Suddenly, things get interesting in Boca Raton

By Douglas Heizer

“Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” — attributed to Mark Twain

The Obama administration has apparently never heard that old saw about avoiding fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel.

Journalists haven’t taken too kindly to the revelation that the Department of Justice seized phone records for the Associated Press in an investigation of classified leaks.

Carl Bernstein from MSNBC said: “The object of it is to intimidate people who talk to reporters. This was an accident waiting to become a nuclear event and now it’s happened. There’s no excuse for it whatsoever. There’s no reason for this investigation, especially on this scale.”

This story scared Americans; they could not believe someone would abuse their power the way it’s been portrayed.

The need to control the press isn’t anything new in the world. Right now, Argentina is having a battle between their president, and their biggest news media and this kind of problem happens all around the world.

We can feel this happening not only around the world but also in our own backyard.

When we began raising questions about topics that not all groups were happy with, we began to see retaliation from said groups.

The biggest mistake people in government can make is trying to sensor what the media has to say. When that happens, the press speaks louder.

Censoring the press is like to try to stop a fire with gasoline. This isn’t something that only I am thinking of, but it’s what history has shown us.

Believe me, the Obama administration will be on the radar of all the media because of their mistakes. People will lose their jobs, and the White House will need to work hard to try to minimize those mistakes.

Censoring isn’t the only direct action of not allowing the media to publish what they know; this can be made in a numerous of different ways. They can suppress information, they can avoid answering your phone calls, they can ignore your questions by email, they can even play the “I don’t understand” card just to suppress information that the press needs to do their job. They can try to intimidate the press by harming their business.

At this moment some people in the city are trying to intimidate us at The Boca Raton Tribune into now doing our job.

They are trying to intimidate us suppressing information, speaking loud and throwing paper on the table during meetings. They are trying to ignore the importance of the media. They are not answering our emails or phone calls and are even trying to use their power to not allow sister companies of our group to get jobs in the city. This is not going to intimidate us. As I said, this is the fuel we need to do our job. This makes our reporters even more motivated to dig for the truth and to know what’s going on in order to make people act like this.

Just for the record, during the dictatorial regime in Brazil where we were censored in every newsroom, where the government told us what the papers can or cannot publish, even at that time, the media found ways to do their job.

They use to torture and put in jail people who wanted answers and changes. During that time I was a 15 year old student that ran away for the police for going to public events to speak to the crowd about what was really going on.  We used to publish a newspaper in the basements and deliver free to the students with news about the government.

I am not afraid of people who try to be aggressive and crass and even of people who want to harm my businesses with their false power. During that time, I learned how to see the character of someone by their attitudes and to know how fragile the false power is.

If those attitudes don’t stop, I will have their attitudes and names published in my column, I just want to make this straight and give them the benefit of the doubt before harming people’s jobs.

We are receiving support of dozen of readers who send us of emails and letters telling us their stories since my last column. Some other mainstream media have their complaints and already have shares them with me. Don’t suppress the press. This is the message.

We live in a free country and with the support of the first amendment; we know what we are doing.

God willing, see you next week!