But what about our principled, liberal press? Well, they aren't principled and they aren't liberal. Those who believe otherwise haven't been paying attention, especially since 1994, or so.
But liberals hate drones, don't they? Well, not really! Drones can be very useful tools! Better than bombs alone!
Of course, people with other priorities - like terrorists - can use drones too. But, for now, liberals are content to see what uses prove suitable for our new toys.
Like they say, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything else begins to look like a nail:
In the last 24 hours, events in Congress have shown how leaders of both political parties have worked together to create a new extra-constitutional precedent — one allowing the occupant of the White House to execute American citizens without judicial oversight or even concrete incriminating evidence.
...This is exactly the kind of thing that rightly sows suspicion that for all the politicians yelling at each other, and for all the media hand-wringing about polarization, in many cases both parties collude to guarantee certain outcomes — especially on national security issues. Yet, as evidenced by an equally troubling revelation, that collusion is not limited to elected officials. It also extends to the media that is supposed to provide a check on those officials.
...In a stunning interview with the paper’s ombudsman, managing editor Dean Baquet admitted that the Times decided not to censor the story because it would pose any kind of imminent danger to Americans, but because it might result in the drone program being curtailed.
...It is not overstatement to call this a genuine watershed moment for American journalism.
Here you have one of the most powerful news organizations in the world publicly admitting that it refused to report a story not because it was concerned about the safety of Americans (aka “national security) but because it believed that doing so might result in people finding out about what’s going on and consequently forcing a change in government policy.
...Can you imagine the reaction if, for instance, a major news outlet openly said it refused to publish a story about a secret tax policy specifically because doing so might result in public outrage and therefore a change in said policy? It doesn’t matter whether the tax policy was ultra-conservative or super-liberal — the notion of any news organization, much less some of the most powerful in the world, publicly saying it suppressed a story to prevent a change in that tax policy is anathema to the most basic understanding of the press’s role in society. It would almost certainly generate a huge amount of outrage — and rightly so.
...That such a decision was nonetheless made quite obviously undermines the entire notion that the Times editors (or any editors at the other papers that made the same decision) have any serious regard for objectivity.
...But perhaps even more problematic than the bias is the government-media collusion that is never supposed to occur in a democratic society.
One of the reasons a free press is so necessary to a functioning democracy is so that it can shed light on the actions of the people’s government — even if that light reveals taboo facts. Clearly, though, the opposite is happening — major news organizations made the decision to turn that light off precisely because it would reveal such politically inconvenient truths.
The other label for that is “state-run propaganda.” That’s a term Americans may not be comfortable with — but unfortunately it’s a term that accurately describes more and more of what we see, read and hear when it comes to national security.
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