OK, now I get it. Corporate control of the media is the same as free press,

but when people through their representatives make access to media available to the people of the land, that is totalitarianism. Do I have that right?

Corporate control is euphemized as "free enterprise" and so corporate control of the media is what defines "free press." Yeah, that's it. And people not only swallow that twisted reasoning, they regurgitate the same line as faith based gospel at every opportunity.

But when the people stand against the Corporations and take control of some portion the public airwaves through their political representatives, like PBS in it's early days, that is tyranny. Yup.

And slavery is freedom.

It really is just a matter, as always, of "which side are you on?" All the arguments about abstractions like "freedom" come down ultimately the question of "for whom?"

When Corporations and their hyper-rich agents control their media, they are free to use it to oppose whatever hurts their bottom line strategic interests and promote whatever profits them the most. Some call that "freedom of the press."

When the masses of people join together and take control over some portion of that media to provide broad local distributed access to those airways in service to their common human interests, others of us regard that as true "freedom of the press."

It really is that simple. Which side are you on?

government constraint, including those perspectives you may personally disagree with. Let the marketplace, rather than strong-armed tyrants, sort out the "winners" and "losers".

The masses? Common human interests? Bah! I'm not sure how the hell are defined. If you prefer a populist approach, the only poll i've seen revealed that a majority of the Venezuelan public was opposed to Hugo's shuddering the doors on RCTV.

you might want to do some reading:
You'll need to go to part 5 for this one, but I recommend starting at the beginning. http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1.htm

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our
moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our
government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of
our country." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.

Seems Chavez has a lot more in common with Jeffersonian ideals than you. Your contempt for "The masses? Common human interests? Bah!" is consistent with your belief that the rich and powerful should control the media, because "the marketplace" is the only arbiter of right and wrong.

And that is exactly the "who benefits" question I, and apparently you, believe is at the core of this debate. Thank you.

You know nothing of my beliefs. I said nothing about corporate ownership of the press, only that the content expressed be free from government censor. I guess when all you have is a hammer...everything looks like a nail.

By the way...>

51. Freedom of the Press

A press that is free to investigate and criticize the government is absolutely essential in a nation that practices self-government and is therefore dependent on an educated and enlightened citizenry. On the other hand, newspapers too often take advantage of their freedom and publish lies and scurrilous gossip that could only deceive and mislead the people. Jefferson himself suffered greatly under the latter kind of press during his presidency. But he was a great believer in the ultimate triumph of truth in the free marketplace of ideas, and looked to that for his final vindication.


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"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and 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. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57
"The press the only tocsin of a nation. is completely silenced... all means of a general effort taken away." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802. (*) ME 10:341

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491

"The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

"The most effectual engines for are the public papers... government always a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632

"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.

"I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78

"The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Paganel, 1811. ME 13:37

"The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world... And while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his course." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. ME 15:465

"The art of printing alone and the vast dissemination of books will maintain the mind where it is and raise the conquering ruffians to the level of the conquered instead of degrading these to that of their conquerors." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1821. ME 15:334

" literati half a dozen years before us. Books, really good, acquire just reputation in that time, and so become known to us and communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is not this delay compensated by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of nonsensical publications which issues daily from a thousand presses and perishes almost in issuing?" --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Bellini, 1785. ME 5:153, Papers 8:569

"I cannot live without books." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1815. ME 14:301

"To preserve the freedom of the human mind... and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement." Thomas Jefferson to William Green Munford, 1799.

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804. ME 11:33

"Weighing all probabilities of expense as well as of income, there is reasonable ground of confidence that we may now safely dispense with... the postage on newspapers... to facilitate the progress of information." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Annual Message, 1801. ME 3:331

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1600.htm

always talks of the importance of the people's many views being expressed, and denounced monopoly of the press by big money. You disagree with him, and if you read those quotes, you disagree with every one of them. Your loyalty to big money is consistent with your blindness to Jefferson's clear words, because no honest democrat could defend the concentration of media in corporate hands, to be used for profit instead of the the common good, something you clearly regard as a contemptible goal. And something Jefferson regarded as the highest duty of any government.

As I said, it is about which side you are on, any you have made that clear.

(edit to add a few words)

I think it's fair to say that one of the benefits of government is to control the degree of extremes that the powerful get to exercise over those in their control. After all, I always thought we created government to keep us from being devoured by lions and evil creatures. Edit- That didn't come across right. What I'm trying to say is that governing...I'm going to have to continue this at a later date. It's just not going to come out. Darn.

I really cannot wait for the day when spin is dead.

Common sense says that...well, you said it best. And as a result of the high powered spin, I see millions of willing receptors soaking in the lies.




The least we could require is that a station spend equal time telling the truth as well as the lies.

There'd be a lot of night shift workers wondering why the hell the revolution hasn't started, though. lol

We, the people, are forced to fight the media, when it should be the media fighting "for" us.

The 5 Corporate media giants technically own our Democracy!

Freedom for the corporate press is not what Thomas Jefferson was refering to, but that is where we are.

"Democrats consider the people as the safest depository of power
in the last resort; they cherish them, therefore, and wish to
leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are
competent." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1825.

"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people; whose
rights, however, to the exercise and fruits of their own industry
can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not
subject to their control at short periods... My most earnest wish
is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the
maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that
our government may be pure and perpetual." --Thomas Jefferson to
Isaac H. Tiffany, 1816.

Sounds like a commie subversive to many who post on DU, it seems. Like Chavez or Sheehan or MLK or Moore or even Palast. And for sure he had more in common with Engels than the owners of the "free market" media. 50-60 years before the Paris Commune, but there is no question about whether he would have allied himself with the Communards or the aristocracy.

Humans love money and power and fame, hasn't changed ever. The only real truth is we either regulate our corporations and all the mechanisms for making profit or we die as the corporations move on to the next consumer for money.

The press love money and fame. Some of those assholes love the power too. They are as sick as Cheney and neglect informing the consumers. Well, enough misinformation mixed in with information - most of it trivial.

Gotta make money. CNN. Foxnews.

It is no better or worse. It is as bad.

The people have not done this, one man has used the government of the people to do this, he has twisted the best parts of Venezuelans, abused their greater passions in life, and this is what he has produced.

If the Venezuelan people did not like RCTV, they could simply turn it off or flip the channel, it's not the only broadcast network in Venezuela. They don't get that choice now, because the government turned it off "for them".

It shows a lack of faith in the people, not a confidence in them. It says their government feels the people of Venezuela are not intelligent enough to make their own political decisions.

welcome to bedlam, coffee and donuts to the left... :evilgrin: