I really try not to write about politics every day on my blog, but there are things happening that do not get coverage on the nightly news programs because there are just too many things for journalists to report on.
There’s the war in Iran. There are shootings and terrorist attacks. There’s Punch the monkey and his stuffed animal from IKEA in Tokyo. There’s the Kīlauea volcano blowing its stack in Hawaii. There are the women who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and his rich friends who apparently are not going to face consequences in the United States like they are in Great Britain.
In a 30-minute news broadcast, minus eight to ten minutes of commercials, a host of happenings fall on the editor’s floor. Today I will touch on a few of those.
Trump’s attitude about the war in Iran
President Trump wants other countries to police the Strait of Hormuz. We’ll see how that goes. He also wants the crews on oil tankers to just be brave and go through the strait. Easy for him to say.
He wants China, France, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and “others” to send warships there to secure the two-mile wide passage. He says things will go “well” with the U.S. coordinating things.
The President said the U.S. may hit Iran’s Kharg Island a few more times “just for fun.” His cavalier attitude over putting American military personnel is harm’s way and spending U.S. tax dollars is deplorable. This is not a video game.
President Trump says he will know when the war is over because he “will feel it in his bones.” He started the war because he “had a feeling.” As a student of history, I don’t recall any other U.S. President approaching a war based on “feelings.”
Can you imagine the misogynistic outcry there would be if a female U.S. President ever said such a thing? She would be the last female U.S. President!
One day he calls the war “a war.” The next day he calls it “an excursion.” The objectives of the war change hourly.
If we get to have a Presidential election in 2028, I hope voters will remember the ramifications when we elect a President who is unable to communicate their objectives or their dependence on facts.
The FCC
After President Trump accused the news media of “intentionally misleading” the public in their coverage of the war in Iran, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses.
We’ve heard these threats before from the Trump Administration, as they try to dictate news coverage.
This is an attack on the free press and a major foundation of our nation. Countries like Russia, China, and North Korea have state-controlled television. We cannot allow this to happen in the United States! If you want to watch and listen to state-controlled TV, you can watch Fox News.
Carr warned that a network’s coverage of the war in Iran will be taken into consideration when their broadcast licenses come up for renewal. In a social media post, Carr warned them that they still had a chance to “correct course” and stop broadcasting “fake news” and distortions of the war.
Carr wrote, “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
He accused broadcast networks of “running hoaxes.”
Carr doubled down on this in an interview with CBS News later on Saturday.
The trouble is that the law is left to interpretation now. Until recently, it was generally agreed that the news media should be free to report facts. Under the Trump Administration, they are being pressured to only report things that put Trump in a good light. This is what they have in autocracies like Russia, China, and North Korea.
Carr has encouraged broadcast networks to air “patriotic pro-America content” this year as we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But when a politically-appointed FCC Chair starts to dictate broadcast content, we and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are under attack.
When the politician in power gets to decide the definition of “public interest,” freedom of the press is in peril.
We have not heard the last of this. If push comes to shove, I imagine we will see a case going before the U.S. Supreme Court.
I only took one Constitutional Law course in college, so I’m no expert; however, I know under the First Amendment to the Constitution it is illegal for the government to censor free speech.
Print media
The President criticized The Wall Street Journal for reporting last Friday that Iran had damaged five U.S. Air Force tanker planes in Saudi Arabia. It seems he did not want that reported to the public. He insisted that four of those planes had “virtually no damage and are already back in service.”
He is so thin-skinned that he takes honest journalism as a personal affront.
He called The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal “Lowlife ‘Papers’ and accused them of wanting the U.S. to lose the war. He called journalists “sick and demented people.”
Janet
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
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