“The Press” is a function, not a caste, a freedom, not an elite.
The constitutional tenet that this function remain unfettered protects “free speech” in its written form. It gives “reporters” no greater freedoms than the rest of us enjoy. Indeed, it doesn’t even differentiate between “reporters” and “the rest of us.”Reporters have no less, and no more, constitutional protections than the rest of us. Certainly they do not enjoy extra rights and privileges. And most certainly no exemptions from laws that apply to all citizens.
You can’t break into a house at night and claim “freedom of the press” in court because you were wearing a press pass. I mean, you can try, but it’s bogus.
You can’t arrest another citizen on the street and coerce them into talking to you just because you fancy yourself a Member of the Caste. I mean, you can try, but the other citizen has as much right to defend himself against you as against anyone else.
Indeed, in the internet and social media age, we are all reporters, enjoying precisely the same constitutional protections—again, no more and no less—than the self-vaunting, putative secular-priesthood “Press.”
When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complains that the NPR reporter lied to him and showed appalling ignorance in his private interview with her, the News-Entertainment-Impeachocrat Monolith launches with nauseous predictability into fevered, hysterical jeremiads over the Stalinism Pompeo’s complaints portend. Short of a bona fide catastrophe, nothing “The Press” loves more than a big dollop of self-exalting persecution complex.
Sorry. No. As for the Pompeo-NPR-reporter row, it’s “he said, she said”—not “she’s oppressed, he’s a Nazi” just because he DARED to speak his mind about what went on there.
We are all the press, we are all reporters, we all enjoy the same rights and freedoms, and none of gets a constitutional “pass” or exemption from the common sphere of humanity, laws, boundaries and responsibilities.
If someone screams at me and interrupts me and won’t let me get a word in edgewise, it’s my freedom to walk away, refuse to engage with this person a moment longer, even to warn others about what an obnoxious boor this person is. If the obnoxious boor just happens to be a reporter, I am not suddenly catapulted thereby into the ranks of Oppressors of the Press. The obnoxious boor will undoubtedly try to make that case...because he’s an obnoxious boor. And not a little stupid, because he’s swallowed his own PR, drunk his own Kool-Aid, bought his own delusion that “The Constitution” elevates him to a quasi-police role (Thought Police, surely) in our society and that resisting him is akin to treason.
This is their sacred dogma, their ploy, and their pathology.
Thank goodness, “the rest of us” (reporters in our way, and thank God no one is stopping me from saying THIS) are free to name it for what it is and not accord it the least shred of respect or credulity.
