If It's Not on TV, Then It Must Not Have Happened

A couple of email messages on Thursday from fellow progressives first alerted me about the arrest of activist and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern during Hillary Clinton's Tuesday speech about internet freedom. His offense: standing silently in the audience wearing a Veterans For Peace t-shirt with his back turned to Clinton .

"How did I miss that?" I asked myself so I started looking for the articles that I must have missed. The video of the incident was from CNN. Searching that site for McGovern's name turned up no stories. I did the same on the Washington Post site. Nada.

A Google search for Ray McGovern turns up stories about the incident but those stories are not major media. Those stories are the ones that filtered out over the next few days. Better than nothing but not particularly informative to the general public.

So I missed the story because it did not exist. It was ignored by the media. The Washington Post dutifully reports Clinton's speech but makes no mention of McGovern's protest.

While the United States government claims to support freedom of expression around the world, its minions are unwilling to tolerate the embarrassing discomfort of Americans exercising those rights here at home. And the mainstream media ensure that citizens are unaware of the hypocrisy.