Buzzsaw

I have been reading Into the Buzzsaw, which is a book written about media manipulation abuses performed by the government and big business.  Their hand was forced not to report, by corporate ownership of mass media and in some places they were fired for trying to shed light on subjects deemed unfavorable by the powers that be. 

Jane Akre an award winning journalist was fired by fox news for tryingto  report a story about rBGH in cows and milk.  The local affilliate she worked for was excited about and spent several hundred dollars on the work for this story.  When Monsanto got wind of it their lawyers shut it down.  First they offered changes to the story that would make it more acceptable (but also untrue). When Jane wouldn't accept them they offerred her a severance package and a job change in exchange for her silence on both the story and how fox tried to cover it up.  She would not accept this either.  The news director and the general manager were let go. Jane was fired next and told by the new general manager "We paid $3 billion dollars for these TV stations. We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!".  The dairy coalition director bragged about how they killed the story with paper work and threats.  In the end the station manager said ""You guys don't get it. It doesn't matter whether the facts are true. This story isn't worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars to go up against Monsanto."

We think we live in a nation where there is freedom of speech.  We do not. Although they don't kill people for speaking, your life may be made unbearably hard with job loss, threats, lawsuits and who knows what else.