In a 1789 letter to the British philosopher Richard Price, Thomas Jefferson observed that “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.” By that standard, it’s no longer clear that the American electorate is equipped for the task. Jefferson was, of course, an ardent advocate of a free press whose primary function would be to provide the voters with enough information about the government’s actions to assess the soundness of its policies. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that he would dignify today’s corporate media with the appellation “free press.”
Jefferson’s definition of the term would not, for example, apply to “news” organizations that collude with government officials to suppress debate on important national issues such as the COVID-19 lockdowns. Nor would it include the major broadcast networks that collectively refuse to report a major government-censorship scandal like the Twitter Files. This kind of story is why First Amendment protections for the press exist. They allow honest journalists to report government skulduggery without fear of retaliation....
The dereliction of duty by these networks deprives millions of voters of information they need in order to assess the character of the man who lives in the White House and the powerful security state over which he presides. The broadcast networks are hardly unique in their failure to keep the public informed. Their print counterparts have been equally negligent....
The corporate media has, for all intents and purposes, adopted the White House’s talking points....
The faithful guardians of “our democracy” in the Fourth Estate are obviously more interested in protecting our president than in fulfilling their primary function of keeping the public informed....