The problem with this type of discussions is that they are strongly
affected by cultural biases. Consider these two examples.
Bill Clinton, President of the USA, is said to have engaged in
miscellaneous sexual activities with a woman in a van somewhere in a back
road in Arkansas. Everyone knows about this, because the press talked
about it big time. Bill Clinton has spent a lot of time protesting that
he did not in fact do anything of the sort. Time which, obviously, was
not spent running the country, but obviously Bill Clinton felt it was
crucial to his success as a US President to invest all that time warding
off the blows. Some people think the whole story was fabricated to harm
the president, some think the woman is looking for $$$, etc.
Francois Mitterand, President of France, had a mistress 20 years ago. At
that time he was 58, and the woman was much younger. They had an
"accident" and the woman decided to keep the baby. This did not come out
when he ran for the presidential elections in 1981, even though some
journalists knew. When he ran again in 1988, most of the press knew, and
it still did not come out. It came out recently, through a journalist
that decided to write a book while the president is still alive and the
potential for $$$ is highest. This journalist is now being flamed by the
rest of the press, including the papers that ordinarily devote a third of
their space to flaming the president. The journalists feel it was totally
unethical to mix the president's private and public life. Even the
opposing parties said they "regretted" that this happened, or that this
was a "very unfortunate" incident.
Well, I'm sure one could put American and French journalists in a room
and ask them to discuss these issues. It would be a total waste of time,
though. The situation is very much the same with issues related to
freedom, authority, control, etc. You can talk all you want and get
nowhere. Journalists who think control is evil will continue to think
list owners are out there to bash people's constitutionally protected
rights to freedom. Journalists who think control keeps some order in the
discussion will not begin to worry about freedom of speech. A couple
percent might change their mind, and meanwhile the silent majority of
people who're not interested in this discussion will start signing off.
Eric
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