After a judge banned the New York Times from making use of privileged legal memos by Project Veritas’ lawyers, the paper has yet another hysterical screed about freedom of the press.
Half a century ago, the Supreme Court settled the matter of when a court can stop a newspaper from publishing. In 1971, the Nixon administration attempted to block The Times and The Washington Post from publishing classified Defense Department documents detailing the history of the Vietnam War — the so-called Pentagon Papers. Faced with an asserted threat to the nation’s security, the Supreme Court sided with the newspapers. “Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people,” Justice Potter Stewart wrote in a concurring opinion.
Times Boomers may be hallucinating the seventies, but this isn’t the Pentagon Papers. In fact it’s a deliberate attempt by the New York Times to shut down investigators, journalists, and activists over their treatment of the Biden administration.
In this scenario, the New York Times is functioning as the plumbers protecting the Nixon administration by digging up dirt on activists and journalists opposed to it.
That simple concept has yet to penetrate the media echo chamber.
The government may not tell the press what it can and cannot publish. This principle long predates the Constitution, but so there would be no mistake, the nation’s founders included a safeguard in the Bill of Rights anyway. “Congress shall make no law,” the First Amendment says, “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Except that the Times has spent the last five years demanding that the government should ban “disinformation” and censor conservative journalists. That project is why the paper targeted Project Veritas.
The New York Times cheered efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story by the New York Post.
This is the same paper that publishes stories and opinion pieces like, “How a torrent of propaganda, lies and conspiracy theories has weaponized the First Amendment” and “Why Is Big Tech Policing Free Speech? Because the Government Isn’t”
The conclusion of that piece read, “The guarantee of free speech is for democracy; it is worth little, in the end, apart from it.”
Free speech either serves Dems or it shouldn’t exist. That is the same reasoning behind every media argument.
The New York Times should be able to make use of privileged legal documents from its political enemies, but they shouldn’t be able to publish Hunter Biden’s laptop.
What’s the consistent doctrine here? Anything goes for the Left when it comes to destroying its political opponents.
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