"We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital. If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started. They get started by suppressing free press. In other words, a consolidation of power. When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press."
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Original Language: English
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John McCain, as quoted in "McCain says suppressing free press is 'how dictators get started'" (19 February 2017), Reuters
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press
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Freedom of the press
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