07-04-2017, 05:37 PM
(07-04-2017, 02:18 PM)Odin Wrote: Journalist Who Exposed The Racist Creator Of Trump’s CNN Tweet Gets Death Threats
The news media can show some spine and expose anyone who threatens journalists. A free press essential to the preservation of a Free Nation implies that journalists have a reasonable right to protection from physical threats . To that end the media have the obligation to expose anyone who seeks to intimidate journalists with threats to themselves and loved ones.
Criminal deeds have no right to privacy. The Internet has been understood to be a wide-open frontier, much like the legendary Wild West... But even in the Wild West there were some rules -- statutory laws, of course. (Note that in the 'Wild West' there were places like Nebraska and Utah where there was little tolerance for personal violence and other crime).
We are beginning to realize under the Trump Presidency how shaky liberty can be. Liberty itself depends upon some fundamental decencies that do not exist under tyranny. One is a general rejection of violence. So someone exposes scummy behavior by an allegedly-anonymous creep? When the politicians and their tawdriest enablers decide what the media say, we no longer have freedom.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.