'Radio Free America'

Townhall.com
By Cal Thomas

During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the "captive nations" that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers. Those dictators did everything they could to "jam" the signals so that their people would only hear what their unelected overseers wanted them to hear. Contemporary versions of jamming and other forms of censorship occur today in Venezuela, Cuba and many other places where dictators believe public ignorance is essential to their unchallenged rule.

While the Obama administration is the product of an election, its approach to Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio and possibly the Internet appears similar to dictators who desire control over the flow of information in order to enhance their power.

The administration's primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies.

Like those Cold War truth-tellers, Fox is simply delivering information to a rapidly growing audience (partly due to criticism from the White House) that wants to see and hear what the other media are not telling them. Fox -- and talk radio -- are reporting on the backgrounds and statements of Obama administration officials. Fox didn't create the statements and actions of Van Jones, the now former "energy czar," who signed a petition questioning whether Bush administration officials allowed 9/11 to happen as a possible pretext for going to war. Fox didn't force Jones to advocate for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, or associate himself with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a left-wing radical group with Marxist roots.

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