Monday, July 21, 2008

Free speech

I've been having trouble finding things to write about lately but this just stood out to me. The NY Times told McCain that they wouldn't publish his op-ed piece unless he rewrote it to be more like Obama's piece. What? There are so many things wrong wit that. Isn't the point that you'd like for them to be different and have different opinions on things so you have an actual choice in voting? Isn't the point of an op-ed piece that it's your opinion? Isn't that the point?! I spent an hour just saying, wow, in disbelief. The editor wrote, "It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece." He also outlined what he'd like McCain to write in his piece. How about the editor just write it and he can put McCain's name on it? I'm so sad. Sure, they can print whatever they want. They can choose to not print something. It's their right to print whatever they want, blah, blah, blah. Seems to me that if they cry so loudly any time they feel THEIR right of free speech is being impinged on, they might want to allow other people to say what they want to freely too. It might be kind of cool if they printed one piece from Obama and one piece from McCain and then went on and on like that; weekly printing their positions on different topics; helping to educate the public on who they might vote for. How cool would that be to provide an open place for the exchange of ideas? How naive of me I suppose.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/21/mccain.nyt/index.html
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/21/mccain-campaign-says-new-york-times-blocked-op-ed-response-to-obama/

1 comment:

Somnicide said...

Well, the press need not be fair nor even accurate, so long as it is free...