Breaking - Which Free Is The Bad Free?

When I commonly read the 1960's Los Angeles Free Press as a youngster, I thought it was named that because it was "free".

There was no cost to it. They shared and gave it to us.

I now know there was much cost involved when those dedicated journalists worked hard to expose what was happening to the nation.

Some of them died thinking they had failed, some still live thinking they failed, but others are still out there trying to explain what "free" really means.

Some of the press in the US which is not free is in financial trouble, but there has been no mention of bailout for them except perhaps in that Dredd Blog article.

And this morning on Morning Joe. I was impressed by the consideration Joe gave the press, in the context of a bailout, and I was also impressed with his appearance on Meet The Press this past Sunday. I even thought that maybe Willie Geist was bringing Joe up now better than his mother did.

But during Morning Yo, even the Pulitzer winner Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, whom Joe was interviewing this morning, only came up with we should "monetize the internet" as a solution to free press demise.

Eugene could not fathom a bailout of the press by the government. I certainly do not advocate that either, but it has already been done in the sense that the Pentagon paid all the very expensive bills for some in the "free press".

They paid a lot more than that to them too. They paid so well that the "free press" became well embedded. Ahem, that is, they even got in bed with them too. Was it hot war and cold love or cold war and hot love as they pulled the clothes off the empire?

Money and love and a piece of the action. Woohoo, voodoo economics amid a free "press", if you get my drift. Every day now they have a little cover up, like an Edwards Affair model or a fear floosy model, but that Jekyll passion is too hard to Hyde.

So, a little money for a "free press" bailout is not good? But it is good for banks and car makers and AIG's? Hey, gotta love "them voodoo economics" of freedom ringing sometimes, eh?

At least wee the people know which "free" is bad press and which "free" is good.

UPDATE: The Pentagon can't get good propaganda help these daze it seems. They just withdrew a report that whitewashed the fact they paid the "free press" to do their bidding:

Donald M. Horstman, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for policy and oversight, said in a memorandum released on Tuesday that the report was so riddled with flaws and inaccuracies that none of its conclusions could be relied upon. In addition to repudiating its own report, the inspector general’s office took the additional step of removing the report from its Web site.

(NY Times). They had been caught with their pants down in bed with the press and attempted to portray it as some sort of medical rescue mission I suppose.