I have no idea how you got ANY of that out of my post...
Perhaps I badly miscommunicated, but my point was that if a business does something the public (or a good portion of the public) doesn't like, it will have to deal with the consequences of offending those people. That doesn't mean that anyone's rights have been taken away, it only means that actions have consequences.
I'm happy to explain, John. The first paragraph of your post was this one sentence: "Yes, a paper has the RIGHT to choose what they want to print and what they DON'T want to print."
What I think you said in that one sentence paragraph was that a paper has the RIGHT to choose what they want to print and what they DON'T want to print.
After you compare what you said with what I think you said, I hope you'll agree that I didn't misunderstand your statement.
If you're distressed by the implications of your statement, rest assured that I'm no less distressed by those implications. What I did was pursue the implications from what you said to where they led. It's true that you didn't use the examples I did but all of my examples are drawn from well known reality during times and in places when newspapers exercised what you assert are their rights: to choose what they want to print and what they don't want to print.
They do have those rights. On that point we are in complete agreement. Where we probably disagree is that I think that because a newspaper has special privileges and protections it has assumed a duty to serve the public by being generally fair and inclusive. I don't think it fulfills that duty by imposing its own political or social agendas on the public. It certainly has the
right to be biased
against African Americans, Jews, Italians, Poles, Asians, Hispanics, gun owners, boat owners, car owners, beer drinkers, cigar smokers, women, homosexuals, or disabled people, for example, and it also has the
right to be biased
towards any of those groups or others. But I've illustrated where some of those biases have led in the past and I hope you agree that they did not lead to good places--not places where I, and I hope you, want to be led or want our communities led.
Perhaps, then, you might at least consider the possibility a newspaper is not simply a business like any other business, and that in return for the special privileges and protection it receives it has assumed the duty I mentioned. The privileges and protection include not only the special freedom of the press but also special subsidies from the public purse in the form of reduced mailing rates. You pay more to mail a letter through the United States Postal Service because newspapers, magazines, and book publishers pay less. They don't carry their own weight. You, I, and other individuals carry some of it for them. I want at least some
semblance of fairness in return for my money. It's interesting that you don't. You're much more charitable than I.
The executives and shareholders of Landmark Communications, the conglomerate that owns the Roanoke
Times, might all be sincere in their belief that all citizens of the U.S. should be denied access to firearms and that those firearms should be confiscated and destroyed tomorrow. I don't mind them holding such beliefs. But I don't want them abusing their public trust as newspaper publishers and television station operators to disseminate those beliefs. I could be persuaded to change my mind if they turned over half of their companies to me so I could disseminate my beliefs on equal footing with them, or even if they just disclaimed any special protection or privileges in a legally binding way. But when they abuse the leverage you, I, and others grant them and when they do it to leverage their own biases and ideas, that I won't accept. You do. So do others here. That's interesting to me because it's always fascinating to watch people passionately committed to their own destruction. I could do without it though.
There is
no benefit to the public--to me, to you, or to anyone else--if a newspaper is operated to disseminate the views and biases of its owners and staff. It's fallacious to argue there is a free marketplace of ideas in the case of the only newspaper published in the area or that the newspaper will sink if a significant number of its readers don't approve of it. There is no competing newspaper for advertisers who rely on newspapers. As for the statement that people who don't like it can start their own newspaper and compete, there's a sense of unreality about such thinking unless someone happens to have a great many millions of dollars kicking around to launch and support the competing newspaper in the years it might take to establish it. I doubt that more than two or three people in this very busy forum have that kind of money to risk: Bluestartlizard obviously has that kind of money and maybe you do too, but I'm a little short this year and I suspect that most other forum members are too. And that's the wonderful part of the thinking behind Bluestartlizard's suggestion: it completely excludes the poor and the middle class, so it sounds good but there's no danger that any but the very rich could act on it.
Sure, the Roanoke
Times has the right to print whatever it wants and not to print whatever it doesn't want, but just because a business might have the right to do something doesn't mean that it's right for them to do it. The Roanoke
Times probably also has the right to completely ignore coverage of any candidate that does not further its political or social agendas while it gives extensive coverage to those candidates it supports: they would be exercising their right to print whatever they want and not to print whatever it doesn't want. And of course anyone who doesn't like it could start a competing newspaper tomorrow, or maybe on Monday. But are those responses the least bit rational?
I'm still puzzled by gun owners who argue so fervently in support of the people and businesses that want to destroy them. Should we all agree now to contribute to the Brady Campaign, vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, and pass out leaflets for the UN movement to disarm American citizens? Or shall we merely argue for their
rights and argue against anyone here who opposes them? After all, Hillary and Barack have the
right to assert that the Second Amendment is obsolete and doesn't mean that
you can own any firearm at all.
