second guessing every move is literally the job of the free press and why it's protected by the US constitution. it is vitally important to an effective democracy.

No sir. There is a world of difference between slight bias in reports about the nationalistic leader who continues to attack all actual news reporters like a 2 year old and direct his terroristic followers to attack them as enemies of the people and a deeper level of bias against all non right wingers paired with outright campaigning for the same anti free press candidates.

Wait...you still defend Fox as having reporting but claim you don't need someone to bend facts? Bending facts like using proper English to describe a scene? But reporting on the birther movement for years as true, and the ridiculous waste of money named the Benghazi investigation, continued denial of climate science, etc. does bother you? Fox doesn't bend fact, they omit it. They don't get credit for using 5% (yes, that's exaggerated) truth to sell their lies.

I watched Chris Wallace interview Conway just yesterday (for as long as I could stand it, which admittedly was only a few minutes), his questions were ok, but delivered with a slow underhand pitch and with no follow-up or contradiction of her ridiculous rambling factless replies. That's not good reporting, it's being the setup for spreading their agenda/propaganda.

You think CNN goes to far by using words like "accost" to describe 3 policemen tackling a topless woman in tights, and while you claim to have looked up the definition , you still claim the word is somehow loaded and not proper. Please explain.

When the police were going after the fleeing armed supporters of Mr Bundie under Obama I think you likely called them violent thugs who attacked that poor innocent man unnecessarily....Fox did. That man was armed and an anti American terrorist, but right wing so Fox called him a strong patriotic American standing up for American values that the unAmerican Kenyan thug in the Whitehouse wanted to murder.
There is no equivalence. Fox is (disgusting unAmerican) entertainment, not news. There is no right wing news outlet, they are all propaganda outlets and little more today.
The Ministry of Truth doesn't need fact, you will believe any nonsense they tell you to, even when it contradicts what they had you believe yesterday. They have you believing any non Trump biased news is fake news reported with hyper liberal bias, even in other countries, but Fox has good reporting and less bias.
*facepalm

A journalist's job isn't just to sit there and passively report what Trump says to you - that would be no different than any official party propaganda. Move to North Korea if that's what you want from your reporters. The media IS the conscience of any democracy, and it is their job to hold Trump accountable for his brazen lies.

That is why the first thing any fascist, communist, and/or dictatorship does to consolidate power is to attack the media and end free press. Trump is doing the same, lying to gullible people like you to discredit any news source that doesn't work in his favor. His lies seems to have worked on you because somehow you think CNN is the "trashiest", when there are things like Fox, Sinclair, and Breitbart, which are no longer news but have moved fully into the realm of blatant propaganda.

And it's laughable that Trump supporters are now crying for respect, when they showed no such thing to Obama. Just your every day Republican hypocrisy.

Also, I'm curious as to what "good" Trump has done. Sure if you're a racist bigot and you like the idea of separating Mexican children from their parents, Trump is your man. Other than that I'm curious what else you believe he's done for America.

Yeah seriously, how dare he provoke the president by asking questions that Trump doesn't want to answer. CNN should go to North Korea and learn how to properly respect the president - you should only ask positive things about our Great Leader! If Fox News can tout the official party line, why can't every one else?

Them democrats caring about such silly things like a free press - how childish!

Just wasn't funny to me. Seemed like they were just trying too hard.

It really says something to me when the President of the organization that sponsors the event makes a statement distancing themselves from the host.

"Last night's program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people," Talev said. "Unfortunately, the entertainer's monologue was not in the spirit of that mission."

Talev's Sunday night email to members indicated that changes could be afoot. She said she and SiriusXM's Olivier Knox, the association's next president, "are committed to hearing from members on your views on the format of the dinner going forward."

Cenk is about to be a very big target of the new authoritarian regime's aspiration to criminalize the free press.

