On Aug. 11, 2023, police in Marion, Kan. — inhabitants 2,000 — raided the places of work of the native newspaper, the Marion County Report, in addition to the household residence of its writer, Eric Meyer.
The Report’s reporters had been trying into allegations of misconduct on the a part of the police chief who led the raid. Meyer’s 98-year-old mom, Joan Meyer, was current whereas the chief’s officers rifled by the house. She died the next day.
This story might sound acquainted. It made nationwide information, because of coverage by NPR, native and community tv information, and The New York Times. The Biden administration weighed in forcefully with a statement by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre from the rostrum of the White Home press briefing room.
Meyer mentioned what heartened him about this in any other case devastating assault was the “patriotic response” of fellow members of the information media. “An assault on one,” he mentioned at a current convention hosted by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Aspen Institute, “is an assault on all.”
Defending the rights of an impartial free press — the one career enshrined within the U.S. Structure — is certainly an act of patriotism. Our nation may certain use extra of that type of patriotic spirit.
Not solely is our new president intensifying his assaults on the press, the American information media have to date appeared curiously flat-footed and uncoordinated of their response.
Think about the ferocity of assaults in simply the previous few weeks.
President Donald Trump has taken aim at CBS News in a case accusing the community of manipulative enhancing of a “60 Minutes” interview of Kamala Harris, virtually actually inside the community’s First Modification rights. The Federal Communications Fee (FCC) is investigating diversity, equity and inclusion policies at Comcast, and sponsorship gross sales practices that assist to help each NPR and PBS.
Final week, The Related Press, winner of 59 Pulitzer Prizes and amongst our nation’s most revered nonpartisan information organizations, was banned from the press pool covering some White House events as a result of it continues to check with the Gulf of Mexico fairly than the “Gulf of America,” as President Trump has decreed.
President Trump has been a critic and manipulator of the information media for just about his complete private and non-private profession, so we shouldn’t be shocked by these newest assaults.
What is shocking — and disappointing — is the dearth of collective motion and response on the a part of the press itself.
In The Related Press case, for instance, what would occur if the AP’s erstwhile opponents, together with Reuters, CNN, The Washington Put up and The New York Instances, refused to attend comparable White Home occasions until and till the AP’s entry is restored?
This collective motion would depart the White Home talking solely to media properties like Fox Information, OAN and Newsmax, favored solely by its base. The loss of a bigger megaphone would harm the administration’s voice and offend its appreciable ego.
The phrase “an assault on one is an assault on all” is drawn from Article 5 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty that created NATO — one other group underneath criticism by President Trump. What would such a dedication to collective motion, a “NATO for information,” imply in sensible phrases?
What would occur if information organizations refused to attend White Home occasions till a ban on The Related Press is lifted?
Information organizations have a number of highly effective property with which to come back to at least one one other’s protection.
They will, after all, deploy their reporters and editors to cowl assaults on fellow press as they might different abuses of energy or legal acts.
Information organizations also can leverage their opinion pages to specific the official views of their house owners and publishers, impartial of their information pages.
They’ve advertising and marketing, advocacy and authorized assets they’ll and may deploy to help the reason for a free press broadly, not solely the narrower pursuits of their very own information enterprises.
Maybe most powerfully, they’ll take the view that an assault on the freedoms and independence of one in all us is really an assault on all.
As fellow Philadelphia newspaper writer Benjamin Franklin mentioned, “We should grasp collectively, or, most assuredly, we will grasp individually.”
