>>>>No. In their case, you could only publish what the government wanted.
>>>
>>>Now replace "government" with "one of the parties" or "corporations who pay for ads on our pages" and you get the warm fuzzy sense of how deeply independent the press is :).
>>
>>
>>You could buy your own newspaper... :o) Or start radio free Dragan... (I don't think anyone could pronounce it if you used your last name) :o)
>
>And? Then I'd be the owner, and the reporters would depend on me. They wouldn't be independent.
>
>IOW, independent press is an illusion. It's just that if it depends on a government it's oh so bad, and if it depends on a corporation it's oh so good.

I understand the point you're making, but there is a huge difference between the government controlling the press and anyone who can afford to being able to publish.

The real point is that people in this country, for some reason, believe that in the past, the press was neutral. That's never been the case and, in fact, in many ways, it's closer to neutral today than it used to be.

I think what confuses people is that there used to rules regulating broadcast media that required them to provide equal time on political issues. That gave an illusion that the broadcast media didn't have a political POV. Those rules are gone (and have been for some time) and never applied to printed media.

Tamar