House of Eratosthenes

Oh, there’s going to be panic over that headline I’m sure. But let me explain. Among those polled, 22% say the government should be allowed to censor the press, in a major poll to be released Monday, conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy. The poll also revealed significant gaps in opinion on news, and its place in society, between members of the press and the general public.

In one finding, 43% of the public say they believe the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree. Just 14% of the public can name �freedom of the press� as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution…

I think I can help explain this. The press has abused its position of trust by not doing its job. They do not tell people what people need to know anymore; they mold and shape our society in ways they think will protect the classes of people they want to protect. Let’s just take the example of an editorial that pissed me off, just yesterday morning. Worrying About The Right Things, which was published a week ago (link requires registration) explores the idea that gee, maybe liberals haven’t given Janice Rogers Brown a fair shake and she could be a decent judge after all.

What would make Janice Rogers Brown a decent judge? In People v. Conrad Richard McKay, Brown dissented from the majority opinion that Richard McKay’s Fourth-amendment rights were not violated when a policeman patted him down and found a baggie of methamphetamine in his sock.

Brown was the lone dissenter in this opinion. Let’s sum it up. Guy gets pulled over on a bicycle. He’s a black guy, which is important to Ginger Rutland, author of the editorial. He has no driver’s license. The cop pats him down and finds the substance. Guy gets 32 months for illegal possession. Knowning that, if there was a Fourth-Amendment violation here, it would mean the druggie has to be sprung from jail, would you say such a violation took place? Janice Rogers Brown says yes, everyone else on the court says no.

Like most “ordinary” people, I’m going to have to shock the shit out of Ginger Rutland by confessing that, actually, I am far to the right of even Janice Rogers Brown. Furthermore, it is crap like this — even in an editorial column — that erodes our faith not only in the press, but the justice system. The bicycle guy committed a crime. Yes, it is a victimless crime, at least, so far as anyone can determine from the facts available, but a crime nonetheless. Furthermore, he is guilty and his guilt has been proven. It is undisputed.

For the past forty years we’ve been playing this game where, hey, if the guy is guilty but the way you found out he’s guilty, is unconstitutional, then the guy isn’t guilty. That is bullshit. And I say that being a big, passionate advocate of the axiom that the Constitution must be upheld — but — get this — it doesn’t necessarily follow that, to enforce the Constitution, we have to pretend that false things are true and that true things are false.

Today’s journalists take it as a given that enforcement of the Constitution trumps truth; they make their living according to it. If the Constitution has been violated, we have to pretend people with baggies in their socks don’t have baggies in their socks. And, by extension, we have to pretend that guys who rape and kill little girls, don’t rape and kill little girls.

Rutland spends much of her column weeping for the economic plight, and the unfortunate skin color, of the guy with meth in his sock. Apparently, if he was middle-class and white, his Fourth-Amendment rights would not have been violated. Did you catch that? The Fourth Amendment is only for poor black people. If you don’t agree with my interpretation, read her treatise from beginning to end. She says “Judges who ‘gnaw through ropes’ to protect people being hassled by cops represent the kind of judicial activism I can support.”

This is the kind of bullshit that arouses suspicion and mistrust. For one thing, I could take out a subscription to the Sacramento Bee for ten solid years, read every page, and the information I would gather about why we have a Fourth Amendment, and what it was intended to do, I could fit on a postage stamp. That newspaper just doesn’t give a damn about it, nor do any newspapers. The press, like the justice system, thinks of it as a game. You collar the bad guy, bring him in, he gets sentenced, he appeals, maybe his rights were violated and maybe not. We all argue about it and newspapers get sold. In the course of the game, lies become facts and facts become lies, guys with meth in their socks suddenly don’t have meth in their socks.

But what’s ironic — to me — is if you are this poor guy with his desperate circumstances riding his bicycle around, and you’re at the mercy of the police because you are so poor and put-upon — you are also at the mercy of something else: Truth. As a general rule in life, people who are in the trenches, who work dirty jobs, who are poor, or who are closest to the action about which other people make life-and-death decisions…they live and die according to facts. When you pretend things that are true are false, or things that are false are true, you are engaging in a luxurious pastime that is not available to people who are closer to the exigencies of life than you are.

For example, if the guy who lives next door to you is a drug dealer, that is a fact and it affects how you live.

And that, in turn, means that to take part in a mental-contortionist argument like the following…

He has meth in his sock but the way the meth was found, was by a search which the court determined was violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, therefore the search was illegal, therefore he does not have any meth in his sock.

…is a luxury which you simply cannot afford. It is truly ironic that for one poor guy, like Conrad Richard McKay, whose rights are being championed by columnists like Rutland — there are maybe a hundred more poor people whose right to live a safe everyday life, is being trampled upon by her impassioned ramblings, and Rutland is probably completely freakin’ oblivious to this.

And that is the real gap between the press and “normal” people.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Let’s Abolish Freedom of the PressMonday, May 16th, 2005

Let’s Abolish Freedom of the Press
Monday, May 16th, 2005