by Feed your head with a play by Pamela Olson

Created on: March 03, 2009

Our Right To Know
Why? Because freedom can't blog itself

R. (Robert) Crumb (of Keep on Trucking, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat fame thought it was absurd that so many people walk around giving free advertising to corporations. He was talking about people with a corporate logo on their hat, shirt, shoes, belt, bag, car, etc. R, Crumb thought their identity is solely their drama identification with sordid celebrities, insatiable corporations, etc. He thought it was weird that these types of people have no identity of their own beyond that. That explains though, the addiction to entertainment by many.

That means media more and more wears the face of a person that's been on a long and difficult journey that tops their last rise and looks down the road running straight and empty to the place they have been striving to go. It now gives people with their own sense of self, people with their identity of the moment, and even the pretend people, the means and opportunity to behave in the way appropriate to each ones' nature.

Corporate media is built on plenty of shrewdness playing well on this lack of individual identity and the entertainment addiction of consumers. It does give those clamoring consumers their identity of the moment. It also gives slices of news to targeted audiences that "see the world a particular way. And they're very grateful to have someone who finally tells it like it is."

In my story Who Is A Reporter, Given The Millions Of Bloggers?, I questioned why Nevada (D) Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader, was holding up the Federal press shield law. The Federal shield law I just finished reading Off the Record by Norman Pearlstine. The author was Editor-in-Chief of Time Inc. from 1995 to 2005. Before that, he was the Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal. He wrote about the need for a Federal Shield law. "A shield law should protect anonymous as well as confidential sources. Any shield law must deal with a couple of pesky issues: who is a journalist, and who should be protected? Congress can limit the shield law to so-called mainstream media, but it shouldn't. There weren't any big media companies when the First Amendment was passed. It was designed to protect the "lonely pamphleteer" of the eighteenth century, and it should protect the blogger in pajamas today.

The courts are already moving in that direction, at least in California, where a state appeals court ruled in May 2005 that on-line reporters are protected by the same confidentiality laws that protect

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