Fighting for an Open Society

Jonathan Turley of George Washington U Law crafts a stinging indictment of the secret and illegal spying ops of the White House, and the Congress's role as an enabler in not opening the spy ops up to public scrutiny or demanding adherence to the law and Constitution. Turley then turns to the free press as the last check and balance against the stealing away of our liberties and Constitutional system. We don't usually wade into these waters, sticking to our media knitting, but Turley's final paragraph nicely captures why we care so much about media concentration, censorship, and Net Neutrality.

The Framers gave us a free press as the final safety net if all other checks and balances in the three branches of government should fail. With the failure of both parties in Congress to exercise oversight responsibilities, the importance of a free press has been vividly demonstrated. The public now has a choice. It can live in self-imposed ignorance, or it can fight for an open society.

An open society requires open access to media, so that media's role in our democracy as a check and balance on government is not compromised. Many will recall in 2003 that Big Media gave the White House a free pass about WMD and other justifications for the Iraq war, for which some like the NY Times and Wash Post have subsequently apologized, and for which our society is now paying a heavy price. As many observed at that time, the media was too concentrated to adequately act as a check and balance on government power. And was it coincidence that at this very same time, these media congloms were also seeking favorable government "de-regulation" to permit more huge media mergers and concentrated ownership, constricting even more open access to the media? Big Media congloms have little motivation to bite the government hand that feeds them or vigorously act as a check and balance on governmental overreaching. Now that its government-licensed TV stations are worth more than its newspaper, would the Washington Post work so doggedly to uncover Watergate today? Perhaps. But how hard would military contractor and TV station/network owner General Electric try on its NBC network(s)? Or Disney owned ABC? Or Murdoch controlled Fox?

This week, AT&T and Verizon have been implicated as partners with the government in the huge secret illegal "data mining" of millions of Americans' phone records. Coincidentally, these two Big Telcos are now beseeching the government for the unfettered power to restrict access to Internet web sites and discriminate against Internet content.

Should the Internet be under the thumb of these new giant would-be media/Internet gatekeepers who so easily, apparently, violate the law when the government comes knocking? If they are claiming a role as Internet/media gatekeepers, perhaps they need to study the meaning of "check and balance" and the role of the media in our Constitutional system? As if we needed yet another reason that the Internet must remain open to all, without discrimination, these Big Telcos and the government just handed us the biggest one of all: protecting free speech in an open and democratic society.