Last week, cries of censorship came from the usual idiots. That does include Glenneth Greenwald.
The know-nothing wanted you to believe that MSNBC and Rachel Maddow
were censoring Donald Trump by not playing his victory speech following
his Iowa win.
That's not censorship.
Censorship would be not covering that Donald won.
Choosing not to air a speech? That's a news decision. And it is not censorship.
They did not consider the speech newsworthy for whatever reason.
We
can think of many reasons it shouldn't have aired. When we cover
something and have to fact check, we zoom in on one area. We're not
doing a text book here. Donald lies over and over. Had they aired the
speech live, they would have owed the public a fact check. He is a
known liar. That's what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was explaining when she
declared, "There
is a reason that we and other news organizations have generally stopped
giving an unfiltered live platform to remarks by former President
Trump. It is not out of spite. It is not a decision that we relish. It
is a decision that we regularly revisit, and honestly, earnestly. There
is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue
things. And that is a fundamental truth of our business and who we are."
There was no censorship.
You
have no legal right to have your speech aired on TV with the exception
of the State of the Union address by the sitting President of the United
States. That speech is the only speech noted in The Constitution.
We've heard other nonsense.
The repellent Dean Phillips insists he's being censored. His run for the
Democratic Party's presidential nomination is not being covered!!!!
Actually, after he took money from DEI hater Ayatollah Bill Ackman and then struck support for DEI from his campaign website, he got the attention he long sought because when you are corrupted by money, that is actual news.
Throughout
every day, someone's making the decision of how to use time and space
and what's news and what's the most important news.
You want coverage, make news.
It would be great if the media covered every candidate.
It would also be pointless.
Until this year, we have covered all candidates in the presidential races.
And what a waste of time that was.
We
had to research, we had to do this, we had to do that and then they
aren't even real candidates. Gary what's his name on the Libertarian
Party ticket comes to mind as does Jill Stein in both of her
presidential runs.
They weren't serious candidates.
WSWS
has their fake presidential candidates every four years. They have no plans
to run for real, they don't commit to social media and they're nonsense. True of Dario Hunter's run for the Green Party's presidential nomination in 2020 (or, rather, his non-run since he couldn't even post once a week to his own social media or his campaign site).
Gloria La Riva is probably never going to win the US presidency. But we've covered her in the past and would cover her again because she is a real candidate. It's not a vanity run and she is raising real issues. Jill Stein couldn't even call out Barack Obama in 2012 for sending US troops back into Iraq secretly while campaigning on the false claim that he had pulled all US troops out of Iraq. But when Mitt Romney looked like he might be scoring points on Barack, Jill comes alive to rush forward and defend Barack from Mitt.
If you're role is to be the kid sister of the Democratic Party, you're not a real candidate.
We're tired of fake asses wasting our time.
So
we do understand why those making decisions at the network level might
decide that resources -- money and time -- can be better spent on real
candidates and not fake asses.
The always ridiculous, spoiled and entitled Donald Trump insisted, "NBC
and CNN refused to air my victory speech. Think of it - because they
are crooked. They're dishonest, and frankly, they should have their
licenses or whatever they have: Take it away."
There
is no law that any candidate's victory speech needs to be aired.
Donald, as always, is an idiot. Sadly so are many others.
We
wonder what would happen if this were 1984 and these idiots were
watching the DNC convention on ABC when ABC elected to shut it off and
air a repeat of a scripted program instead (as TV GUIDE observed,
tongue-in-cheek, at the time, ABC interrupted the live coverage for a
late-breaking episode of HART TO HART). That wasn't censorship. That
was the network making a decision. Based on ratings, yes. Also based
upon the fact that they felt the DNC convention was staged and scripted
and didn't qualify as news.
These are decisions that are made. By all means disagree if you want but don't lie that it was censorship.
When
Joan Crawford left Douglas Fairbanks, it was news around the
world. Bette Davis complained and complained about that (she had a 'scandolous' film, EX-LADY, that opened the same week and no one paid attention to the film due to the interest in Joan). As Adela St.
Rogers declared "It was bad timing for Bette. WWII could have broken out, yet everyone wanted to hear about Joan and Doug."
The
media doesn't owe you coverage. If you're the sitting president, what
you do and say generally qualifies as news and will get coverage. The
rest? Not really.
If you want to be covered by the news media, you need to make some news. Yacking is not making news. Candidates are expected to make speeches, after all.
