Bullying the Media means Internet Censorship and Breaking Civil Rights!

It is not the first time that a Bolingbrook public office tried to bully the media, and it won’t be the last.  Last year Mr. Claar tried to pull information away from a reputable paper for reporting the truth, because it was not in his favor.  This year, Tressler LLC has tried to threaten the Number Crunchers on behalf of the Library.  

Bolingbrook officials do not respond to the papers unless it is to report fluff.  This is all due to FEAR.  They do what they can to find “lapdog journalists” to report Bolingbrook news.  The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favor of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog journalism. Some of these journalists work for the Bugle and Patch.

Watchdog journalism is a type of investigative journalism. It refers to forms of activist journalism aimed at holding accountable public personalities and institutions whose functions impact social and political life. Watchdog journalism is most commonly found in think tanks, alternative media, and citizen journalism such as blogs. It is occasionally found in mainstream media as well. Since independent media and think tanks are not profit-oriented, they have more latitude in which to adopt strong positions and cover a wide range of topics. However, it is also more difficult to determine the backing of non-mainstream outlets so those are sometime subject to covert exploitation by well-funded interests.

Some watchdog journalism, such as the Number Crunchers and the Bolingbrook Report focuses on bias in the media. For examples from the United States, see list in Media bias in the United States. In the UK where there is greater national coverage, watchdog journalism is very effective and consumers' rights are upheld both by radio, television and most national newspapers.  If the media were all lapdogs, the residents would never know the truth or what was going on locally.  These watchdogs hold elected officials accountable by publishing the truth, despite the elected officials that try to stop them.  And try to stop them, they do!  They try to stop them by threatening legal recourse or by spreading rumors that these sites do not publish the truth.  When in reality, they are the only TRUSTING news sources available to the public.

However, when they try to stop them, they are essentially breaking the constitutional rights of the people that work for these organizations and every reader that reads their work. It is called

Internet censorship.

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/internet-censorship

According to the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), “the vision of an uncensored Internet was clearly shared by the U.S. Supreme Court when it declared, in Reno v. ACLU, the Internet to be a free speech zone, deserving at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to books, newspapers and magazines. The government, the court said, can no more restrict a person's access to words or images on the Internet than it could be allowed to snatch a book out of a reader's hands in the library, or cover over a statue of a nude in a museum.”

Not only do they try to stop the freedom of speech, they spend your hard earned tax dollars on this.  We call this frivolous spending against what you believe in, with YOUR money. 

I mean, let’s be honest, you cannot regulate what people say or do on the Internet.  You cannot take away someone’s freedom of speech.  When you try, it looks like your hiding in fear and using bullying tactics. 

If the Number Crunchers did receive a letter threatening legal action, they should spit one back and sue the Library for trying to threaten their civil liberties as a legitimate Watch Dog Organization.  This is a federal case, and local judges cannot be bought off.  

What most residents do not see, is that this attorney, Tressler LLC, run by Jim Boan, has caused over a half dozen break to others civil rights in less than two years.  This has left many people ready to throw lawsuits and join together for a class action suit.  We don’t forget Bonnie being removed from the ballot twice!   We don't forget stacking the school board to keep certain elected officials on the ballot when they did not get enough signatures.  We don't forget the number of people that have been threatened or harassed by "Village" workers such as code enforcement when they spoke up to question Bolingbrook government.

What this amounts to is bad advice from elected officials, supported by Tressler and Boan, which is costing tax payers high legal fees, in which only they profit.  Hmmmm, sounds like he knows how to make his millions off of the tax payers!