At Least We Still Have Free Speech and Press

As a long-time observer of American radio, TV and newspapers, I am appalled by claims some people are placing on Facebook that we no longer have a free press. These claims, freely transmitted over the internet, would seem to contradict themselves.

One wonders if these people have any understanding of what life was like in a country that really did not have a free press: the Soviet Union prior to Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost (free speech).

The Soviet censorship agency, Glavlit, employed 80,000 people. Nothing could be published — even a...