(Originally published in Greater Democracy)

A few days ago, I posted an entry, entitled ‘Reflections – Part 1’. That sort of requires me to follow up with a part 2. This part is one that I’ve been thinking about ever since the Republican convention, and since then, I keep getting more and feedback to go into the article.

My daughter is taking a course on comparative politics and the professor talked about key aspects of a democracy. She challenged whether or not the United States is truly democratic, choosing two points, whether or not the writ of habeas corpus is being properly observed, and whether or not we have a free press.

If you have been reading my blog, you will recall my concerns about what protesters referred to as ‘Guantanamo on the Hudson’. Hundreds of protestors and innocent bystanders were held in New York for a period exceeding the amount allowable by New York Law. The NYCLU filed a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of these detainees, and won their case. However, New York did not honor the judge’s findings, and at subsequent hearing, the judge found the city in contempt of court. This case is continuing in the courts.

Some would argue that the existence of these continuing cases illustrate that our rights haven’t been eroded, yet those who were detained unjustly may question this.

As to having a free press, my daughter sited Fox News and the consolidation of the media markets as illustrations that the press isn’t truly free. It is worth noting that coverage of New York City’s violation of the writ of habeas corpus, its contempt of court, and the continuing legal challenges has received almost no coverage. The writ of habeas corpus is something people study in college, but isn’t sexy enough to get continued coverage.

One of my daughter’s fellow students brought up bloggers as an example of a free press. My daughter didn’t mention my activities since it didn’t help her point, however, she did know enough about blogs to be able to help the other students have a more informed discussion about the effectiveness of blogs. If a blogger blogs in the forest…

Another discussion I had was with a producer for a major network nightly news program. I had written to him about the detainee issue in New York. We had an interesting and wide-ranging discussion about the media; biases and objectivity, the relationship between entertainment and news coverage, the role of the internet in the future of television broadcast news, etc.

More and more people, especially younger adults are getting their news from the Internet and abandoning broadcast television. My friend argued that unless you really dig and think deeply about what you are reading, you will get a more objective view through the efforts of the broadcast news programs than you will be able to discern yourself. However, when you look at the broadcast news, he did admit that they show a disproportionately high number of articles on medical issues. This is because the primary audience is over 55 and that is what they want to hear about. Perhaps most views of broadcast news don’t want to hear about the writ of habeas corpus.

However, it was at the reception after the memorial service for a friend that had died of cancer that provided the most surreal discussion of blogging. In the chitchat of scientists from a pharmaceutical company whose colleague had just died of cancer, my wife mentioned her campaign for State Rep. From there the discussion moved to deeper into politics with one person talking about how untrustworthy the mainstream media was and how he had recently found a new source of information about what is going called blogs.

So blogs are having some interesting affects on the media ecology. However, they are only part of the picture. Perhaps I will get to the fuller picture in part 3…