What do you think?
At one time Americans expected journalists to be watchdogs on government and business and their actions. Their reporting was trusted to enable us to make informed opinions on the issues of the day. Implicit in the profession was and still is a loyalty to the citizens with an obligation to tell the truth on “all the news that is fit to print.”
Unlike the current vitriol accusing reporters as agents of “fake news” and “enemies of the people,” journalists remain committed to a free society dependent on a free press and committed to monitoring with impartiality and objectivity the powerful and the institutions that impact our lives.
Admittedly, journalists bring their own experience to the profession of reporting in newspapers or on the air in radio or television. The multiplicity of news agencies with a variety of perspectives and depth in research, however, serve as a check and balance on the news that is available to you and I. Journalists have also put themselves in harm’s way to discover the facts and bring all the news that is fit to print to us.
Back in the 1940s, Ernie Pyle earned a Pulitzer Prize for his roving stories on small town America and the accounts of ordinary soldiers during WWII. Pyle was on the front line in the foxholes of Europe sending back commentary picked up by newsreels in movie houses across America. The nation was informed and engaged with a spirit of 1776 resemblance, and with victory gardens and war bonds and air raid drills for a successful conclusion of a war we were determined to win. Ernie Pyle, the celebrated journalist was killed by enemy fire in 1945 in the Battle of Okinawa, the last pitched battle of WWII.
When the news is disturbing the giants of industry, they speak out with their own fake news andobfuscationof the truth.
Dedicated to freedom of the press, journalists face increasingly turbulent times, are often imprisoned by authoritarian leaders who do not like the scrutiny of the powerful or the corruption of wealth that keeps masses of people in poverty. But in America, a free press is still thriving and free from attack (until 2016) in a culture established by the first colonists and their thirst for news. Boston in 1690 produced the first publication; three pages of the “Public Occurences,” which once a month kept the American public aware of the immoralities of the King of France and the outcomes in the French and Indian War. New publications expanded in Boston and Philadelphia where the public learned about pirates and the death of Blackbeard and English politics and political criticism that precipitated a law suit that firmly established the principle of freedom of the press later written into our Constitution.
By 1727, Annapolis had published its first newspaper, the Gazette, which in 50 years would be a leading mouthpiece in the fight for a new nation. The Gazette still exists as the oldest continuous published newspaper, the Annapolis Capital. Newspapers informed the public on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in 1787. They are the asset that opened the doors to the settlement of the West and for two cents bound new settlers to the nation through a continuous stream of news.
At the turn of the last century, social activist and Republican, the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, commenced a fight against corruption and business monopolies. His effort was supported by investigative reporters. In 1902–03, Ida Tarbell profiled and reported on JD Rockefeller and Standard Oil’s efforts to force small oil companies into bankruptcy. Her reporting led to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Author Upton Sinclair exposed unsanitary conditions in the slaughter and packing plants in Chicago. Big corporate efforts slammed him but his findings led to the pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Their efforts served the interests of the public against power and corporate greed.It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. When the news is disturbing the giants of industry, they speak out with their own fake news and obfuscation of the truth. R.J. Reynolds didn’t like exposure of their complicity in covering up reports on lung cancer from cigarettes. The news reports on Vietnam by David Halberstam revealed the military’s misleading rosy claims about American successes in this unpopular war. In 1964, Halberstam received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. In 1972, Woodward and Bernstein, reporters for the Washington Post, unveiled a series of political dirty tricks in a break in at the Democratic Headquarters at Watergate directed by President Richard Nixon himself.
America has a proud tradition of freedom of the press that has served the American public over time by protecting it from the abuse of power. The press—through magazines, newspapers, radio, and television—has from their beginnings offered substantiated information to aid an informed public on the issues of the time. Interested public can even fact check assertions reported in the press.“The enemy of the people” or perpetrators of “fake news” have long been the tools of the rich and powerful to selfishly secure motives of greed and corruption and power. As distrust of the news and character assassination against reporters is fanned by he “who protestith too much,” it might be prudent to consider whose interest is being served by the diatribe.
