While I'm not a great fan of Rush's...when I read about something like this, it gets me to worrying...especially the following quote: “But here is the bottom line – the media shield law, which I am prepared to support, and I know Sen. Graham supports, still leaves an unanswered question, which I have raised many times: What is a journalist today in 2013? We know it’s someone that works for Fox or AP, but does it include a blogger? Does it include someone who is tweeting? Are these people journalists and entitled to constitutional protection? We need to ask 21st century questions about a provision that was written over 200 years ago.”
Those who read this blog (at least the three or four of you that do...chuckle) know what my views on various issues are, but being a journalist? What is the definition of "journalist"? Well, according to WWW.dictionary.reference.com:
And journalism is defined as:
the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business.
So in the very sense of the definition of the word, I am not a "journalist". But then the question is why go after bloggers and tweeters? I go back to the blog entry that I quoted above:
What is the purpose of a blog? The official term for a blog is "web log"
where a person puts down his thoughts in a log (a type of journal) for
other people to read, to learn and maybe even to discuss. You might have
figured that back in the old Reformation days, Luther would have put
his "95 Theses" on a blog rather than on a church door...(or Jefferson doing the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln the Gettysburg Address, Dr. King with the "I have a dream speech", etc...).But if a
person is restricted from writing down what is on their minds then you
begin to go on the road to censorship and restriction. You begin to go
to a totalitarian society where all speech is forbidden unless it is
approved by a board. You could have imagined in the 30's and 40's if
blogs were around; Hitler's Gestapo or Stalin's KGB going after blogs,
where the blog writer dares to say something against the state or
against the leader.
So the question is-Is a person free to write about their own thoughts and experiences where people could possibly learn something that helps them in their lives or we going to become "blog sheep" just saying "Baaa..." or whatever the party line is.... Is it freedom for all or freedom for just chosen people?
So the question is-Is a person free to write about their own thoughts and experiences where people could possibly learn something that helps them in their lives or we going to become "blog sheep" just saying "Baaa..." or whatever the party line is.... Is it freedom for all or freedom for just chosen people?
That paragraph keeps echoing in my head because yesterday we celebrated a holiday in which we honored those who died for our freedom and the freedom of others...Did they do it in vain? Are we going to allow the sacrifice of so many be cancelled out because of a few that object to what is being said in blogs and tweets? Or is this still the land of the free and home of the brave? If we live in a land of freedom for all, should that freedom extend to all? Or should we borrow from the Lincoln quote:
"When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic]."
"When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic]."
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