During the Cold War, people in Europe who lived behind the Iron Curtain had very limited access to news. The State controlled the media, controlled the content of the media, controlled the minds of the people. This was successful to a great extent as long as the News from the West was removed from access. Broadcasts from Western nations, including the US's Voice of America (the BBC, RFI, Radio Canada, Deutch Welle) tried to present the news from another perspective. Their broadcasts were jammed by the nations behind the Iron Curtain. Those oppressed behind the Iron Curtain hungered for News from different perspectives. Many radio signals made it past the jamming. The news of the rest of the world provided a clearer picture of what was happening.
When the Iron Curtain fell, those people were able to freely partake of the (unjammed) radio news from the rest of the world. They had been liberated from their prison!
Today, there are people who live freely in the West who have self imposed a censorship upon their media access. With access to the broadest scope of media in world history, they claim that only one source of news is correct, one source of news is true, and only one source of news is needed to discover how the world is.
It seems incredible that anyone could make such a mistake. In the past it was widely known that knowledge is gained by multiple perspectives. In the past it was widely known that being limited to one media outlet was tantamount to being in a dictatorship of the mind. In the past it was widely known that it was worth while to risk your freedom to hear other(even contrary) perspectives. That was defined as FREEDOM. In fact, there are hundreds of millions of people who believe that multiplicity in access to the media is the key to understanding and constructing a truthful knowledge of the world.
Today there are thousands (maybe more), who believe that FOX news is the only news worth watching. They believe that they are tapped into the only source of news worth watching. These people have (sadly) imposed censorship upon their view of the world. These people have put them selves behind a new Iron Curtain, and stripped themselves of Freedom.
What a sad sad tale...to see people I know who have placed themselves in bondage in this fashion is just almost unbelievable.
