Letters to the Editor
cestmoi123
Published Letters: 235 Editor's Choice: 8
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@Che Pasa, @Sinnard
[Read the article: Israel imposes a 10-year ban on American critic of Israeli policies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@ Che Pasa
If Israel really doesn't have nukes, then its security is dependent on conventional superiority over forces much larger than its own. The viability of the IDF's conventional capability is heavily dependent on continued supply from the West, particularly the US. Were those military supplies to be cut off, Israel would face a major conventional military deficit vs. the Arab world, and history shows that the Arab world would likely attempt to take advantage of that. By possessing nukes, Israel changes that equation, by forcing Arab rulers to take their own personal survival into account when calculating the impact of trying to drive Israel into the sea. While some might not care, expect virgins galore in the afterlife, the more pragmatic (read Assad) are obviously quite attached to the here and now.
While it could all be a major bluff, the evidence (as interpreted by people across the spectrum of views of Israel) seems to be very much in favor of Israel's actual possession of nuclear weapons.
@Chris Sinnard: The IAEA is very far from considering Iran's nuclear program to be A-OK.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/world/middleeast/27iran.html
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This is absolutely a free press
[Read the article: CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Free press means that you get to publish what you want (outside of outright libel). It doesn't mean that you or I get to dictate what someone else publishes. Our recourse, if we don't like the output of a certain media organization, is to not watch it, or to put up a contrary argument, unless of course you think that the folks at Fox should be able to say "that Greenwald guy, he doesn't reflect enough conservative voices, so we need to be able to edit his blog."
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@Glenn
[Read the article: CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, you're missing the point. A free press doesn't guarantee anyone (including the employees you mention) the right to have a platform for his views to be heard. If you decided to make every single column a screed about how evil Joan Walsh is, and how every person who buys a Salon subscription is an idiot, with detailed instructions on how to block Salon's ads and picket Joan's house, she'd be entirely in line in firing you.
The employees you cite were clearly unhappy with the companies they were working for - they were free to protest, or quit. There is ZERO obligation for ABC, or NBC, or any company to say "well, Mr./Ms. Employee, you aren't doing the job we want you to do, but that's OK, do whatever you want, we'll keep paying you." If you work at McDonalds, and refuse to sell cheeseburgers, you get fired. If you work for a media company, and refuse to produce the content that the company management wants produced, same thing.
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@Jim White
[Read the article: CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your math is a bit off. If your dad really did make $35k/year in 1973, and he was the sole household earner, that would have put your family somewhere around the 97th-99th percentile - the very top end of the income scale. Median household income that year was about $10,500.
So, if Cronkite had gotten $1MM/year, he would have gotten about 100x the median family, not 15-30x. A smaller multiple than Couric (15MM/42k=357k)? Yes, but not an order of magnitude smaller.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/ie1.html
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@Glenn
[Read the article: CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, you're making my point. My deal with Salon is that I have full and complete editorial freedom to write whatever I want to write with no limitations, directions or interference -- a commitment they've honored in full. That's because I would only write somewhere where I was free to express whatever views I wanted. Those who aren't free to do so aren't practicing free journalism, which is the point.
I don't know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that Salon offered you that deal because they knew what you write, and knew that, unless you decided to make a complete 180, your content would be pleasing to Salon's target readership. In other words, the fact that you were offered that freedom is because Salon wasn't concerned that you'd actually USE it.
Unfree journalism means being prevented from reporting political facts or expressing political views -- not being prevented from giving instructions on how people can physically attack others.
I never said physically attack others, or anything of the sort (picketing is protected speech, btw), and claiming that the only criterion for journalistic freedom is in the political realm is a very limited view, but whatever you prefer.
Media organizations receive all sorts of special privileges from the Government, and in return, owe public duties. They use public airwaves. They receive all kinds of constitutional and legal deference that no other industries receive. The premise of all of that is that they serve a public interest beyond just profit maximization. If they want to claim that they should be totally unlimited in doing what they want and be allowed just to make profit, then they should renounce those pubic benefits and stop telling the public that they are there to practice journalism.
Two points:
1. Sounds great to me. I'm all for auctioning the broadcast airwaves off to the highest bidder - giving them free to broadcasters is a collossal waste of a scarce resource that could be put to much better use.
2. Once we've dropped the free spectrum the broadcasters get, what do we do about all the other media, like cable channels? It seems that the remedies are worse than the problem - do we go back to the fairness doctrine, and dictate what an appropriate balance of views is? If we're going to do that with cable TV, which doesn't get gov't subsidy or free spectrum, then why not do it to Internet sites that are carried along exactly the same cable pipes as TV programming? Do we need a board to tell Salon "you need to add Karl Rove's blog to offset Glenn's"? I would certainly hope not.