Pork barrel

[Occhidiangela]

Hi,
Yes, in principle. No, in practice.  Indeed, who guards the guardians?

--Pete

PS I hate waking up hungry in the middle of the night.  Food seems to color all my thoughts ;)
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Fourth Estate, IIRC, versus Fifth Column (saboteurs/spies/dissidents/rogues) Food is a good, universal metaphor/condiment to any conversation, eating being a universal habit. (Eating FOOD, for all of you Lurkers out there with minds in the gutters . . . :wacko: )

Media amalgamation and the attendant reduction of choice in the print media has yet to be counteracted by the explosion of news outlets on the internet, due IMO to Internet's inability to reach out as the omnipresent broadcast mechanism allows. It is a variable stovepipe information medium, whose broadcast elements typically induce information overload, and who rely on an individual's desire to do more than "hear what he wants to hear and disregard the rest . . ."

This leaves radio as a broadcast conduit, due to the constraints at the present that AM and FM bandwidth impose, but radio has been increasingly monopolized by trash music on FM, while on AM, talk radio seems to have reinforced itself to a narrow audience thanks to the corporations running the station networks, and the FM and AM audience's demonstrated choices.

Freedom isn't free, and in a like fashion, a free press costs time and money to enable. In whose interest is a free press? Not in the interest of those who prefer to work at the edges of honor and into dishonorable exercises. For those, misdirection is a key asset.

Competition for attention, and therefore priority of message -- as in a classroom full of attention-starved kids -- goes to those clever enough to get the eye and ear of the listener/viewer (teacher in the model). Clever does not necessarily connote honorable.

From where come the guardians of the public interest? In re your "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" from the population base. How does one grow guardians?

That is a point worth pondering. Just what, in an increasingly insular and chaotic, diverse, allegedly multicultural society (there's an oxymoron for you, given that society is based on culture) is of public interest?

In deference to P.J. O'Rourke, I'd say the one thing that is of interest to everyone is "where the 'public' money goes" in a nation governed by a Parliament of Whores. Paradoxically, that generic interest seems to drive a desire to "hide where the money is going" behind a wall of obfuscation and misdirection by those handling it. This boils down to integrity. The question put generically: "If you are hiding what you are doing from the public, whom you allegedly serve, just what are you doing up there in office, Senator? What are you doing in uniform, General? What are you doing in the Cabinet, Madam Secretary of _________?"

The alleged purpose, character, and structure of a constitutional republic drives a more fundamental question set, with assumption number one given being that a Free Press is indispensible to a government suited to a Free People, and that people give a crap about being "free" versus well sheparded sheep.

Is the purpose of government to serve or to rule?

If to rule, then the society is not free, go back looking for enlightened despots/kings

If to serve, where do you find people who wish to serve their fellow man, their fellow citizens? What cultural baseline, and basis, creates such citizens? From that same baseline, and basis, will come the journalists and editors who wish to serve the role the Fourth Estate is supposed to play in a Free society. I will offer my usual public service announcement that censorship of crap like the PC movement has no place.

What common cultural assumption evokes the desire to serve others?

What common cultural assumption imbues integrity as a behavior?

How does one apply that across a society?

Answer those, and you'll have your guards. ;) If I had an answer that was implemntable, I'd be working on making it happen. The thorn on this rose is the matter of public vitrue. The agents of the French Revolution, for example, tried to inflict a certain amount of virtue on the recently freed from despotism Republic, with mixed results. Likewise the Prohibitionists, and Abolitionists, and the Progressives of the early 20th century.

It is sobering and troubling to observe that the analogous movements in the direction of public virtue these days seem to be religion based movements, of varying stripes. Steps forward, or back?

Occhi