Northern Valley Beacon
Information, observations, and analysis from the James River valley on the Northern Plains----- E-Mail: Enter 'Beacon' in subject box. Send to: Minnekota@Referencedesk.orgWednesday, October 05, 2005
A free press has the freedom to serve a dictatorship
"The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world," Al Gore pointed out in a speech today.
While Bill Clinton visits the states ravaged by hurricanes and reminds us of what effective and intelligent leadership is, Al Gore re-emerges with a profound assessment of how the press is complicit in the fall of our country.
His words bring hope of potential change to us who live Aberdeen, SD, where the local newspaper's corporate mission statement is: "To be the dominant source of news and information in northeast South Dakota."
It is the dominant source of news, but also the most incompetent and poltically repressive. It is to the neo-regressives what Pravda was to the Kremlin.
All politics is local. For northeastern South Dakota, the way to bring democracy back is to recognize the journalistic failure of our "dominant" news source and provide alternatives to one of the worst newspapers in the upper Midwest. As long as that news source serves only those who deceive and repress, there is no chance to live in a true American democracy.
While Bill Clinton visits the states ravaged by hurricanes and reminds us of what effective and intelligent leadership is, Al Gore re-emerges with a profound assessment of how the press is complicit in the fall of our country.
His words bring hope of potential change to us who live Aberdeen, SD, where the local newspaper's corporate mission statement is: "To be the dominant source of news and information in northeast South Dakota."
It is the dominant source of news, but also the most incompetent and poltically repressive. It is to the neo-regressives what Pravda was to the Kremlin.
All politics is local. For northeastern South Dakota, the way to bring democracy back is to recognize the journalistic failure of our "dominant" news source and provide alternatives to one of the worst newspapers in the upper Midwest. As long as that news source serves only those who deceive and repress, there is no chance to live in a true American democracy.
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