Interview of Seymour Hersh by Arabic daily, Asharq Al-Awsat, via AlterNet:

• I really believe something happened to America; after 9/11 we became a different country.
  That is fine, presidents sometimes might want to do that, but my issue is how did Bush do it?
  How did he beat the press?
  How did he beat the military and Congress and turn everyone into a coward?
  Why didn’t people stand up to him in this situation?
  In other words, how fragile is the American constitution; it turns out that it is much more fragile than people think.

These are the questions.
Hersh was explaining how after Bush leaves office people might open up.
(Illustration found here).

And on journalism in the US:

• In America, it is collapsing.
  Economically it’s a disaster.
  I have an easy fix for the problems regarding reporting in America; I would get rid of 70 per cent of the editors.
  You see it is always the more cautious people that get promoted and the more aggressive people who do not because they are harder to control.
  Above and beyond that, the newspapers have been very slow in coping with the internet and we are dying.
  One of the great things in America is the first amendment; we can publish any top secret document we can get, there is nothing like that in Britain or anywhere else.
  Let us assume I obtain some highly sensitive material, It is my call whether to publish it or not. Of course, one wouldn’t want to jeopardize his colleagues or fellow Americans etc, but what I am saying is that we are failing despite this incredible press freedom.

Hersh is right.
In a new survey by Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, the Internet has surpassed newspapers for news.
Via RawStory:

• Forty percent said they get most of their news from the Internet, up from 24 percent in September 2007, and more than the 35 percent who cited newspapers as their main news source.

TV is still the top dog for most Americans:

• Seventy percent of the 1,489 people surveyed by Pew said television is their primary source for national and international news.

TV my ass, which leaves US peoples as ignorant as ever.