One thing I am looking forward to are good polemics as part of the election's post-mortem. In terms of video footage, both Cenk and Kyle over at TYT and Secular Talk respectively went off the rails quite nicely. But the good stuff, the really good stuff, will trickle in, and exclusively in written form.

Lambert over at NC makes a decent start, given his lack of sleep:

The Democrat establishment was warned about their weak candidate, and they were presented with a popular and well-funded alternative: Bernie Sanders. Instead, as the Podesta emails show in lavish detail, they used their control of the party machinery and their service providers in our famously free press to rig the primary in their favor at every turn. When their candidate was nominated, the Democrat establishment tacked right, and proceeded to explain to Sanders voters that their votes were not needed or even desired because, as #BernieBros, they were racist and sexist. Sanders supporters have every right to say #WeWereRight and #WeToldYouSo.

If this were Japan, we’d be seeing Democrat Party leaders committing seppuku, or cutting off their little fingers or — supposing them not to be gangsters — ritually and tearfully bowing to the people they betrayed. This being America, and these being Democrats, they are feverishly deploying the Blame Cannons at racist and sexist #BernieBros, Johnson, Stein, and the dogs who wouldn’t eat the dog food. These assclowns will only leave office if they’re whipped out with scorpions. So get to it, Sanders supporters. This is your time.

The right to free press is the first thing to go if he gets the presidency!

Not that we had GREAT press in the first place, but still!

Okay. You're right. He can be a politician. He is a politician. A stinking poor one, but since he is running for public office, he is by definition a "politician."

Doesn't change the fact he is unqualified to be President. He knows nothing. He promotes fear-mongering and encourages violence. He says he will do things as president that are clearly unconstitutional and outside his powers (banning Muslims, changing the libel laws so he can gain financially.) He is thin-skinned.

He has just revoked the press credentials of The Washington Post because he didn't like a front page story. The man doesn't understand the three branches of government plus the fourth estate of a free press.

I'm qualified to disqualify him because I am a thinking American who knows some history. Like Ken Burns. Like Mitt Romney.

Trump is a unifier, all right. For the first time in almost eight years, some Republicans are putting their love of country above partisanship. I've never been more proud of everyone who has the courage to tell the truth about Donald Trump.

He is patently unfit to serve our country. He has never done it before. He isn't interested in doing it now.

That's the price of having a free press. Free from government interference and free to print what they like.

Good journalism is rare now. But I'd rather have a free press and have to hunt to find good journalism than to have a North Korean style propaganda machine.

Soros funds Free Press, whose stated goal is to dismantle capitalism and replace it with socialism. But Rachel won't make a peep about that, I'm sure. She's already got years of experience as a socialist mouthpiece, so she'll always have a job lined up.

And here I thought the claims around his four laptops were put to rest in July of last year or, at the very latest, after his meeting with Ray MacGovern, Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake in October.

There was nothing of substance on those laptops and to suggest otherwise with any credibility demands extraordinary proof.

Why?

Because of two primary reasons, as far as I am concerned:

- Any of Snowden's claims has yet to proven false. The entire apparatus is trying and they failed miserably so far. Probably because Snowden actually knows what he's talking about, unlike such cranks as Rep. Peter King.

- Snowden spent years working within the intelligence industry (CIA, NSA, private contractors) and he has proven to be careful and meticulous. Unlike the public (or the British MoD), he'd know better than to transport any sensitive information on a device like a laptop or a smartphone. Or an external harddrive. Or a disk. He'd use flash memory, possibly a thumb drive, probably an SD card -- the less embedded controllers a device has, the better. Heavily encrypted, of course, and if anyone doesn't believe that crypto works... tough luck, I'm done trying to convince people otherwise.

So, the only people who received data from him are Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. American journalists reporting on American issues, just like he said.

As for the the revelation of "tons of national secrets and techniques": he has revealed nothing. Let me say that again: Snowden has revealed nothing.

