Originally posted by lazs2
I would just as soon let the media run wild. It they print a lie and it harms people then they need to be sued. Get sued enough and you are out of the game. I think it works well here and in western countries..
Not perfect but certainly better than government censorship.
Masses are uneducated and tend to believe media. In a case I posted above (Balakovo power station) - they don't have anything to be sued for.
My point is that govt control is better then no control at all.
Look, here we have a great experience of fighting govt, but only in peace-time, in emergency - it saved us from becoming extinct many times. We are a "surviving nation".
KGB, I mentioned that Armenian terror act in many previous posts, it's an exclusion that proves the rule (èñêëþ÷åíèå ïîäòâåðæäàåò ïðàâèëî, did I translate it correctly?). That explosion was reported on Pravda's front page, but there was media hype about it.
OTOH the escalator breakdown at Aviamotornaya station in Msk was reported on Voice of America and raised rumors of hundreds people killed, while there was no one dead. Same thing at Kirovskiy Zavod in Leningrad - it was closed for a couple of months in 1980 IIRC, people repeated horror stories they heard on short-wave radio.