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Unfortunately, the media, which are not at all reluctant to act in their own self-interest, have succeeded in equating reform in the public mind with further restrictions on just about everyone else's freedom of political speech.

Public discourse has been polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation - not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim.

Governments can no longer control 100 percent of the story. Time and geographical boundaries disappear. In places like China and all over the Middle East, social-media outlets are being used to expose and hold accountable public officials that don't want to be held accountable for corruption and human rights abuses.

The job of the press is to speak truth to power. And yet, for doing our job, we are persecuted. I say that these aggressive and illegal tactics to silence us - inventing arbitrary legal interpretations, over-zealous charges and disproportionate sentences - must not be permitted to succeed.

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn't matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

It is now such a complex society in terms of media. It just comes at us from every direction. You kind of have to push it all away.

Here's a nation, one of the founding pillars was freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they can say, on what they can think. And the media is the largest proponent of this, crucifying people who say things really quite innocently.