No More Fear Since Bush Is Gone!
Did you know that there is more freedom of press in Finland & the Czech Republic than it is in the United States? Our first amendment rights have slowly been slipping away in this country under George Bush. There have been other presidents who have tried to manipulate the news, for sure. During the time George Bush has been in office, he has controlled how he would interact with the media. What he has done is largely ignore the media & treat them as if they were a nuisance.According to The Punch:
“The US (53rd, 13.00) has slipped nine places since last year, after occupying 17th position in the maiden ranking carried out in 2002. The assessor attributed the dwindling fortune of the press freedom in the US to the frosty relationship between the media and President George Bush after the latter acted under the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.”
This was further compounded by the refusal of US federal courts, unlike those in 33 states, to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.
For instance, Reporters Without Borders observed that a freelance journalist and blogger, Josh Wolf, was imprisoned when he refused to hand over his video archives. Sudanese cameraman, Sami al- Haj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, has been detained without trial at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, since 2002, and Associated Press photographer, Bilal Hussein, has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April 2008.”(End of Excerpt) Read the whole article here:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art20081120231498
Not surprisingly, China was one of the 10 worst violators of freedom of press.They just made it legal for their reporters to cover natural disasters truthfully in 2005,after all.Talk about draconian laws, China’s got them. But, according to Reuters:
“The Chinese government has started to loosen its control on the negative information,” an academic source close to propaganda authorities told Reuters.
“They are trying to control the news by publicizing the news,” said the source, who declined to be named.”(End of Excerpt) Read the rest here:http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4AJ1VF20081120
My hope is that Obama will restore the freedom of press in this country. It is on a steady decline,most noticeably under the reign of George Bush. Instead of reporting what’s really going on around the world, we get news organizations that all show the same information almost in perfect synchronicity. I’m not kidding,either. I tend to channel surf & I switch from CNN to MSNBC to FOX. More often than not,they are all covering the same stories as if there isn’t much going on in the world. You can tell that the news is controlled in the United States. This video that I included from Democracy Now really breaks it down.
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Things That Make Me Like America 