Rex's Las Vegas Lists
Newspapers have always widely held that the First Amendment applies to themselves, and themselves only.
Don’t believe me?
The Review Journal, the same newspaper that brought you geriatric pornography on its homepage has unilaterally decided that some people are more deserving of Free Speech than others.
The Review Journal was recently given a subpoena for information about readers, and they are handing it over.
Feel free to read about it here, but you may want to consider an anonymous proxy before using the second link. If you click it, you might be a terrorist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061601923_pf.html
http://www.lvrj.com/news/48240147.html
While the RJ is calling this a victory on their part and is making a major production out of protecting the identity of most of the posters on their website, they are handing over the personal info of the most controversial posters.
They are trying to sell their readers on the fact that as long as they only out the people with “bad” opinions, then they have done the right thing.
Of course, any paper worth its weight in fertilizer knows that this is absolutely bogus logic.
Remember, the First Amendment does not exist to protect popular speech. Popular speech needs no protection.
The only speech that needs Constitutional protection, is speech which is objectionable.
The First Amendment was put in place not to protect the right of people to say “I agree with everything the government does”, but for people who say the opposite. The First Amendment exists to protect the most vile, controversial, and unpopular speech imaginable, not to protect speech which is pleasant.
The founding fathers also noted that there is no free speech without anonymity. This is why we have a secret ballot in this country.
So why has the esteemed (not really) Las Vegas Review Journal decided to turn over information about people who posted comments in the online edition of their newspaper?
Editor Thomas Mitchell said “I’d hate to be the guy who refused to tell the feds Timothy McVeigh was buying fertilizer,”referring to domestic terrorist McVeigh, who destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Oh how altruistic, but isn’t citing terrorism as a means to invade privacy slightly played out in 2009?
Apparently, the RJ desperately misses the 2003 propaganda machine, and are taking it upon themselves to fill the void.
Remember folks, this is not some beat reporter, but the EDITOR of the RJ spouting this nonsense.
Invoking terrorism references is the last bastion of the desperate and intellectually bankrupt, which the editor of the Review Journal clearly is.
Want to do something morally wrong, and have the public accept it? Associate it with a terrorist act in some way. This is the very rationale that newspapers themselves began gleefully deriding at the start of the Iraq war, but now use it to their own advantage.
Invoking terrorism for personal gain is only bad if someone else does it.
Using the RJ Editor’s logic, you can extrapolate that everyone should live in glass houses and only use postcards to communicate since anyone can theoretically do something bad at any moment. What if one of the other posters on the site buys fertilizer? How can they be sure that they will not?
Is the RJ culpable if one of the other 100 posters does something terrible?
Nobody who subscribes to the Review Journal has to worry about fertilizer purchases anyway. Horse shit is delivered to their door on a daily basis.
Of course, the RJ has a long and storied history of invasion of privacy. This is why it is always prudent to give them a fake name if you ever acquiesce to an interview. If you speak to RJ reporters, they have the proven ability to run your name through a police database, and post the results online without your permission, even if it has no relevance to the story.
Don’t believe me?
http://www.vegasrex.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3984&p=58413#p58413
Remember, this is a private company, no different than McDonald’s, accessing police files about a bus rider, and then posting their findings about his criminal record online in a searchable format absent any cause whatsoever.
These are the same people who gleefully published photographs of the “50 most prolific prostitutes in Las Vegas”, but they absolutely refuse to get anyone from the Public Utilities Commission on the phone.
18% rate hikes or some lady selling her ass in a private hotel room.
Which issue effects your life more?
Unless you are going to use the paper merely as an advertising mouthpiece, stay away from the RJ.
Unless you are going to say something milquetoast, status-quo, and non-controversial, you would be well-served to stay away far away … from any online endeavors run by the Las Vegas Review Journal.
Let them have the status-quo’ers who long ago shed any semblance of independent thought. Those are really the only people who consume mainstream media anyway. Look at the mainstream numbers. They are dwindling. Newspapers are hurting, and it’s by their own hand. They lost the trust of the people long ago, and are only accelerating that perception of abject distrust in the public psyche.
Find someplace else to make your opinion known, and use things like the Onion Router when you do so. ttp://www.torproject.org/
The RJ will gleefully toss out the First Amendment on the predication that you “might” do something wrong at some point in the future. Hell, they might just post anything they know about you for no reason at all (see above).
The Review Journal has never been ethical or trustworthy, and this is becoming more apparent as time goes on.
Also, do not forget this incident the next time the RJ itself hides behind the First Amendment. I know I won’t.
When they protest and cry out that they are protected by the First Amendment, remind them that “We’d hate to be the readers who refused to tell the feds that the RJ was selling out the interests of their readers to NV Energy.
Apparently, this is logic that the RJ can relate to.
