DKSuddeth
Senior Member
Originally posted by pegwinn
Cool, what do they have the right to know?
My contention is that we as a nation cannot restrict the press; deep breath ; but, we are not required to cooperate with them either.
So where does the publics right to know stop and your civil liberties begin. If you are the victim of a crime, they will camp out on your door. If you run for office they will claim the right to know every girl you ever tagged (thanks bill). IF you are running a business, they will investigate your practices without much in the way of provocation. Oh well, thanks for the insight.
the press have every right to investigate that you yourself do. The only special priviledge that the press is, or should be, given is access to areas that the mass public would not be able to occupy to get the story for the people.
Now, for the specifics of what you are asking, the press can sit on the sidewalk in front of your home as long as they like, just like I could. Its a public sidewalk and you have no more right to throw me off of it than you would Jacques Chirac, as much as you'd probably like to. As part of the public, I have the right to know everything that my government does since the government is my representation, my employee, and as such, we the people use the press to get this information out. That does not mean that I have the right to know 'every girl that clinton (or any other politician) tagged', yet we (the people) allow this with the excuse of determining the 'character' of a politician. We only have ourselves to blame when things like what happened to jack ryan happen.