Obama’s Loss of the Press

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
– Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson hated newspapers, yet he would not see us without them. The thought of news organizations who would not report things the government did not want the citizenry told. Now, the Obama administration is seeking to ostracize a news organization for their opinion programming (they mistakenly call the opinion programs news programs). The truth is Fox News’ actual news programs are no more opinionated than CNN’s, MSNBC’s, or any other news organization’s. Now, the news organizations are circling the wagons. They rightly see that an attack on one of them, is an attack on all of them. An editorial in the Washington Post is equating the Obama administration’s actions as being similar to a third world dictator’s. When the Obama administration tried to get the national press pool to exclude Fox on a series of interviews with one of their staffers, they conferred and unanimously said no.

It is this kind of behavior on the part of the Obama administration that worries conservatives. We elected a President, not a dictator or king. The President’s powers are supposed to be limited. Yet, this administration seems to be always pushing to expand and control them. President Obama ran on a platform of inclusion, bipartisanship and transparency. Yet, we see him trying to exclude the opposition while steamrolling over their legitimate concerns and insisting on trying to ram through massive pieces of legislation without enough time for our representatives and the public to view them and voice their concerns. I hope that he will choose to change course and be a little more inclusive than he has been on major legislation.