IF WE'RE NOT CAREFUL, WE MIGHT BE NEXT TARGET

Re: "White House reportedly gave magazines benefits for promoting anti-drug
policy," April 1.

Free speech is one of the most basic rights in this country. For hundreds
of years free media served as a bulwark against an authoritarian government.

Now all this is changing.

It is not only that federally mandated messages fly under the banner of
free editorial content or that this sort of compliance has turned into the
proverbial gravy train.

It is not that all this is happening clandestinely and that the
Constitution is sold at 30 pieces of silver per article.

It is not only that civil liberties have become a matter of product
placement or the Orwellian magnitude of what is transpiring.

It is the nonchalance in which the administration glances over the betrayal
of its constituency.

What will be the next message that will be oozing out from our journals and
TV sets? The policy du jour concerning our privacy and how it hinders law
enforcement procedures? Our opinions on necessary force in policy arrests?
Freedom of religion? Racial equality?

All this can easily be manipulated and we should make darn sure we struggle
as hard as we can not to hand over that power to those in power.

Because, otherwise, we ourselves might be the next target.