i wish you'd left your opinions about the article first to get us started, but whatever.
the first journalist supposedly fired wasn't fired, he was suspended for 2 weeks without pay, and quit in a huff. ohnoes, that's totally the same as getting fired! and why was he suspended? for allowing an article to be printed called "52 funniest things about the upcoming death of the pope".
> two senators, a congressman and the mayor's representative attack a newspaper, and a few days later, the editor is fired.
he acts as if they're the only ones who complained. the newspaper received thousands of letters of complaint within 2 days of the article being run.
he doesn't make a single point which convinces me that the government had any influence on these journalists. everything they did seems like it would have gotten them fired anyway. the u.s. is 52% right-wing, its just capitalist damage control.
the line of his that irritates me the most is this:
> all of america is complicit in this ideological double speak
so let me try and break this down:
all americans believe that everyone fired deserved it or should have expected it.
therefore, the government fired them.
if we're all in agreement, why would we need our government to do it? wouldn't their bosses be happy to? wouldn't our tens of thousands of complaint letters help?
the author sees a house on fire, with a can of petrol and a box of matches sitting in the lawn, and somehow comes to the conclusion that a jet came by and hit it with napalm.
just so i don't sound unreasonable, here is what would convince me of government censorship:
when a c-span commentator or producer gets fired for something they say or allow to be shown on there.
since c-span is non-profit, and not funded by the government, they have nothing to lose from saying unpopular things, and they often do.
> ...Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Peter Arnett, probably America's most famous television war correspondent, was fired by NBC [...] on March 31st, 2003, roughly a week after the war started, for saying this during an interview he gave to Iraqi state television:
> "The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan. Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces."
>"That is why now America is reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week, and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance now they are trying to write another war plan."
> That was it. He said: the flat truth. [...]
I believe this was his main argument. I don't see how he "deserved it or should have expected it."
PS. The CNN transcript is apparently censored (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/30/sprj.irq.arnett.transcript/).
Clarification: I believe this was the author's main argument. I don't see how Peter Arnett "deserved it or should have expected it."
tl;dr the whole article, but >>2 pretty much summed up my thoughts on the first part. As for Arnett, in an earlier age, he probably would have been charged for sedition for saying that. As it is, he was giving the enemy our war plans (of sorts), even if they were probably more opinion than hard fact. Either way, there is still no evidence the US government had anything to do with his firing. It's all just suspicion.
i think arnett should have been fired for giving an interview to organs of iraqi propaganda on american television while the u.s. was still at war with them. talking up the iraqi resistance was just inappropriate, like something howard stern would have said.
i still insist that the authors main point is that the u.s. government is conspiring to fire reporters that disagree with it.
i think this is asinine, and i repeat my earlier formulation:
the author sees a house on fire, with a can of petrol and a box of matches sitting in the lawn, and somehow comes to the conclusion that a jet came by and hit it with napalm.
I'll admit straight off that I didn't read the article, but one thing comes to mind: If the goverment is exerting pressure on the press, they wouldn't do so directly. It would be far subtler, and with the complex relationship between the media and the government, there are many much less obvious channels to exert pressure, without ever doing anything that is actually incriminating.
Of course no government official would ever ask a newspaper or TV channel to fire a journalist - but the editor would know that if they displeased the government, there would be reprecussions later on. For instance, the media to some extent relies on the government to feed them information through press conferences and the like. That's one way they are reliant on the good will of the government.
I'm not saying this is happening any more or any less now than under any other administration, though.
>> 8
glad to see you're on the side of rationality waha.
in some countries, the government actually does directly censor the press, and fire jouranlists! in my own mother russia this was true until recently.
perhaps some day this will be true in america. at the moment though, all the u.s. government does is register its displeasure. so what!
if the news organization wants a radical, left-wing bent, they should be proud of the government's displeasure. if they want to seem moderate, then people like these should probably be reprimanded anyway.