By BOB BILLETER

The Power of the Press

The press has always had great power since the printing press was invented and the masses started to become educated. We hear a lot today about the growing power of government but little about the power of the press.
Does it have great power? Edmund Burke, the great English statesman, was giving a speech in the House of Commons and he began talking about the three estates that controlled power in England. These estates were the clergy, the nobility and the Commons. He pointed to the press gallery and said, “And there, gentlemen, is the fourth estate, more powerful than all the others.”
Yes, the press in America has great power. As a matter of fact, it may have greater power today than it had in the past. For instance the big chains of newspapers reach far more people today than a single newspaper did decades ago.
It also is a cause for concern to many people that 80 percent of today’s press in our country is controlled by liberals. The news coverage is not fair and balanced. Stories that break that put liberal politicians in a bad light often are ignored by them.
The liberal press plays up stories that are critical of politicians they don’t like.
Right now the bias in news coverage is greater than I have ever seen it in my lifetime. It is alarming, to say the least. This is not a healthy thing for a democratic country.
And yet if there is only one conservative newspaper or TV network left in a region of the country it is often attacked unmercifully by liberals who would love to shut it down.
This happened last week with the firing of Shirley Sherrod, a Agricultural Dept. worker who spoke before the NAACP about racial matters.
Fox News, the White House, the NAACP, other papers and channels and just about everyone else took some of her remarks out of context and misinterpreted the meaning of what she was saying. But it was Fox that paid the price.
There are many liberals who will never be happy until the liberals control 100 percent of the media. I am convinced of this and the liberals prove it every day by their actions and words.
With the media bias as bad as it is and the press as powerful as it is, I am surprised that a conservative ever gets elected in this country today.
Obama has everything going for him. Eighty percent of the powerful media supports him. There are millions more Democrats than Republicans. Yet his popularity rating has fallen to 44 percent among voters. And what’s even worse, the popularity rating of the Congress has fallen to 11 percent.
No Congress has ever had a rating that low since they were first calculated many years ago.
Here is my question: what would Obama’s popularity rating be and what would Congress’ rating be if we had a fair and balanced media in our county? That is an interesting question, don’t you think? It is obvious that a predominately liberal media has a powerful affect on these ratings.
Can you imagine an America that has a media that speaks with only one political voice? I hope it never comes to this but I think it is a distinct possibility.
Is it any wonder the government seems to be taking over our financial system, our insurance industry, our automobile industry?
Is it any wonder we are speeding toward socialism and Marxism and away from the free enterprise system that made us the great nation we are--the greatest, most powerful nation in the world?
For generations, our country has been a beacon symbolizing hope and freedom for a great part of the world. I pray that beacon does not go out.