Earlier today, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post published a statement on Elon Musk’s X platform announcing that Bezos was seizing control of the newspaper’s opinion section.
“We will be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets… Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Interesting concepts, “Personal liberties”, “free markets” - why does it sound like a smoke screen for the “Golden Rule.” He who that has the Gold, makes the rules.
But then, for those stratospheric level courtiers of our Masters of the Universe, the rest of us, really are totally beside the point, no different than chattel in the breeding pens.
… trying to sue smaller news organizations and bloggers—even knowing they will lose the case—in the hopes the long legal process will bankrupt them, or scare them into settling.
That’s exactly what happened to Mother Jones and Idaho-based reporter Peter Zuckerman when they investigated billionaire Frank Vandersloot in 2012 and were viciously sued by Vandersloot in 2013, despite the fact that their reporting was protected by the First Amendment. Mother Jones thankfully won their lawsuit against Vandersloot two weeks ago, but much of the damage was already done: they spent over $2.5 million dollars defending themselves and Zuckerman.
Since its founding in 1976, Project Censored has been focused on stories — like Watergate before the 1972 election — that aren’t censored in the authoritarian government sense, but in a broader, expanded sense. Reflective of what a functioning democracy should be, censorship is defined as “the suppression of information, whether purposeful or not, by any method — including bias, omission, underreporting, or self-censorship — that prevents the public from fully knowing what is happening in society.”
It is, after all, the reason that journalism enjoys special protection in the First Amendment: Without the free flow of vital information, government based on the consent of the governed is but an illusory dream.
Yet, from the very beginning, as A.J. Liebling put it, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” …
2023
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