It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. (Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar)
The BBC has pulled a film about the experiences of rioters during last summer’s disturbances just hours before it was due to be broadcast after a ruling from a judge. The film, due to be broadcast on BBC2 at 9pm on Monday, was a dramatisation based on the testimony of interviews conducted for the Guardian and London School of Economics research into the disorder.
The British public is not allowed to know the “nature of the order or the identity of the judge who handed down the ruling.”
Contrast this with the United States, where we have had uprisings and even some rioting, and where we have a first amendment. We have large corporate-owned broadcasting outlets free of government censorship. These corporations are staffed by highly trained journalists and fronted by pretty faces who emphasize selected news with great sincerity and ignore other selected news with a high measure of opacity.
These organizations have the good sense never to make documentaries that are such an affront power. We don’t need no stinking court to tell us that.
Piece of Mindful 
We must live every day with the consequences of bipartisan elitism and neoliberal economic ideology. Without strong anti-trust laws and effective enforcement, it’s game over.
A special thanks go out to former Pres. Clinton and his Blue-dog Democrats and Republican allies in Congress who enacted neoliberal deregulation policies in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
A handful of corporate conglomerates wield unprecedented “private” control of public information and our public airwaves. We are all prisoners held in a new variant of solitary media confinement.
LikeLike