OR “THE POST-INTELLIGENT” FOR SHORT

Ace investagative investigatave envestegative pushy reporter Noel Woodstein Burnward here.

On behalf of myself, our reporters and our esteemed Publisher and Editor Emeritus Mike “Pinch Me” Hendrix, I would like to say that Cold Fury is an established newspaper of record, a valuable source of information and a nutritious breakfast product that stays crunchy even in milk.

Why do I say this? For the noblest of motives; to promote the diffusion of vital knowledge to all mankind.

And to secure our cut of the $50 billlion-dollar booty when these Pulitzer-Prize Pirates of the Potomac enact their “Welfare for Walter Cronkite”-Socialized Journalism program.

As if it weren’t socialist enough already:

Robert W. McChesney, the socialist professor whose Free Press organization is leading the charge for the $50 billion transformation of the media, hosts a one-sided, tax-supported radio program sponsored by the University of Illinois that could serve as a model for the “New Public Media” the group has envisioned for America. …

McChesney’s well-financed Free Press is not alone in the effort to transform the media along Marxist lines. Supporting the project is the so-called Center for American Progress (CAP), the Soros-funded group that employed Mark Lloyd before he went to work at the FCC as Associate General Counsel and chief diversity officer. CAP released a proposal for “an independent and stable funding stream for public media” in its Change for America book project that was designed to influence the Obama Administration. …

This same proposal was recently adopted by discredited former CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather, who called for a “White House Commission on Public Media” during an appearance before the Aspen Institute. Rather was a featured speaker at the 2008 conference of McChesney’s Free Press and has become a hero of the progressive “media reform” movement.

…The assumption of the exercise was that the federal government, under the cover of a national broadband plan, should not only regulate the Internet but provide new media for the public. …

The idea of the federal government telling people how to “differentiate between authentic and inauthentic information” is frightening. But this is part of Benton’s “Action Plan for America.”

Once Mark Lloyd left the Benton Foundation for the Center for American Progress, the two organizations collaborated on a letter demanding that the FCC require that broadcasters meet “public interest” obligations, provide access to the media by various groups, and “enhance political discourse.” All of these measures are designed to give left-wing “progressives” more access to the media.

Now Lloyd is in a position to bring this about through federal regulation.

Rep. Henry “Ear” Waxman:

“Government’s going to have to be involved, in one way or the other… “We have to figure out together how to preserve that kind of [independent] reporting.”

The same way we preserved “independent” car companies–by having the Government take them over.

The town of Bureaucracyville doesn’t need a Bailout Beacon to get the news. Hear ye, hear ye; if the Feds had done this a century ago, the Town Crier’s Union would still be running the media.

Vivian Schiller, the president and CEO of National Public Radio, cited her own organization’s history of criticizing the government even though it is federally subsidized.

“No news organization worth its salt is going to accept money with conditions attached,” she said. “… If anything the opposite problem is true: ‘Oh, they’re funding us. Let’s look more deeply into them.’”

Baloney. I’ve often said that if Government could do the Fairness Doctrine, then NPR should be the fairest of all. Instead, it is a reliably liberal house organ. Yes, it criticizes the government…from the Left. It’s always advocating for more liberalism, more government, more funding, etc.

We should be finding ways to get NPR off the public payroll, not putting all the other news organizations on it. “Lucy Ramirez” is Dan Rather’s secret source for news–let her buy him lunch at Spago’s.

Josh Silver, the executive director of Free Press, acknowledged that there are liabilities to government-subsidized journalism but said the country has no choice but to move in that direction in order to halt “significant erosion of the Fourth Estate.”

This “Free Press” isn’t a Free Press newspaper–it is an advocacy group that wants to “reform” media by having it paid for by taxpayers and run by big government liberals. They even have a video clip of Obama explaining what good journalism consists of.

Maybe that’s your idea of a free press, but it’s not mine. Here’s mine:

“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”

Our Press Corps is already three quarters in the tank for Big Government anyway. Once Washington starts signing their paychecks, too, well, that’s Abridged Too Far.

UPDATE: To make the point, Steven F. Hayward:

As in the furor over Dan Rather’s fabricated documents about George W. Bush’s National Guard service back in 2004, bloggers have been swarming over the material and highlighting the bad faith, bad science, and possibly even criminal behavior (deleting material requested under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act and perhaps tax evasion) of a small group of highly influential climate scientists. As with Rathergate, diehard climate campaigners are repairing to the “fake but accurate” defense–what these scientists did may be unethical or deeply biased, they say, but the science is settled, don’t you know, so move along, nothing to see here. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who in the past has trafficked in the most extreme climate mongering: “It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow,” Monbiot wrote in a November 23 column. “The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. .  .  . I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them. .  .  . I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.”

Now imagine politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, regulators, scientists, greedy executives from AlGore, Inc. AND journalists were all feeding at the taxpayer’s trough…where does a taxpayer go to find someone looking out for him? To our moneylenders in China?