If our "free press" is all that stands between us and tyranny, we're screwed

The main problem for the so-called free press is that they are long past having destroyed their own credibility. They’ve made themselves irrelevant. It wasn’t the Russians, it wasn’t Trump; no, they have only themselves to blame.

On top of that, the internet came along and ate their lunch. Without lunch money, the big papers are increasingly obliged to rely on a sugar daddy, as in Amazon boss Bezos’  purchase of the Washington Post.

The Boston Globe, where today’s bit of grandstanding originated, is a money-losing black hole in financial terms. By the way, the top three news stories on their website the last time I checked were all about said grandstanding. That’s what we need more of; newspapers writing about themselves.

In the good old days, owning a major paper was not only a cash cow, it was a sure path to power and influence. You’d be hard pressed to find, anywhere in the annals of US history, a time when politicians and news barons didn’t forge alliances.

Because influence peddling is what our free press historically did. They’re pouty now because they have very little influence left to peddle.

Here in Canada, we’ve had three examples of newspaper proprietors ride their bully pulpits all the to the House of Lords in the mothership. If you read up on him, you’ll find Max Aiken became one of the most powerful men in the British Empire in an era when that still meant something.

That’s what the news business used to be about!

Now they’re pretty much all circling the drain. They’re hoping to extort a little sympathy, and hopefully a government bailout, with this rubbish about how they’re the last line of defence for our beleaguered democracies.