Newspapers are in a sad state. One of their problems is that their print editions must compete with their web versions. Offering the latter free of charge only exacerbates the tendency of readers to opt for getting news on line. For that reason, digital subscriptions are in vogue. The New York Times requires a subscription to access more than ten articles a month. The Washington Post has announced that it soon will charge for access beyond twenty per month. (That number may not hold; the Times initially allowed twenty). I learned belatedly that The Seattle Times has adopted a similar policy, permitting "about" fifteen free hits per month. As we subscribe to the newspaper, that doesn’t affect us.
Various factors other than self-competition have contributed to the decline of print journalism. The trend toward on-line reading is reenforced by mobile devices, and fewer people care about news in any form. Costs of operation no doubt have increased and advertisers have options other than papers. Whatever the cause, The Seattle Times is a poor copy of its former self, even though, with the demise of the P-I, it now has no local print competition.
Presumably due to the cost of syndicated columns, the Times op-ed pages now are dominated by staff and guest writers. There have been some good columns, but the result overall is unimpressive. On June 7, the page reached a new low by including a guest column by a young woman who, after moving to Seattle, has had trouble getting a date, and blames that on timid Seattle males. However, this evidently wasn’t just space-filling; the Times invited us to enter into a dialogue by on-line chat over this burning issue, and those who couldn’t make the chat could respond to a poll asking whether they agree with her opinions. The Times probably thinks that it is reaching young readers with this nonsense.
The paper redeemed itself in part by printing on the facing page a house editorial on the recent revelations of domestic spying. Although many people have expressed opinions — covering a wide range — about the surveillance programs, it’s impossible to take many of those reactions, or the government’s statements, seriously, because all of this still largely is secret. The Times focused on that fact. It’s worth setting out its observations almost in full.
A FEDERAL document reveals a program called PRISM that scoops up email, chats, videos, photos, stored data, Internet phone calls, file transfers, video conferences and logins from nine different Internet providers.
President Obama says, "There are a whole bunch of safeguards involved" in what the government did. Should we believe him? Skepticism is in order here.
The program was secret. And when the president says it does not involve reading "the emails of U.S. citizens and U.S. residents," how sure are we of that? Not nearly enough. . . .
Has Congress been a check on the executive power? No. Have the courts? Not in this instance, which involves a tribunal in which there never is an opposing counsel and which operates in secret. How often does this court ever say "no"? . . .
How does this square with "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"? The Fourth Amendment seems to define a lawful search entirely in terms of what PRISM is not.
Two years ago, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., asked Attorney General Eric Holder the still-salient question: How can the people judge a program when they are not told what it is?
The essence of the Constitution is power constrained by law. We are looking for the constraint and not seeing it.
The editorial added a more general comment, one which many of us would echo:
This page supported Barack Obama. So did the voters of Washington. Obama was for "change." But on the matter of secret killing by aerial drone, on detention without trial at Guantánamo, and now on the mass interception of mail by the national security state, where is the change?
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