THE PRESS

IS IT MORE FREE THAN WE?

 

TPATH REMARKS

January 25, 2019

 

There was a very dangerous period of time when this young nation, not yet quite free of an oppressive empire, when the Founders were not just contemplating what the new government would look like but wondering if they would live long enough to configure and implement it.

 

Having lived through decades of subjugation these men realized that in order to persevere the people needed to be informed and engaged. Without the people, there would be no revolution. Without the perceptiveness of the people, there would never be freedom.

 

When it came time to fine tune the Constitution with the Bill of Rights the thing that weighed most heavily on their collective minds was the dire need to protect free speech without the fear of government retribution.  Not just correspondence between the Founders but the writings in the Federalist Papers expatiate that concern.

 

Reading some of the Founder’s remarks about the press, they understood even at that time, that journalists were not the pillars of virtue.  Flush with that concern, they considered a government in control of the press to be unacceptable. It seems likely, however, they did not fail to regard the reverse. More on that later.  

 

Many people and so called scholars who have studied the Bill of Rights believe that the Founders wrote the First Amendment in such a way that the press was given extraordinary rights to free speech, even beyond that of the common man. This is patently false.

 

It is true they made mention of the press by including it in the wording. It is clear they wanted to make certain that the press, as an entity, was included in that protection, equally with the people. It was not given any additional power or purpose. A careful reading of the First Amendment will make that clear.

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

 

The text “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press” does not provide additional or greater rights to free speech than that of the people. It merely includes the press, almost as an afterthought. Note that it is the people who are referenced first.   

 

Therefore the press has no more right than does any individual to say, print or post anything they desire.  Even people like Julian Assange cannot be denied the right to free speech if the press is not so deterred.  

 

Any law that Congress has made which gives the press more freedom than any citizen, is unconstitutional.  Remember, the people were mentioned ahead of the press and there is no expression giving the press special or extraordinary rights.

 

This not to say that people or the press should be allowed to steal and then publish secret government documents. Laws prohibiting that are constitutional but if the press is given a pass and permitted to do this and an individual is not, that is unconstitutional.

 

The Founders may well have been aware of the dangers of a runaway press and therefore intentionally did not give them special rights above those of the people. Even if they did not foresee the peril that an all powerful press could present to liberty and freedom, we certainly do now.  

 

We have a press which is not controlled by the government. Wonderful! But what we do have is worse or at least as bad. We have a press that controls the government and by extension, the people. By usurping the Constitution and assuming power not afforded to it, the press has become the unelected enemy of the people.

 

How much more of this will the people take before we take action?  The longer we delay the more perilous the fight.  As did our Founders, we must fight the oppressors, even if we may not live to see the end of them.