The “Break it Down” Blog

In light of the attacks on the freedom of the press over the last few years and growing concern that all the “news” currently broadcast inside the United States is controlled by 3 companies that are in lock-step with each other, one can only see the latest out of Washington and wonder… how many days until this is a military-controlled country with a single dictator at the helm a la V for Vendetta?

So the Pentagon has revealed a new “Correction Unit” whose sole purpose is to scour the web for news and “correct” the stories. Everything from blogs to newspapers to magazines… you name it. Any source of news inside the United States.

Hey that sounds like a great ideal, especially given the current state of our government. Let’s correct any story that disagrees with our agenda… because after all, our marketing department calls the war a “opportunity for building” instead of a “wasteful tragedy”… so we need to correct that.

Now getting off my soap box for a minute, forgetting political allegiances… does this scare anyone else? For all the Bush-supporting Republicans out there they may be thinking “So what, it’s good. There is so much liberal propaganda online and it’s all lies!”, that’s fine… but let’s say a Democrat gets into office and the tables are turned and they start flopping the government the other way… then what? Do you still feel comfortable knowing that your government (the one you no longer like) is still “correcting” the news?

How is this different than censorship like in China or North Korea? We all know how this is going to start. A small correction here, a small correction there. Then there will be some landmark case where the department actually sends a request with threat of legal action in order to get a story changed. That will go through and the story will change. The department will start getting stronger, getting more momentum. Laws will get written in that support the operation of this foundation… give it 10 or 20 years and our news will be completely filtered, top to bottom by this department before they are ever released to the 1 or 2 news corporations that still exist inside of the United States and then we will all watch it and go “Ahhhh, the war in Iraq is so successful! We are liberating so many people and saving so many lives! YAY!” because it will all be pictures of people hugging soldiers, and interviews with troops (or actors) that are all positive.

At that point, I don’t think it matters if you are Republican, Democrat or homeless… we would just be screwed.