12/09/2008

Real Government Censorship


As The Daily Pander pointed out to me earlier today, it is amusing that Gov. Blagojevich actually engaged in some of the behavior that the far left loones have accused the Bush Administration of engaging in - censoring the free press. The Governor refused to provide the Tribune Company with state economic assistance unless it terminated members of its editorial board, including John McCormick, because it was critical of him and had called for his impeachment. Here we have actions that really do violate the First Amendment. Now that we know what government censorship really looks like, maybe we can stop making false accusations against those that we simply disagree with.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I still think there is only a degree of difference between trying to influence reporting by urging the firing of editors and trying to influence reporting by denying access to news sources. And neither, by the way, is a First Amendment violation as far as I can see. So, while I wouldn’t compare this kind of sleeze to what the Bushies have done – our prosecutor has still put them in the same defendant’s box.

Chris Janc said...

hrw, your comparison is laughable. How you can compare what is clearly economic extortion by a person in a position of power to "denying access" - a tactic employed often and effectively by both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, I might add - is beyond obtuse. It requires a complete distortion of the facts and their consequences.