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From: ignatz@chinet.UUCP (Dave Ihnat)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Projecting winners in elections
Message-ID: <1891@chinet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Nov-87 11:51:10 EST
Article-I.D.: chinet.1891
Posted: Mon Nov 23 11:51:10 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Nov-87 02:14:58 EST
References: <899@cod.NOSC.MIL> <716@ers.UUCP>
Reply-To: ignatz@chinet.UUCP (Dave Ihnat)
Organization: Analysts International Corporation
Lines: 32
Keywords: First Amendment, Censorship
Summary: Well, yes, but there *are* problems...


In article <716@ers.UUCP>, nmm@ers.UUCP (Neil McCulloch) writes:
>	In Canada there is an outright ban on any polls being published. 
>	The point is quite fundamental. In Canada it is realised that in order
>	to protect the democratic process it is more important that the election
>	process be as fair as possible than the media's right to free speech.
>	The media have there rights curtailed for a specified period of time
>	in order that the individual's rights and the nation's requirement for
>	a fair un-skewed election is secured. A trade off of such as this once
>	every 5 years or so seems an admirable compromise. ...

Well, maybe...but there's a real problem any time you decide to allow
such suspension.  For now, it's elections; but it also includes,
since the precedent has been set, the possibility of other issues also
permitting suspension of a free press.  For that matter, it seems to
me that the only country in the world that doesn't have an official
censorship mechanism is the US, isn't it?  I would suspect that the
inviolability of the First Amendment is what's prevented that.

What has endangered such freedom, though, is a lack of concomitant
responsibility on the part of the news services.  It used to be common
for a public official to call in the Press and let them in on a
breaking story, with the understanding that it *would not* be released
until it couldn't adversely affect the issue at hand.  I'm not saying
the gentlemen and ladies of the Press today are less ethical than
their precursors, but the intense competetion and the minute-by-minute
mentality of TV have combined to make such a move, today, an act of
idiocy.
-- 
			Dave Ihnat
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