>>>>As to freedom from press: Akre case. Fox news has won a major victory, it now has a legal right to publish whatever it is paid to lie, because freedom of speech protects them from any obligation to tell the truth. It is now legally the best news channel money can buy... money first, news later.
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>>>>Not that the others are much better... maybe dropping all pretenses and going blatantly the way of presscenary, or presstitute or whatever they prefer to be called, is more honest than maintaining the pretense of free press.
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>>>I disagree with you about lies. Granted that Fox News has more conservative slant on the news, it is essential when outlets like CNN on NBC news anchor people perform Lewinsky on Obama {g}.
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>>What's "a Lewinsky" - a blow job or a more expensive version of swiftboating through courts?
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>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre which leads to http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/
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>>It's not a slant. It's about spending a million dollars on a lawsuit to defeat "FCC's policy against the intentional falsification of the news" as "just a policy, not a law". If they find this so important to spend a million on it, then so do I. They put their money where they want it, to fight for the right to lie. For Monsanto, no less.
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>There is more to that story and that lawsuit than the obvious. If they had won, then any station which broadcasts 'untruths' could be shutdown for good. There is a problem with that. The media is supposed to report both sides of a story. In almost every story, at least (if not one side) of a story is lies or at least a spinning on the truth. However, both sides must be presented in order to present a 'fair story.' If you've ever watched 20/20 then you see how it is handled. It is something typically along the lines of 'we contacted so and so and they provided us with the following response...' or the reporter will actually interview both sides and present it knowing that one or the other or both is lying. It is not up to the station or the reporter to determine which side is being 100% honest. Only to show what 'facts' they can and get a response from both sides concerned. Understanding that, it is virtually impossible for any news organization to ensure that all stories will only contain the truth.
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>Now, in theory, I agree that there has to be some way to determine when it is ok and when it is not. If 20 people die from drinking a specific brand of bottled water and the reporter does a story on it which shows that the manufacturer is responsible or knew of the danger in advance, the report should request a response from the manufacturer, it is their duty to include the response, whether it is truthful or not for fairness. They do not know whether or not the manufacturer is being truthful. If they do, they include the response and then the evidence which suggests otherwise. Those two reporters refused to do that. They refused to print Monsanto's response period. They should have aired or printed Monstanto's response and then shown the evidence which suggested Monstanto was not being truthful in their response. We hear dictators lie on the air all the time and yet we don't hold the media responsible for airing their comments.

I just don't see how I could ever trust news coming from a source that instructs its reporters to lie. Sure interviewees lie, but I just don't see that as the same thing. I don't think it's too much to expect a reporter reporting news not to knowingly tell lies.

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>However, the lawsuit was not about that. It was about claiming that they were fired for blowing the whistle when they reported FoxNews to the FCC for knowlingly distorting the truth (airing lies).

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>It is a real conundrum.
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>Anyway, if you are going to wave the flag then do a google search on the two reporters and read the articles by other journalists and not just the left-wing ones. You will be amazed at what you find (some are ridiculous, some are interesting, some are disturbing), such as these:
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>http://www.gene.ch/gentech/2000/Aug/msg00088.html
>http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?bafa6c8d-9ebc-4479-85cb-0cc82491aa61