10 October 1997

RESOLVED: The free press in America is not free. Is hasn’t been for several decades. Instead, it is held hostage by the liberal ideology espoused by an ever increasing number of its membership.

Polls and studies conducted during the ’94 Congressional races – and again during the ’96 Presidential campaign – revealed that more than 90 percent of journalists identified themselves as democrats, most of whom openly embrace liberalism while simultaneously claiming it has no bearing on their coverage of political issues. To hear them tell it, their coverage of the Clinton administration – arguably the most corrupt in the history of American politics – has been even-handed and fair.

Yeah. Right. Want to compare and contrast their handling of Watergate to Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater, Paula Jones, cattle futures, the selling of the Lincoln Bedroom, draft dodging, Buddhist temple fund raising, Vince Foster, etc., etc., ad infinitum? A single issue brought Nixon down. Hell, one of his best and brightest did prison time for the mishandling of a single FBI file, yet when the Clinton administration admitted having hundreds of FBI files on their political enemies it was explained away as "an honest mistake". And the American press led the charge against Nixon. For many months the front page of every major American newspaper, the lead story of every network television newscast, was Watergate. It was tenacious. Unrelenting. Some might even say downright mean-spirited. The media made no secret of its antipathy for "Tricky Dick".

Not so Clinton. Nixon’s hounds of hell have transmogrified into subservient, docile lap dogs.

The American people deserve better. They used to have better, as this stroll through the historical antecedents of our Constitution’s 1^st Amendment will demonstrate.

The invention of the printing press ushered in a paroxysm of legal rulings concerning libel. As early as 1606, a British "Star Chamber" ruled that a libel (a printed lie – as opposed to slander, which is a spoken lie) against a private person could be punished criminally because it might provoke revenge and a breach of the peace. And the chamber went on to say that any libel against a government official was an even greater offense "for it concerns not only the breach of the peace, but also the scandal of government." But here’s where it gets interesting: the ruling declared that, in the instance of libels against government officials, truth or falsity was not material. The reputation of the government was paramount. (Sounds like Clintonian philosophy.) Thus, the doctrine of "seditious (disobedient, mutinous) libel" was born.

For decades afterward, the British Parliament struggled with the Crown to guarantee freedom of speech – to its own members. In 1668 the House of Lords finally declared that seditious words uttered in Parliament could not be punished in court. The common folk, however, had still best watch their words – and writings. In 1704 a British Chief Justice strengthened the seditious libel doctrine when he ruled that "a reflection on government" must be punished because, "if people should not be called to account for possessing the people with an ill opinion of the government, no government can subsist. For it is very necessary for all governments that the people should have a good opinion of it."

For two centuries, disgruntled British subjects were jailed, fined, and whipped for having the audacity to disagree with their government. And the truth of what they said or wrote, far from being a legitimate defense, was held to be even more damning, because that would cast the government’s reputation in an even worse light – and nothing was more sacred to the Empire than its reputation.

Enter one John Peter Zenger. The year is 1734 and Zenger, in his "Weekly Journal", prints a criticism of the Governor General of New York. The governor, being less than amused, has Zenger imprisoned for seditious libel. Unable to post the high bail, Zenger languishes in jail for nearly a year before his case comes to trial. His lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, convinces the jury that Zenger merely wrote the truth – and that TRUTH ought to be a legitimate defense against libel. The jury agreed and voted to acquit.

That trial became a cornerstone of the free speech/free press clause of the 1^st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – a clause designed to ensure that no American would ever have to fear speaking, writing, or revealing the truth.

Understand, however, that the 1^st Amendment was never intended to protect those who would distort the truth. But that’s what it has come to. The bulk of today’s "journalists" hide behind the obelisk of press freedom while they obfuscate, cloud and distort the truth, presenting only one side (the liberal one) of any given issue, purporting to hold the moral high ground, and – on those occasions where they are found out – refusing any responsibility for real objectivity as having a "chilling effect" on their absolute freedom to dissemble. That’s not the type of freedom the founding fathers had in mind. That’s a far cry from the freedom to speak the truth that the founding fathers pledged "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to defend.

Can you imagine what would happen to President and Mrs. Clinton’s reputation were the media to do the job on them that they did on Nixon? No way would the man have ever been elected, much less reelected. The First Lady would probably be in jail over the cattle futures deal alone. Virtually everyone involved in the Whitewater fiasco has been indicted, most are doing prison time. The administration’s landscape is littered with indictments, convictions, and obvious cover-ups.

Yet the press yawns. They aren’t interested in pursuing any possible connection. The Lippo group? Chinese money laundering? Not interested. They’re too busy hounding Newt Gingrich, who paid a huge fine for using PAC money to fund a college course called "Renewing American Civilization" – because it was alleged to be "politically motivated" (translate "conservative"). What he did was not declared illegal – only unethical. Of course no liberal professor, flush with federal funding, would ever dream of injecting politics into his or her coursework. Naaahhhhh.

The difference is obvious. Newt was censured by his ideological soul mates. So, ultimately, was Nixon. Seems conservatives don’t tolerate even the appearance of impropriety among their own. If only the liberals could find a similar soul, a comparable conscience.

No, today’s press can’t be bothered with the arcane notion of fairness. But please don’t hesitate to call if you suspect a conservative scandal. Just be sure to get out of the way of the stampede that will ensue.

Like the founding fathers, I believe that a free press is essential to the conduct of a democracy. And like them, I believe in the original concept – that the "free" part of a free press is grounded in telling the truth. Not half of it. Not just the part with which you philosophically agree. The whole truth. I’d like to see integrity return to the pressroom, to the editor’s office. I’d like to see reporters on fire for the cause of ethical reporting, investigative or otherwise.

I’m going to take a lot of flak for this one, but I believe that freedom of the press ought not be absolute. There should be limits. Freedom of speech is not absolute. No one has the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater. Editorials belong on the editorial page. I would like to see a world in which legal sanctions are imposed on members of the journalistic community when it can be demonstrated that – under a banner of allegedly unbiased "reporting" – they willfully and intentionally present only one side of a story. Most of today’s "reporting" is merely thinly disguised editorializing or outright political posturing. That’s not a free press. That’s a press which has given up its integrity and its freedom by allowing itself to be driven by political ideology – at the expense of the truth, not in defense of it. And that does not serve the American people. It approaches the other side of the same tyranny our founding fathers risked all they had to prevent.