Stay on your toes.

As much as the people complain about media bias in America, there remains the startling reminder that people throughout the world face far more censorship and progandizing. With the death of prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, we should take a moment to be reminded of the First Amendment and the quality of balanced journalism produced in this country.

Although American media outlets often place an undue emphasis on profits, an content does suffer as a result, the fact remains that places such as China, Russian and Iran do not have access to information as we do here in the States.

In Russia, a journalist was just shot for her coverage of human rights violations. Ted did an excellent write-up on it. In China, to mention criticizing the government is taboo, even for a media scholar. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began, in mid-September, filtering the Internet in an attempt to cease all "citizen reporting" via blogs, and return the country to a more controlled state as it was under the Shah.

But, let us not forget the responsibilty we hold in preserving our rights to free speech in the US. And, let us not become apathetic in our pursuit of informed news. As al-Jazeerah pointed out in an opinion article, the United States is guilty of censorship of a different kind: sanitation. Let us not forget that it was the credulousness of the American media that allowed us to go to war in Iraq. A tenacious media would have doggedly pursued the claims of the Bush administration. Instead, propaganda was taken at face value, until it was too late.

stay on your toes.