rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php The USA ranks at 46th for press freedom, a drop from 32nd a year ago. One of my main concerns about President Obama is his inattentiveness to press freedom, which for me began with his silence about the massacre of journalists at Maguindanao, Philippines in Nov 2009. I assign him a D- for protecting freedom of expression. Arresting Bradley Mannings imprisonment I can understand, but throwing the book at Barrett Brown - with a potential cumulative sentence of 105 years - is a breach against the protections of freedom of expression that democracies should be providing. Eric Snowden has been threatened with prosecution too harshly, as has Julian Assange. Our news media is not as free to tell us the verifiable facts as our news media want us to believe. For instance: When the news broke that our government had been using extraordinary rendition or special rendition - a program wherein prisoners were sent to other nations for interrogation that would have been illegal here (like tying them up naked to a hook from a ceiling and feeding them only chicken bones between beatings) - the response was anger at our news media for giving away state secrets to our enemies, but the story had been in the international media for many months before it was shared with the American public. In other words, our enemies had known about it long before most Americans heard about it in our news; it had been kept a secret only from the American people. We are only as free as we are able to tell the truth so others can share it, and to be told the truth when we need to know it, thus we are not as free as we enjoy telling ourselves we are.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 04:16:42 +0000
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