Having the the Freedom of Speech is a God-Given right, guaranteed by the Constitution. And so is the Freedom of the Press.
It does not allow someone to scream “FIRE” in a crowded theater. Nor does it permit a journalist to get on TV and make patently false, unsubstantiated statements, knowing that his or her bully pulpit is a powerful medium from which people expect to hear the truth.
But week after week, liberal journalists do exactly that.
Most recently, Margaret Brennan of CBS News made a blatant falsehood, and expected to get it by Marco Rubio unchallenged. She claimed that free speech was “weaponized” in Germany to carry out the Holocaust, as she claimed Vice President JD Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he criticized European leaders for censorship and said “the threat from within,” rather than Russia or China, posed the greatest danger to the security of the West.
She assumed that her statement would just get by without comment. But she underestimated Secretary Rubio.
“Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion? We are, after all, democracies,” Rubio replied. “And so, I think if anyone’s angry about his words, they don’t have to agree with him, but to be angry about it, I think actually makes his point."
Brennan then offered a historically dubious and weak response.
“Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups,” she said. “The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that.”
Rubio was quick to criticize her flawed logic. “No, I have, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they, they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews.”
Perhaps the media in general, and CBS in particular, need to go back to journalism school and learn the difference between real facts and the reporter’s interpretation of those same facts to make a statement as if that were the truth.
It is not a CBS issue; recently, ABC settled a lawsuit with Donald Trump because its “ace interviewer”, George Stephanopoulos decided to accuse the now-President of a crime of which he knew Trump was found not guilty. And it paid the price. And soon, the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris will be settled for a hefty sum, too.
The lesson that the legacy media needs to learn is that it has become untrustworthy to deliver fair and truthful news to the population at large. We recognize that we all have opinions and can sometimes seep into what is being said. But presently, there is no attempt to PREVENT this.
The pendulum is swinging in an alternative direction, where Americans will get the news from an unbiased source. Until the legacy media learns this, ratings will continue to fall and so will corporate profits.
The press, like guns, has changed dramatically since 1787. And both require that responsible people are held to the changing dynamic that 21st century society requires.
It is time to hold the media accountable for violating the same trust we hold law-abiding gun owners to. The trust that those who speak the words across public airwaves understand that those words are as powerful as the bullets from a forty-five caliber handgun or AR-15.
To quote some wise men from a different time who offered our generation of Americans some real guidance:
“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.” - Ben Franklin
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." And, "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." Thomas Jefferson
It is up to those who have the power of the media to exercise the wisdom to speak freely, but truthfully, or the trust we have in it will certainly be lost forever.
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