The most effective check and balance on government has been an independent press which maintains its credibility by ensuring that its criticism is balanced and based on fact - based indeed on solid journalistic work.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A journalist covering politics, most of us are aware of the necessity to try to be sure we're unbiased in our reporting. That's one of the fundamentals of good journalism.
We have got to make sure there is proper independent scrutiny and accountability for people in the press, just as there should be in any other industry where things go wrong. But let's not try and think it is for politicians or governments to tell people what they stick in newspapers. That is deeply illiberal.
An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.
It is scrutiny by the general public that keeps the powerful honest.
As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe that the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press.
As Americans, we rightfully place tremendous value on having a free and independent press. Our role as journalists is to give voice to the voiceless, and hold our leaders and institutions accountable. But the circle is only completed when that information is consumed by a free-thinking and engaged audience.
The written tone and the spoken tone change and the reporters' disbelief in the veracity of the government spreads to the readers and the viewers.
I'm not in the news business and won't tell people how to do their job. I'd like to restore trust in the news business, though, and feel that restoring fact-checking will really help. News business realities mean that such fact-checking has to be practical, it has to be fast and cheap.
I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy.
The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.