January 29, 2012
Historically the United States has been the world’s leading advocate for freedom of the press, a right protected here in the U.S. by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (PDF); which begs the question “how can the United States have less freedom of the press than 46 other countries? Worse yet, how could the U.S. fall 27 places in just one year?!?
Reporters Without Borders, an organization founded in 1985 to monitor countries who were trying to control what was reported in their country, has placed the U.S. in 47th, making us worse than Niger and equal to Argentina and Romania.
In 2010 we were 20th, which is pretty bad considering this is “the land of the free”. But how could we fall 27 places in just one year after falling only 3 places over the previous 8 years?
“The United States… owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.”
As of today there have been 6,319 #OWS protestors arrested and 36 regular journalists since last September. That latter number doesn’t include Occupy media teams, which account for an additional 14 arrest. Many reporters have been maced and beaten.
******************
There are two things that are glaringly obvious today: 1) The main-stream news media has been covering civil unrest in great length and detail in other countries, yet 2) have only made mention of the civil unrest in the U.S. except when a story can be spun to make #OccupyWallStreet appear as villains’.
There are self-serving reasons for the way the main-stream media has been reporting on #OccupyWallStreet. But these so-called “freedom of the press defenders” best remember the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller, the anti-Nazi theologian in Germany during Adolph Hitler’s reign:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
WAKE UP, AMERICA!!
™