Originally Posted By: Matter-eater Man
  • Rep. Lamar Smith: ‘The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.’
    Yesterday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) launched the Media Fairness Caucus, made up of about a dozen House Republicans, aiming “to fight liberal media bias.” The group will “point out unfair stories, meet with members of the media, and write op-eds and letters to the editor to highlight media bias,” Newsmax reported. Appearing on Fox News today, Smith declared that “liberal media bias” is a bigger threat to the United States than the recession or terrorism — and Fox’s Bill Hemmer seemed to agree:

    SMITH: Let me just say — this is going to sound radical, I don’t mean for it to be radical — but to me, the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias. …

A bigger threat than terrorism?
\:lol\:


Arguably, yes.

There's a reason why "Free Speech" is in the First Amendment. It was considered one of, if not the, most important rights to be preserved if we were to remain a free society.

It has long (ie, even before the founding of the US itself, to some extent) been recognized that, in order to preserve liberty, there should be a free and open exchange of ideas and information. Part of that free and open exchange is that as many viewpoints as possible should be presented.

Another part is that there should be a free and independent press that questions and challenges the excesses of the government.

If media bias means that there isn't a true open exchange (because the center-left press effectively "censors" opposing viewpoints) and/or that the government is unquestioned (because the center-left press is unwilling to fairly report on the excesses of the Obama administration) then we have lost the basic building block of a free society.

We can recover from terrorism. We can't recover so easily from a stripping of our most important civil right.