"Um, Yes, We Want To Know Secrets, But, Um, Which Ones?"
Right after it was revealed that the National Security Agency is paying phone companies for copies of all of their customers' phone records, using them to look for "patterns" to help them fight terrorism, the Washington Post took a poll and found that 56% said "it was appropriate for the news media to have disclosed the existence of this secret government program."
I took this stat from Tim Rutten's media column in Saturday's LA Times. Rutten makes the case that, really, it is up to the people to decide, but gives a great deal of credit to the press as a sort of clearinghouse for what people are to know about government.
Thing is, as much as Rutten tries to objectively detail today's conditions of information dissemination, he doesn't admit that he and the media is a critical part of what the government does. He may even think he is an unbias reporter, sworn to serve the public as a check against tyrannical government, but he is actually a pawn in Caesar's vast administrative operation.
He even closes his piece with this comment: "Americans place a higher value on a free press than do the lock-step partisans in the chattering class." Oh, Tim? You're a "free presser" and not a "chatterer"? Really, typical Joe American trusts you, Tim, because you do such a splendid job of saying you're the objective one, that you're above it all and can know what to say and what not to say, and know that for the rest of us as well.
I wonder, what secrets are okay for the press to release? Which ones are not okay? Will you take a poll by sharing all of the secrets you know about and then asking which ones are okay to publish? And when you do, how do you know you're not just asking a bunch from a particular partisan chattering class?
I may be a bit harsh on poor Tim Rutten. Perhaps it is true that he just doesn't know.
He just writes really well.
And in the Catholicist Nation, image is everything.
What is the Catholicist Nation? Check it out here.
I took this stat from Tim Rutten's media column in Saturday's LA Times. Rutten makes the case that, really, it is up to the people to decide, but gives a great deal of credit to the press as a sort of clearinghouse for what people are to know about government.
Thing is, as much as Rutten tries to objectively detail today's conditions of information dissemination, he doesn't admit that he and the media is a critical part of what the government does. He may even think he is an unbias reporter, sworn to serve the public as a check against tyrannical government, but he is actually a pawn in Caesar's vast administrative operation.
He even closes his piece with this comment: "Americans place a higher value on a free press than do the lock-step partisans in the chattering class." Oh, Tim? You're a "free presser" and not a "chatterer"? Really, typical Joe American trusts you, Tim, because you do such a splendid job of saying you're the objective one, that you're above it all and can know what to say and what not to say, and know that for the rest of us as well.
I wonder, what secrets are okay for the press to release? Which ones are not okay? Will you take a poll by sharing all of the secrets you know about and then asking which ones are okay to publish? And when you do, how do you know you're not just asking a bunch from a particular partisan chattering class?
I may be a bit harsh on poor Tim Rutten. Perhaps it is true that he just doesn't know.
He just writes really well.
And in the Catholicist Nation, image is everything.
What is the Catholicist Nation? Check it out here.
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