The Balkan Yankee

Freedom of the Press is suppose to mean that we access to the full and best information without government censorship or restrictions. We decry instances of censorship by the governments of China, Iran, or Cuba and hold up our system of constitutionally protected press as a golden standard by which to judge fair and open from closed and oppressive.

Even those less cynical than me would admit our system isn’t perfect. For example, conflict of interest can sometimes arise between journalistic interests and corporate interests. Or, the encroachment of entertainment driven broadcasting into our traditional news outlets.

Most people think that it’s not that bad and  at the end of the day our system is pretty good and better than anywhere else in the world. But is it?

CNN recently conducted a 30 minute interview with Vladimir Putin. ou wouldn’t have found that transcript unless you searched for it, and they didn’t air it on TV. Apparently, they just decided to edit it down into sound bites.  I’d encourage you all to read both the links.

So, what’s the big deal? They did publish the full transcript on their website and the information is still available to those of us who care to search for it, right?

CNN took a powerful interview which at the very least would offer challenge to the popular American assessment of Russia’s actions in Georgia, and its ambitions in the world, and they turned it sound bites they could use to continue driving the narrative they’d already written. The result is still a largely misinformed public. A public no closer to understanding the recent conflict, and no closer to understanding the country which will play an increasingly large role on the global scene.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if it was completely censored or not. And it doesn’t matter if it was the government that did the censoring or a news outlet. The public’s opinion is being shaped.

The only silver lining is that we as individuals don’t have to worry too much yet about being hauled off by the FBI and sent to Gitmo for writing in our blogs.

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