{"id":21989,"date":"2016-10-16T11:21:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T16:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21989"},"modified":"2016-10-16T11:21:29","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T16:21:29","slug":"obama-enters-the-media-wars-why-his-recent-attack-on-free-speech-is-so-dangerous-and-radical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21989","title":{"rendered":"Obama Enters the Media Wars \u2013 Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Obama Enters the Media Wars \u2013 Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical<\/a><\/h3>\n
\"screen-shot-2016-10-14-at-4-46-42-pm\"<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Control of the news media is an instrumental, key feature to any totalitarian government. In contrast, the primary reason this experiment known as\u00a0the United States has lasted so long under relatively free conditions is due to the\u00a0preservation of free speech (and press) via\u00a0the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

In case you haven\u2019t read it in a while, here\u2019s the text:<\/p>\n

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nowhere in there do I see an exception for \u201cconspiracy theories,\u201d but apparently Constitutional scholar Barack Obama has an alternative interpretation.<\/p>\n

As reported by\u00a0AFP<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Pittsburgh (AFP) \u2013 President Barack Obama on Thursday decried America\u2019s \u201cwild, wild west\u201d media environment for allowing conspiracy theorists a broad platform and destroying a common basis for debate.<\/em><\/p>\n

Recalling past days when three television channels delivered fact-based news that most people trusted, Obama said democracy require citizens to be able to sift through lies and distortions.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to,\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Obama said at an innovation conference in Pittsburgh.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don\u2019t have any basis in anything that\u2019s actually happening in the world,\u201d<\/strong>Obama added.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat is hard to do, but I think it\u2019s going to be necessary, it\u2019s going to be possible,\u201d he added.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama Enters the Media Wars \u2013 Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical Control of the news media is an instrumental, key feature to any totalitarian government. In contrast, the primary reason this experiment known as\u00a0the United States has lasted so long under relatively free conditions is due to the\u00a0preservation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3306,2703,4285,512,6174,584,1796,838],"class_list":["post-21989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-barack-obama","tag-free-speech","tag-liberty-blitzkrieg","tag-media","tag-michael-krieger","tag-obama","tag-us-congress","tag-us-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21990,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21989\/revisions\/21990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}