He has empowered members of the press, the fourth estate, to do their bloody jobs and fullfil their role as watchdog over the government, something they failed at miserably in this particular regard. All revelations happen at the discretion of those journalists who are now the sole proprietors of the Snowden-documents.

If, however, you don't subscribe to the notion of a free press as a line of defence against government abuse, then I can't change your mind.

By the way, "putting American lives at risk" should have received a trademark by now, the way it has been waved around to kill uncomfortable conversations. I vividly remember how desperate they were to find proof that the Afghan/Iraqi War Logs and the Gitmo Files were endangering lives. As far as I know, they never found any. And as far as I know, all releases based on Snowden-documents were carefully chosen and redacted where neccessary to protect the identity of human assets. All claims to the contrary need to provide evidence.

But I'm glad to see that the "American industry" has found its way into the argument. At least we don't have to pretend that this is solely about terrorism anymore. Industrial espionage, diplomatic advantages and... keeping your own population in check.

Yay! It's just like the old days.

Oh wait, I forgot. My country has been under full scale surveillance by the US, the British and the French since the late '40s, so it's actually business as usual.

I second @JustSaying here -- what exactly does it tell you? (Snowden seeking refuge in countries with abysmal human rights records)

What it tells me is that it is pretty pathetic that Snowden's best chances for freedom and a life outside of a concrete cell in Gitmo come from someplace like Venezuela, Ecuador, or Russia as compared to his home, the "land of the free" USA. I think it says much more about the current government and political environment in the US than it does about Snowden.

Given my take on it, I think it is laughable to accuse Snowden of hypocrisy. Aim that word at an entity that deserves it -- the country and government that labels itself:

*the "land of the free" (except for those that we lock up in indefinite detention without trial, those guilty of thoughtcrime, anyone trying to travel freely outside of the country or even from state to state, etc.),

*"home of the brave" (except for any vague threat of 'terrorists', in which case we ask everyone to panic and allow a friendly TSA officer to treat you like a sock puppet, in spite of the fact that you're 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist),

*originator of the bill of rights (unless the government has some tenuous and self serving reason to revoke any/all of your rights: Free speech? Hah! Free press? Hah! Unreasonable search and seizure? No such thing! Due process? Hah! Speedy and public trial? Hah! By a jury? Hah! Cruel and unusual punishments? Waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation techniques' don't count! The government laughs at the bill of rights and pisses on their grave.),

*bastion of democracy (except I don't remember voting on ANY of the shit that Snowden brought to our attention, and it seems that neither do any/most of our elected 'representatives' -Hah!), and

*home of the American dream (as long as your dream doesn't involve freedom from any of the myriad transgressions listed above).

Oh how my once proud nation has fallen.

"Well, we’re talking about the death of a free press, the death of a civil society. This is far beyond a reasonable debate. We make the East German Stasi state look like the Boy Scouts. And if we don’t wrest back this power for privacy, for the capacity to investigate what our power elite is doing, I think we can essentially say our democracy has been snuffed out." - Chris Hedges

love how they "censor" that scene in glee, even though you can clearly tell what it is. I see that double standard a lot in censorship. They hide certain bits of it, but you see enough of it so instead of saying "whew glad I missed those parts" its "hrm...what was I missing out on? I wish to know more"

And that's where censoring fails. You give power to that which makes you uncomfortable. It's so bad...YOU MUST CENSOR IT!! Which just encourages people further to view the censorship. It has the opposite effect. Same goes for boycotting. If you boycott something, odds are you're just going to make it more popular as it's just free press.

Here's a pro tip:

1. You don't have a right to not be offended.

2. If something bothers you, don't give it power over you. Seeing these things that bother you does not validate or endorse them any way. Announcing that you're offended and that you MUST remove the offending bits just announces to the world what honks you off and gives people power over you as they now know how to manipulate you.

3. If you're teaching your kids, step up and do your fucking job as a parent and educate your kids instead of hiding it from them. If this "education" has any merits to it, it will stick on it's own.