Brian Lamb is a native Hoosier who is due hi-five's from all his fellow Americans. As the founder and chief executive of C-Span, he wrote a letter to the Democrat leaders of Congress and the White House requesting C-Span cameras be allowed to broadcast negotiations between house and senate conferees when they hammer out a final healthcare bill.
Lamb's request was rejected even though C-Span is politically nuetral and has been since it was launched in 1979. C-Span is strictly informational, a window for the American people to view its Congress at work. And Lamb has been a pillar of integrity since C-Span's inception.
How is that Obama campaign promise of more transparency working for you?
As a retired journalist, I keep asking where is the outrage from America's once great newspapers. Their silence has been deafening.
I was taught very different journalistic ethics and values when I was in college. I remember a plaque that read, The Word is Mightier Than the Sword, hanging in one of the journalism classrooms at the University of Tulsa. The Press then was viewed as the great enlightener; the courts as the great arbiters; to ensure our freedoms could not be trampled by government. The WORD is no longer so mighty.
Democrats going behind closed doors to craft the healthcare bill is an affront to every American. Even more of an affront is Nancy Pelosi going before the cameras today declaring, "There has never been a more open process for legislation." This on the day she announced Democrats and White House representatives will meet privately to finalize a healthcare bill; bypassing the normal conference route; bypassing C-Span; bypassing Republicans; and most of all, bypassing the American people.
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