Sunday, November 27, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: FREEDOM OF THE PRESS - AMERICA VERSUS RUSSIA


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER


As for American media, they are free, too.

Free, that is, to do as their very small number of large corporate owners dictate they should.

And I have yet to hear of a large American corporation which does not cooperate, hand in glove, with the government of the United States on a vast range of matters.

We saw the snowstorm of trash thrown at Trump by virtually every one of them, a relatively small version of what the last couple of years were like on the subject of President Putin.

And we are all aware of the stories of the ways Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and other (non-media) giants cooperate fully with the CIA and NSA as well as how they worked in many surreptitious ways against Trump during the election.

Anyone who believes in the integrity of corporate journalism is simply someone not worth paying any attention to. Such ignorance and naivete disqualify anything they might say.

I think still the best statement ever made on American journalism is the one that says that to have a free press, you have to own one.