Do progressives want to restrict the press only to the extent that press disagrees with their agenda? Trotsky, the darling on the left, advocated a restrictive press.
Hardly, and the fact is that while liberals my bash Fox, its Republicans who should be clamoring for more conservative TV news outlets. Fox is wingnut wackjob because it has a monopoly. Think about it, if there were only one liberal channel, it would be as biased as Air America was. AA was radio, but it HAD competition, so it went out of business. The market for liberals may be large, but the market for screaming wingnut liberals is small. If Fox had fair competition, they would probably be forced to be less nutty or go out of business, but either way, it would good for conservatives AND liberals if there were more than one conservative TV news channel. Fair competetion is always agood thing, and when it comes to conservative TV news it doesn't exist. As an aside, I think the Fox monopoly actually helps the Dems unfairly, but thats another topic.
Ideologically progressivism would embrace a free press, but practically it has been limited by those that are followers of it (such as Wilson and FDR).
No. Some whine about not getting to manipulate the media as much as they'd like, which causes them to think someone 'else' is manipulating it. However no one wants to restrict press freedom.
It is more of a power thing than a party thing. But if you define progressive as those liberals who want to force certain policies on the public for their own good that definition would certainly consider control of information as part of that force. But there could be, and historically have been conservatives who decided restricting the press was a good idea. That is why I think we should focus on small government more than on left and right.
As long as the media or press as you call it is friendly to the progressive agenda they are all for free speech. If the press disagrees with them then it's time to trot out the 'fairness doctrine' and see if they can make it float. You will never see them use the word 'restrict'. All they want to do is make it 'fair'. Good luck to you
