Your personal freedoms--destroyed by the internet. How?

The only thing that stands between you and the complete destruction of the freedoms we've come to appreciate in America is a vigilant press corps. The idea of freedom of the press was so important to the framers of the constitution, they made it the first explicit right in the first ten amendments to the document. The Bill of Rights seems pretty straight forward when speaking about the freedom of the press. That freedom of reporting, and the oversight role that media plays in watching the government activity, is being destroyed by the internet.

Newspapers are going bankrupt all over America. The Tribune companies, publishers of the Chicago Tribune, have already declared bankruptcy. The New York Times and its sister paper the Los Angeles Times are in deep financial trouble. Gannett Newspapers, including USA Today, have been laying off employees and cutting expenses rapidly in an attempt to stay afloat. Newspapers are going out of business at an alarming rate.

The economy has certainly caused a great deal of the problem. Advertising has slumped drastically in the past 24 months. Papers have lots huge amounts of dollars in revenue to internet advertising. Meanwhile, the cost of printing, delivering and reporting the news just continues to rise unabated.

Its suggested that newspapers failure is systemic of a technology that's long past its time. Like the telegraph, wagon trains, or typewriters, newspapers are well on their way to the scrap heap of history. Already most of us get what news we do consume from social media, or RSS feeds from web sites. Some people even watch the news on that ancient technology known as television.

The mainstream media have earned their reputation for slanted and jaded reporting. While practitioners of the art will claim to only "seek the truth", the reality for anyone facing a reporter is you will either confirm or deny the version of the story they've already determined to write. Its called the angle, and its the beginning of most every story you'll find in print or online.

The loss of newspapers isn't the bad part of this story and the cost to freedom. The cost comes in the removal of reporters who are your eyes and ears to make sure government does as it says.

Watergate would have been a simple break in without the determination of the Washington Post reporters Woodward and Berstein. Their push for the truth destroyed the presidency of Richard Nixon. Other scandals big and small have been uncovered by the press. John Edwards and Gary Hart's marital infidelity, Elliot Spitzer's fascination with call girls while he was Governor of New York or the hidden files of September 11^th are all stories that came to light because their were newspaper reporters working for the truth.

Its not as simple as putting the stories online and reporting. There are costs to reporting because news is NOT a commodity. There's fact checking, rewriting, and confirmation of sources. Freedom of the press did not come with the freedom to libel people, which seems to be a hallmark of a lot of online "journalism."

Without journalism, we'd have Katie Couric passing herself off as a bona fide newsperson, or TMZ.com, and PerezHilton.com as true news sources. Its not bad when its the fluff that most of these products deliver as news. Can you imagine TMZ.com doing coverage in Iraq? Or PerezHilton.com explaining the latest tax hike from the Obama Administration?

News events are commodities. Every news source can get pretty much the same spin from the newsmaker from the same event. Our current White House press treatment shows the danger when reporters are so enamored with the subject they are covering, they forget to do their jobs.

Its the story behind the story. Its the questions that must be asked on your behalf. You can accept the "official" story that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or you can look deeper to see if it is true. You can accept the "official" story that Pat Tillman was killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan, or you can find the truth.

The truth costs money. The truth is what is needed to protect freedom. The question is what value do you place on the truth.