The Enemy Within - Nat Hentoff - V V

[groovedaddy]

Nat Hentoff – Village Voice
The Enemy Within
Journalists, under fire today by the Bush White House, have been the enemy before
by Nat Hentoff
January 21st, 2007 3:06 PM
can say, as a matter of first principle, that unauthorized disclosure of classified information has actually led to the death of individuals had this information not been inappropriately put into the public domain.
Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, New York Daily News, December 1, 2006
What we're really looking at is the criminalization of investigative reporting in this country, and we're on a very slippery slope that we're already starting to slide down.
Brian Ross, investigative reporter, ABC News, PEN Press Freedom Petition to Congress, National Press Club, September 28, 2006
The Government's power to censor the press was abolished . . . by the Founding Fathers . . . so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government.
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, New York Times Company v. United States (1971), "Pentagon Papers" case.
________________________________________
In the more than half a century I've been a reporter, there has never been as systematic an operation to intimidate and then silence the press as is now taking place under the Bush-Cheney-Gonzales administration. Along with a sharp increase in subpoenas for reporters' notes and telephone records, there are threats of prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917 for reporting such classified information as the president's secret authorization of the National Security Agency's warrantless secret authorization of the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping on us.
Adding to the shroud of secrecy, Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department has convinced a number of judges to close down cases before they're heard in a courtroom, lest "state secrets" concerning national security be revealed by the press to the public.
Paul McMasters, the First Amendment Center's ombudsman, makes the necessary point that "while the First Amendment protects the press from overt government censorship, it can't fully protect the press from full-time government hostility or part-time citizen apathy."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0704,hentoff,75597,2.html

[peacetalksforall]

1. We all speak about the secret energy meetsings of Cheney and

the future corporate benefactors of the invasion of Iraq.

Our oversight investigators need to look into the secret meetings that obviously took place between the Republican Party and corporations who are politically controlling the news we get, the slant they want us to have, and the exclusion of coverage that forms a war against the citizens all on its own.

These secret meetings took place over several White House administrations. The oversight committee can look at the communications of this administration with the corporate networks. Though the set-up and installation was already in place - there is ongoing communication directing the corporate networks by emphasis, omission, extent.

(We also know how they stack the deck of guests to create immbalance in their favor. They're delivery is notorious for ridiculing, demeaning, laughing, and sending messages by physical body language signals of eye-rolling and disapproval. But we also know that this is just poor breaches of civic and social behavior beneath the dignity of the profession).

We need to bring things to a pinnacle. These corporate networks must either admit that they are political arms of the Republican Party or our law-makers need to look into the breach of the tenet of our Constitutuion - that the press is there to expose the government, not protect one political party and its operatives in high offices.

"The Government's power to censor the press was abolished . . . by the Founding Fathers . . . so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government."

[BridgeTheGap]

2. Some feel it's the other way around...

"These corporate networks must either admit that they are political arms of the Republican Party or our law-makers need to look into the breach of the tenet of our Constitutuion - that the press is there to expose the government, not protect one political party and its operatives in high offices."

As in: the G.O.P. is the political arm of these corporations.

[peacetalksforall]

3. You're right. But, it is still all arranged in secret so we can't be sure.

My picture of the heirarchy is:

Barons - multi-national groups of them
Foundations - Think Tanks
Corporations - Lobbying firms
Intelligence agencies and Military
Face politicians who perpetuate the myth of office holding and elections by citizens - the WH and staff and all the operatives who put them in place - the RNCs, the DLCs.

All of the above have an ever increasing effect on judges, courts, lawyers, and government dealings at the federal, state, country, local civic level and the schools.

The Republican Party targeted these areas long ago and have been and are still grooming people for those jobs.