Journalists no longer enforce the 1st Amendment

Steve Borris reports on a speach by Former Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow in which he claims that rather than enforcing the 1st Amendment,America journalists have
eroded it.

He lamented that a handful of elite news organizations has been shaping and defining not just what has counted as news, but also what has counted as acceptable opinion, chilling the vigorous political debate the First Amendment attempted to foster. He bemoaned a culture of political correctness that forbids journalists from even acknowledging views that might ruffle feathers, creating self-censorship despite a First Amendment that forbids censors.

Perhaps even more frightening is his assertion that Thomas Jefferson's adage that journalists exist to act as a fence for the individual as a buffer against the power of the state has been destroyed.

He attributes this to the fact that it was

easiest to do their jobs by sucking-up, socializing, and empathizing with those in power

Another US blogger writes that

It’s time for the press to declare themselves either free guardians of the public trust or owned members of a political movement. They can’t be both.