By Daniel Nardini
There are two things I will never forget when the Al Qaeda attacks happened on September 11, 2001. First, the sheer shock I think almost all Americans felt by what happened. I myself woke up to go to do an interview on that day in downtown Chicago. When I got to the train station to go, I was told by the ticket seller that the trains were not running into downtown Chicago, and in fact they were taking people away from downtown. He told me to watch the news on TV to know what happened. Well, I did the interview a few weeks later, but I had my story for the time. But one other thing that happened which affected me just as much as September 11th, and that was government censorship efforts of the news itself.
Then U.S. President George W. Bush began to rely more and more on the Espionage Act of 1917 to target journalists who :knowingly or unknowingly may have published “classified” information. Problem is, who labeled what was classified and what is not classified? What about the CIA rendition of people to third countries and black jails? Or the Bush administration’s use of charging U.S. citizens in military courts rather than in the civilian court system. But I am not just going to focus on Bush alone. Then U.S. President Barack Obama used the same Espionage Act to prosecute whistle blowers and even have journalists under surveillance. And what about former U.S. President Joe Biden? He threatened to have people jailed for “not following the science” in regards to the Covid pandemic. After the first year of the pandemic, I just gave up wearing a mask even though I risked going to jail.
The two things that seem to be consistent with Trump and previous administrations is that the executive branch has taken far more control of the government and society, and the legislative branch just seems to follow along. After all, who essentially started the Iraq War, and didn’t Congress go along with it even though the so-called evidence of Iraq being involved with 9/11 was proven to be a bold-faced lie? As we come up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we should not just remember the dead and our heroes, but also undo the wrongs and legal stupidity that has had impinged on journalist and constitutional freedoms so we do not give our enemies what they had long wanted—to turn the United States into an authoritarian one-party state fearing its own people.
Censorship Since 9/11
By Daniel Nardini
Then U.S. President George W. Bush began to rely more and more on the Espionage Act of 1917 to target journalists who :knowingly or unknowingly may have published “classified” information. Problem is, who labeled what was classified and what is not classified? What about the CIA rendition of people to third countries and black jails? Or the Bush administration’s use of charging U.S. citizens in military courts rather than in the civilian court system. But I am not just going to focus on Bush alone. Then U.S. President Barack Obama used the same Espionage Act to prosecute whistle blowers and even have journalists under surveillance. And what about former U.S. President Joe Biden? He threatened to have people jailed for “not following the science” in regards to the Covid pandemic. After the first year of the pandemic, I just gave up wearing a mask even though I risked going to jail.
The two things that seem to be consistent with Trump and previous administrations is that the executive branch has taken far more control of the government and society, and the legislative branch just seems to follow along. After all, who essentially started the Iraq War, and didn’t Congress go along with it even though the so-called evidence of Iraq being involved with 9/11 was proven to be a bold-faced lie? As we come up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we should not just remember the dead and our heroes, but also undo the wrongs and legal stupidity that has had impinged on journalist and constitutional freedoms so we do not give our enemies what they had long wanted—to turn the United States into an authoritarian one-party state fearing its own people.