Save the Journalists!
The Trump debacle has taught us that the fourth branch of government is the most important: a free press. Journalism will rise from this mess as the beacon of truth amid the jumble of lies, spin, insinuation, rumor and malicious tweeting. It probably already has. More and more Trump is almost impossible to listen to; rambling, uninformed speech that sounds like the rumbling of a garbage truck in the morning, with just enough information that we know it for what it is, garbage, so that we can go back to sleep. Then we open the newspaper and read coherent English about the events of the day. What a startling contrast!
A free press is ensured in the the first amendment to the Constitution.
My favorite is Paul Krugman and I have to force myself to not repeat what he says, since I almost always agree with him. His December 11 column in the New York Times is outdated. He is talking about the threat to democracy by the Republican Party. Old news, and an old opinion. Since Obama was elected and the demographics of the country were clearly heading toward a minority of Caucasians by mid-century or earlier, the Republican have been bending the rules to give keep power in the hands of the conservative minority. I have written about this when I have talked about the combined gerrymandering and rule-changing of the Republican leadership.
The good thing about Krugman's column is in the 'footnotes'. He references the book How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Krugman has given us this reference to support his opinion, something I have yet to hear Trump, the blowhard, do. Books like this are not tweets. They do not grow out of an upset stomach at 3am. Both authors are professors of political science at Harvard. They have investigated how democracies change to autocracies. They present their findings in a book of real information, backed up by real facts. Does their book count as journalism? Possibly. Informed journalism or specialized journalism is a subsection of journalism in which a journalist educates him or her self on a particular topic. Great examples of this are Michael Pollan on food and Gary Taubes on dietary fat. Whether Levitsky and Ziblatt can be counted as journalists or as professors or both, they have demonstrated what our constitution enshrines; the free flow of information from one person to another. Once this is impeded our democracy is threatened, just as it is impeded by our president's constant attack on the truth of the press.
My prediction is that the next step by the Republican Party will be to attempt to impede the free press. They have impeded impede the rule of a fair and impartial judiciary when McConnell bent the rules of appointing a new supreme court justice in an attempt to bend the court. Once this extends to the press, we must speak out in defense of our eyes and ears, the journalist who keep up informed, in these dark days of misinformation. To quote the subheading of the Washington Post, 'Democracy dies in darkness.'
A free press is ensured in the the first amendment to the Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.In the wake of Trump's attack on the truth spoken by those people who are our eyes and ears we must listen. Thousands of these intrepid journalis search out the facts every day and give them to us. They listen, ask questions, report the answers, and sometimes give us their interpretation of the information. The interpretations are not as important as the facts themselves. But how much easier than thinking for ourselves is the temptation to pick a few opinion journalist and read them so we will know what we really think, rather than coming up with our own take on the news.
My favorite is Paul Krugman and I have to force myself to not repeat what he says, since I almost always agree with him. His December 11 column in the New York Times is outdated. He is talking about the threat to democracy by the Republican Party. Old news, and an old opinion. Since Obama was elected and the demographics of the country were clearly heading toward a minority of Caucasians by mid-century or earlier, the Republican have been bending the rules to give keep power in the hands of the conservative minority. I have written about this when I have talked about the combined gerrymandering and rule-changing of the Republican leadership.
The good thing about Krugman's column is in the 'footnotes'. He references the book How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Krugman has given us this reference to support his opinion, something I have yet to hear Trump, the blowhard, do. Books like this are not tweets. They do not grow out of an upset stomach at 3am. Both authors are professors of political science at Harvard. They have investigated how democracies change to autocracies. They present their findings in a book of real information, backed up by real facts. Does their book count as journalism? Possibly. Informed journalism or specialized journalism is a subsection of journalism in which a journalist educates him or her self on a particular topic. Great examples of this are Michael Pollan on food and Gary Taubes on dietary fat. Whether Levitsky and Ziblatt can be counted as journalists or as professors or both, they have demonstrated what our constitution enshrines; the free flow of information from one person to another. Once this is impeded our democracy is threatened, just as it is impeded by our president's constant attack on the truth of the press.
My prediction is that the next step by the Republican Party will be to attempt to impede the free press. They have impeded impede the rule of a fair and impartial judiciary when McConnell bent the rules of appointing a new supreme court justice in an attempt to bend the court. Once this extends to the press, we must speak out in defense of our eyes and ears, the journalist who keep up informed, in these dark days of misinformation. To quote the subheading of the Washington Post, 'Democracy dies in darkness.'
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