When news outlets are bought and sold and controlled by the likes of Rupert Murdoch or Conrad Black that is every bit as much an assault on freedom of the press as anything Chavez has done.

Agreed, a free press would be a mainstay of a free society - but it's a mainstay that in large part we haven't got. And a corrupt and venal press is destructive of a free society, and in large part that is what we do have.