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When I started teaching in the late sixties, I used to tell my young students: our democracy has a safeguard, an independent press that safeguards us from become like authoritarian states where the government owns the press. Who knew that sometime around the Reagan years, our press would become the cheerleading end of the government. I was discouraged then; despondent and depressed now. In 2000, I watched with horror as a well paid press core became cheerleaders for W; gleefully trashed Al Gore.
I was stunned with the press core did not work to uncover the W who abandoned his post, while sitting back and watched a Vietnam vet be smeared. I knew the press disliked the Clintons; the disdain for Bill's poor roots in Arkansas was not even hidden.
And now, in 2008, it is 1984.
A press core campaigning for their own personal preferences; covering for criminality in government; and living their lives as a part of an oligarchy. Clearly they no longer safeguard democracy. Now they safeguard their and their friends lifestyles.
