The Department of Transportation is actively blacklisting news outlets that are openly and aggressively critical of the Mexican Truck Pilot Program. One such agency, OOIDA (Owner Operators Independent Drivers Association) Media which publishes Land Line Magazine, a magazine dedicated to the trucking industry, has been subjected to such blacklisting.
In August of 2007, after some articles that were highly critical of the pilot program, the DOT abruptly cut off all communication with OOIDA Media and refuses to accept or return their phone calls or emails and removed them from the press release list in an obvious attempt to silence critics of the program.
Last year Congress cut off funding for this program in the transportation funding bill that was passed and signed into law. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters chose to ignore the will of Congress and continued the program even though the bill expressly eliminated funding for the program. She is even talking about extending it another three years.
Ms. Peters found herself in a Senate hearing today to explain her actions and was sternly warned that continuing this program against the will of Congress would have "consequences".
A reporter for World Net Daily was refused entry to this hearing today on the pretense of not having proper credentials. World Net Daily has also published several articles that were highly critical of the pilot program. The reporter states that nobody even asked to see any credentials and was simply told "We've read your stories" and was denied access to report on the hearing.
So this is what our country is becoming? If a news agency says something critical of a government pet project they are simply blacklisted and not allowed to report? I think the Constitution has something a bit different to say on this topic. What's next? Jackbooted stormtroopers kicking in the doors of bloggers who write anything negative about the government? Government censorship of the news?
This is a blatant violation of the Constitution and the people should be up in arms about it. But of course, nobody seems to actually know about it. I wonder why that is? Shouldn't the other news agencies be screaming their heads off about this? Or are they afraid that they too will become blacklisted?
WND Story
OOIDA Land line Story
Hearing Story