The Press Act that is Steamrolling through Congress

The “Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying” Act is steamrolling its way through Congress. As H.R. 4250, it enjoyed bipartisan support and passed the House without objection.

When enacted in identical form by both bodies of Congress, the bill will bar federal executive agencies and the courts from forcing reporters to identify confidential sources or disclose sensitive newsgathering material except in very limited circumstances.

It will also limit spying upon reporters.

This bill removes the restricted definitions of protected “reporters” that appeared in previous bills.

The bill also excludes the nebulous exception for “national security,” which has protected countless past crimes of the US Government. As NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and State Department whistleblower Julian Assange have risked their lives and liberty to publicly point out, in Ed’s words, “Where exposing a crime is criminalized, you are being led by criminals.”

Obviously, because the truth is all the knowledge and information that advances humanity, it is generally a crime to lie to or hide the truth from the people. One exception not cited in the bill, an exception for which sources should not be protected, is to protect ongoing and necessary investigations within reasonable time frames. Exceptions cited by the bill include (1) to prevent or identify the perpetrator of an act of terrorism and (2) to prevent a threat of immanent violence, significant bodily harm, or death, including specified offenses against a minor.

It should also be obvious that all classified documents that don’t fall under one of these three exceptions are hiding crimes of the government and should be declassified.

This much has been reported by others or can be inferred from the reports of others. I have additional observations to share with you.

The unanimous support that the Press Act enjoys is a rarity in Congress. Such unanimity generally occurs only when the Empire is perceived as being under a threat that must be eliminated.

What is the present threat involving the mass media, the Fourth Estate, television, radio, and major newspaper news? People are realizing that the mass media is subject to the power and censorship hierarchy depicted in the graphic above.

This power and censorship hierarchy is an inevitable result of the combination of capitalist productive relations and general elections. As people sense that the mass media exists to keep them ignorant or misinformed, they are turning to other sources, especially the internet sources for their news.

The Press Act represents only a slight improvement but is intended to convince the poorest and least educated folks, who still rely exclusively upon mass media for their information, that they should continue to rely upon it.

Will the Press Act take the censorship monkeys off the backs of reporters and make their output credible? Think about it! All the Act will do is eliminate a couple of types of government abuses: spying upon reporters and incarcerating or fining them for not divulging their sources. THE ACT WON’T DO ANYTHING TO ALTER THE POWER AND CENSORSHIP HIERARCHY, AND THE MONKEYS WILL STILL HAVE INFINITE MEANS OF OPPRESSING REPORTERS AND SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH.

In contrast, consider the solution to mass media censorship and misinformation proposed by the Peace Love and Progress Party. Our plan won’t get the censorship monkeys off reporters’ backs, but it will get them off YOUR backs.

As Step One of our Global Peace Plan, we propose expanding the United Nations News Agency into a Global Peace Net and bringing it, via (the most ease-to-access, user-friendly, and stimulus-capturing) television and radio, into every home on the planet, 24/7/365.

Once in operation, globally, it should take no more than five years for the Global Peace Net to disabuse peoples of the prejudice, wishful-thinking and censorship with which ruling classes have brainwashed them and subject them instead to the fully-open, global and dialectical debate needed to discover truth and unite them sufficiently to support Step Two of the Global Peace Plan, the passage of the “We the People Treaty/Amendment.”

For details, please see https://peaceloveandprogressparty.org/blog/f/peace-on-earth-is-not-a-dream-but-a-political-choice .

For the Peace Love and Progress Party,

Dave

April 11, 2024