The Governor of Alaska continues her war against the media:
“This is for the sake of our democracy that there is fairness in this other branch of government, if you will, called the media,” she said. “It is foreign to me the way some in the mainstream media are thinking.”
This isn’t the first time that Palin has demonstrated a strange understanding of the role of the press in our Constitutional system. Back in before the election, she said this:
ABC News’ Steven Portnoy reports: In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by “attacks” from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama’s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate’s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”
As I noted at the time the plain language of the First Amendment says something different:
Nothing in there about private entities, and nothing that says that a politician like Palin can say what they want without having to be held accountable for it by an independent, even critical media.
You see Governor, that’s what the whole freedom of the press thing is all about. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that you get to say whatever you want without anyone criticizing you for it.
Apparently, she’s still too thin-skined to get that.
You need to get out more. The Press is often referred to as the fourth branch of government. She said “this other branch of government, IF YOU WILL” which clearly showed she wasn’t somehow confused, as you try to make her out.
And how does her fear for our First Amendment Rights make sense to somebody who isn’t just trying in a knee-jerk manner to condemn her? Our right to free speech isn’t worth much if the entire mainstream media condemns you and says you are using “hate speech” and attack ads. Sure, you have the right to say it, but nobody will for fear of being branded hateful and an attacker. She was trying to get the MSM to back off and quit being so judgmental, maybe let the people decide for themselves, instead of being in the tank for Obama. Makes perfect sense to this guy with no axe to grind against her.
By definition, the press cannot be a “threat” to our First Amendment rights.
There’s nothing in the FA that says that the media has to be unbiased and, for a long time in American history, the media of the day (newspapers) were openly and viciously partisan. Compared to the 1800s and the Civil War period, today’s media is a model of objectivity.
And I get nervous whenever I hear politicians talking about making the media more “fair”
That’s not their job.