Things apparently weren't always so bad, as
this article in the N.Y. Times Review of Books looks at the initial publication of the "Pentagon Papers".
It's an excellent article for all those on the verge of losing hope with the status of media and Governmental cooperation in your country, as it details the fact that things before the Nixon era were far more biased against the free dissemination of information than they are now.
(More after the JUMP. Plus a great cartoon. And a poll. Who are you to resist? Are you some sort of Frenchman? Do you hate freedom?)
Public disclosure of the Pentagon Papers challenged the core of a president's power: his role in foreign and national security affairs. Throughout the cold war, until well into the Vietnam era, virtually all of the public had been content to let presidents--of both parties--make that policy. As the Vietnam War ground on, cruelly and fruitlessly, dissent became significant. The Pentagon Papers showed us that there had all along been dissent inside the government. Thomas Powers, in an essay in Inside the Pentagon Papers, says that their disclosure "broke a kind of spell in this country, a notion that the people and the government had to always be in consensus on all the major [foreign policy] issues."
So there you go. Before you let the 8 and a half inches of cut Gannon wash away your hope for the future of your children, or before you drown your misery in a tall glass of lite, sweet, crude. Just remember. Watergate exploded onto the scene with a revitalization of journalism that spanned the country. And Watergate was a result of the complete iniquity and corruption of Nixon's overconfident regime.
And that's pretty much what you've got now.
And also, just to cheer you up, my favourite cartoon of the day. It's non-political, but you sort of feel that it has to have SOME sort of message.