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Editorial: Editorial: Cedar Key News Annual Meeting March 29
March 8th, 2008

Editorial: Let School Board Know What Should Be Taught
February 15th, 2008

Editorial: What Is a Fair Tax?
February 4th, 2008

Editorial: Inconsistent Appraisals Harm Taxpayers
December 17th, 2007

Editorial: Energy Crisis?
November 30th, 2007

Editorial: Florida Water War Heat Up
October 16th, 2007

Editorial: Nobel Prizes in Medicine
October 5th, 2007

Editorial: Editorial: Same Rules for Everyone
September 22nd, 2007

Editorial: Demand Action on Bridge Repair
August 8th, 2007

Editorial: Local Response Needed to Stem Clam Poaching
July 24th, 2007

Editorial: Money, Money, Money...Votes
July 9th, 2007

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June 26th, 2007

Editorial: Are You Ready for Hurricane Season?
June 12th, 2007

Editorial: The Sources of Progress in Medicine
May 30th, 2007

Editorial: A New Era of Politics and Religion
May 17th, 2007

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Editorial: Freedom to Blow the Whistle

Editorial: Freedom to Blow the Whistle

Editorial

Who better to defend the right of free speech than the Press? So, when a citizen criticizes a government action or a powerful corporation endangers the public, the citizen is often attacked by the offending party. And, he is vigorously defended by the news media. The Press balances the power that incumbent politicians have over individuals.


Forty years ago President Richard Nixon used the full force of the Justice Department against Daniel Elsberg, a defense analyst, for releasing the Pentagon Papers in protest to government action in Viet Nam war. The New York Times and other new sources defended Elsberg`s whistle blowing.


A careful reader of this editorial may have noticed the adjective "incumbent" before politician.

We in the United States of America seldom need to go into the streets in protest. Whistle-blowers and an alert and righteous press can unseat entrenched incumbents! Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency of the United States in 1974, thanks to two reporters and the Washington Post.

In 1777, just a year after the Declaration of Independence, ten sailors in the U.S. Revolutionary Navy protested torture of captured British sailors by their commanding officer. Their subsequent arrest was predictable. The protesting sailors were acquitted, no doubt in part due to their case being well publicized. Congress paid for their defense. Public awareness of the sailors` moral courage was important.


The Press can defend itself. A wise man said, "Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel." We defend whistle-blowers, because they have freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution, just as we do.

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