Media, Rights and Hypocrisy :: 06/12/2013

The news stories "Freedom key to watchdog role, experts say" and "Controversies over journalist phone records reignite calls for federal media shield law" (both June 2 and TribLIVE.com ) highlight the hypocrisy of major liberal media, specifically The Associated Press, when government "abridges" their constitutional rights, specifically the First Amendment's freedom of the press.

Quite suddenly, the Bill of Rights offers important constitutional protections! Not so, apparently, for the Second Amendment.

Liberal media argue that the right to bear arms is obsolete in today's society, but will not see that it is the contemporaneous Second Amendment that backs up the First Amendment to prevent tyranny over the press.

Further, it is laughable that journalism professor Richard Benedetto would characterize the media as a "watchdog" or that Maureen Ciarolla, daughter of a victim of the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System's Legionella outbreak, would think that without a free press, the government could hide embarrassing failures from the public. Indeed, the current statist administration, for which liberal media act as the propaganda arm, sees the entire Bill of Rights as an obstacle to a more "efficient" regulatory state.

Interestingly, the operative words in these amendments, "abridge" and "infringe," described as archaic or obsolete, have similar meanings, both protecting a constitutional right!

Dan Campbell

Nottingham Township

By Tribune-Review Published: Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 9:00 p.m.

http://triblive.com/opinion/letters/4131099-74/media-rights-amendment#axzz2W06ujgjt