Mark Lane on the First Amendment

[Peter McGuire]

In addition to scolding New Times for reporting on Posner's habit of lifting text from other authors, Lane ended his recent press release with an intriguing aside.

New Times should be focusing its energies on the CIA's attempts to infiltrate newsrooms around the country, Lane says. Really. Here's the excerpt:

"I do have one further suggestion. Since the issue of the search for the truth may be of interest to you and since, as you must know, a committee of the United States Senate years ago and then again more recently, concluded that the CIA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies have assets pretending to be journalists embedded in the major news media, that might be a subject that could attract your attention. Unlike the Posner affair in which no one was harmed, it is that use of the media and the publishing houses that is a threat to our democracy and impedes our right to a free press pursuant to the unambiguous mandate of the First Amendment. That is a campaign that many of us could support, endorse and relish. Our country needs muckraking journalists who can recognize muck worth raking when they see it."