Giving Journalists the Silent TreatmentWhy ignoring the media is a serious threat to press freedom.

I don't see why it's such an offense to 'freedom' that democratically elected socialist presidents don't offer themselves up to media outlets controlled by corporate elites who propose not only different policies and candidates but a very different society. While the current political settlements in Nicaragua and Venezuela have come from elections, let's not forget that these media outlets represent political factions which fought civil wars and attempted coup d'etats, in both instances. Obama tried to shun Fox News to his right, and Fox News's constituency has never forcibly deposed him.

As an alternative, consider the audacity of a socialist or Islamist media outlet thinking it could get an interview with Obama? Of course they couldn't. The segments of American society socialist or Islamist media represent are both too far from Obama's politics for him to have anything to gain from trying, and failing, to persuade them, and because they are marginal, he doesn't have to. And so he doesn't.

To expect that socialist leaders would engage with corporate media outlets who they know they can't persuade and whom they don't have to because they are in the majority. And that's what it comes down to, there were elections, they won, part of being in the majority in a democracy is getting to set the agenda. Corporate media outlets can try to influence the agenda against the democratic majority, but why should it be integral to freedom to demand that politicians who enjoy majority support try to help them do so?

If the idea that Ortega and Chavez refusal to talk to the corporate press impinges on 'press freedom' seems credible, while the idea that Obama's refusal to talk to the socialist press impinges on 'press freedom' would seem absurd, this is only because we privilege our own local political norms and expectations based on who has influence and who doesn't in America.

-- suchgreatheights
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