire as biased coverage, even when it is completely factual, just because they don't like it. And the fact of the matter is that the media gets is right far more often than it doesn't.

[Tim Bonney]

[Joseph Patrick]

From Joseph Patrick...aka Gerry Milligan
Quibble if you must (which is a 100% given on BaptistLife.com) over the word muzzle, but the title of this thread is freedom of the press and when the party in power intentionally blocks press access (1st amendment anyone???) of legitimate press outlets where does that fall on the "Freedom of the press" continuum?

[Jon Estes]

I do not see where the Freedom of Press is being taken away from anyone.

I do see a reduction in the Freedom of Access.

All Presidents had their way of dealing with... handling of... sharing information to the media.

The self proclaimed most transparent Presidency of all time was anything but.

The current twitter addict is driving the media nuts and having the media called out on their lies as quick as they publish them is something new to the discourse.

When journalism becomes biased it is no longer real journalism.

We need some Dragnet journalism.

It is going to be an interesting 8 years.

[William Thornton]

[Joseph Patrick]

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[Rvaughn]

This Time article gives some interesting history of the interactions between President and Press.

[Sandy]

Log on to Rachel Maddow's website tomorrow, and watch her segment from tonight. Check her sources.

What's going to matter in the long run isn't who gets access. It's who gets the facts, and how many people are paying attention. The alternative fact media that surrounds and sucks up to Trump doesn't have the power that the mainstream media does, because it just doesn't have the following. The mainstream media is trying very hard to be fair to the orange haired buffoon, but he keeps ramping up the rhetoric. The press will win the war.