What is the most spectacularly mis-named far left activist group in America? Hands down winner is Free Press, the organizational vehicle for the Neo-Marxist American college professor who cheered Hugo Chavez when the Venzuelan thug strangled the free press in that suffering nation.
Robert McChesney founded Free Press eight years ago and has been in the forefront of a proliferating movement on the far left to do to the U.S. media what Chavez and other left-wing dictators always do, which is take over the news media and convert it to propaganda outlets for their dictatorial regimes.
If you doubt me, check out these quotes from McChesney culled by The Daily Caller’s Mike Riggs:
“Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism.”
“The news is not a commercial product. It is a public good, necessary for a self-governing society. Once we accept this, we can talk about the kind of media policies and subsidies we want.”
“In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”
Nobody can seriously believe that a guy who thinks like that will have an iota of respect for the First Amendment and this country’s cherished freedom of the press.
I’ve been reporting and writing for several weeks about the FTC’s “Reinventing Journalism” campaign, which is the Obama administration’s initiative for nationalizing the news media, much as was done to General Motors and Chrysler were. As I reported last week, and continued this week, a “draft discussion”paper allegedly prepared by FTC staff is the current focus of the effort.
Riggs makes a convincing case for the proposition that McChesney’s fingerprints are all over the FTC staff working paper. And, as the three quote above make clear, that ought to stir worry, anger and resolve in everybody who believes a democratic republic must have an independent press to hold the feet of elected and appointed government officials to the fire of accountability.
Quite frankly, what McChesney and the Reinventing Journalism crowd are seeking to do to the First Amendment and the free press makes the Alien & Sedition Acts pale by comparison. Journalists had better wake up before its too late and start a tea party movement in the newsroom.
The danger of the FTC effort is already clear to the vast majority of Americans, as seen in a new Rasmussen Report survey that found 85 percent of those surveyed oppose the idea of government “assistance” for the news media.
