Tri-County News

A free press is essential to our democracy


Jean Matua “From the Heart”

Our forefathers set down the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States with 45 simple words that guarantee us 5 freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. These are powerful concepts that form a basis of what we all love about our country.

Freedom of the press – free from government control and censorship – to pursue its duty has been a part of our great country since the First Amendment was established in 1789. In fact, a free press was so important even then that it was considered a fourth branch of government, an equal part – with the executive, legislative, and judicial – of the checks and balances in our unique and lasting system of government.

“[The people] have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right, to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.” John Adams, 1765.

As I’ve said so many times, our job is to shine a light into dark corners. When that light is dimmed, or extinguished, there is no more transparency in government. Who assures that transparency? The free press, of course.

Without an active, free press, corruption wins. Our forefathers knew that far better than we do. We’ve been able to live free of tyranny for more than two centuries because, in large part, of a free press.

But what has a free press done for us lately?

Standard Oil was exposed by the press as a monopoly, found to be in violation of antitrust laws, and broken up by the Supreme Court. The press investigated inhumane working conditions on meatpacking docks, and in mental asylums and conditions improved.

The press was embedded with troops in World War II and every war since, documenting for all posterity what fighting a war was really like. If not for the press, all tales of the Vietnam War would have been gloriously victorious (and false). We know about the My Lai massacre, and the use and effects of Agent Orange because of the press.

Were it not for an investigative press – asking questions and shining that light – no one would know the name Watergate except as a hotel in D.C., and Richard Nixon would not have been forced to resign. It was the free press printing the Pentagon Papers that bared the truth behind nearly 60,000 dead American soldiers and millions of dead Vietnamese.

It is the free press that investigates and reports matters like racial discrimination in housing, safety violations in cars and airplanes, water pollution caused by chemical plants, and what really happened at Three Mile Island.

Without a free press persistently asking questions and seeking truth, Bill Clinton would not have been impeached, and we’d never know the name Monica Lewinsky.

If not for a free press, we would only know what Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld allowed us to know about the war in Iraq (and the absence of weapons of mass destruction), the World Trade Center bombings, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Think of examples of corruption that have been brought to light by the free press: college basketball and football programs, steroid use in baseball, and the concussion crisis in the NFL. Residents in Flint, Michigan, would still be consuming toxic levels of lead in their water.  We would never know who’s providing the money behind political candidates (in return for what expected favors), and bribes would continue, unknown to the public.

A recent study showed that, in towns where their newspaper went away, the cost of doing business for schools and government increased noticeably.

Bad things are done in the dark of secrecy; things that are bad for individuals and for us as a nation.  It is a free press that keeps the lights on, the lights of democracy.

Dozens of journalists are killed every year throughout the world, because of their jobs. Today, those who call our profession the “enemy of the people” are spitting in the face of our forefathers. They put lives and safety of journalists at great risk. Even more grave, they put the very future of our great democracy in peril.

In full disclosure, I borrowed heavily from an article written by Mitch Albom last week in the Detroit Free Press. Thanks, Mitch!

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