So Senator Jay Rockefeller is now calling for an investigation of News Corporation companies in the US, including, we can imagine, Fox News. Admittedly, the News Corporation is having severe problems in the UK, as a result of various phone-hacking allegations, and even a few convictions. And yet none of those allegations have spilled back to the US. That is to say, nobody has accused any American media properties of any involvement in--or even awareness of--the bad practices. The UK is, after all, its own media culture, with its own idiosyncratic practices, not all of them good. But someone might remind Rockefeller that here in America, you're not supposed to go investigating media outlets. Why not? Because the First Amendment to the US Constitution says that you can't. Journalism is one of the few professions, the sanctity of which is actually written into that sacred document. Government investigations might be necessary in some extreme case, where there's real evidence of wrongdoing, but it''s obvious, here, that Jay is just on a fishing expedition. And that fishing expedition will inevitably have a chilling effect on the First Amendment.
But don't expect Jay R. to see things that way, to worry about our most prized traditions. After all, he's never played by the rules. He's never had to--he's a Rockefeller.
Sen. Rockefeller has been in the US Senate since 1985, and yet has managed to stay obscure, for one big reason--he is a dope. But of course, he didn't get elected to the US Senate because he's a dope. He got elected in spite of that fact. Instead, he got elected because he was rich.
Cable Gamers might not know much about him, but here's what they need to know: Back in the 70s, the megabucks Rockefeller family sent one of their boys--"Jay" is actually John D. Rockefeller IV--to the backwater state of West Virginia to buy high political office. It seems that those Rockefellers with political ambitions were sent off somewhere to run for office in a state where votes could come cheap. Jay's cousin, Winthrop Rockefeller, did the same thing in Arkansas back in the 60s, and so perhaps that's where Jay got the idea from. But of course, by the time tha Jay was ready to buy his political career, the Rockefeller family had mostly turned liberal--and liberal of the worst kind, the guilt-ridden, trust-fund liberal kind.
Jay ran for governor, as a Democrat, in 1972, and lost. And then, with more family money, he ran for governor in 1976, won, and then won again in 1980. After that second term in the WV statehouse, he moved to the US Senate. See kids? That's how you do it! You inherit a few billion dollars, and then you're in politics!
If West Virginians want to sell themselves to the Rockefellers and their money, that's their right, one supposes. But the damage that Jay does ought to be confined to one state. He ought not to be able to do damage to the rest of us--and that's what his plan to investigate any media company would do. Making things worse, subsequent reports show that two other Democratic Senators, Barbara Boxer and Robert Menendez, wish to join Rockefeller in an inquisition against NWS and Fox.
Before they go too far, all three of these rogue senators should read a fierce New York Times editorial that sharply reminded British officials that even there, they should be careful about putting shackles of any kind on the press. As the Times put it:
Britain does not need new laws, it just needs to better enforce the ones it already has. In other areas, Britain’s press already faces more hurdles than are healthy in a democracy. An Official Secrets Act lets the government decide what news can and cannot be printed. Libel laws heavily weighted toward complainants chill the publication of unflattering facts.
Enacting further government restrictions on news gathering and publication would be a terrible idea — blinding the public in the name of protecting it.
Strong words, and good words, from the Times on press freedom. At least in Britain. Now let's wait and see if the Times writes another equally tough editorial defending American press freedom. If the issue were US press freedom for some obscure student blog, the Times would undoubtedly be thundering in its defense of press freedom. But since it's NWS, including the dreaded Fox News, don't be surprised if the Times is struck dumb.