Having a free press in this nation is as important as being able to breathe air.  It is one of the key pillars of our democracy and absolutely essential for enabling our citizens to make informed decisions so that they can help steer this country according to their will and their moral conscience.   But before we beat our chests and say how great we are for having freedom of the press, we had better take a careful look at what a free press actually means. 

The Facts Are King

One might argue that having a free press gives us the right to print whatever we want, including championing opinions over facts, serving a particular political agenda, and/or spinning a story to emphasize certain things and ignore others so as to create a certain bias within the reader.  This is certainly a freedom of sorts.  It is the freedom to do whatever suits you.  But it is freedom without responsibility; and it amounts to wholesale manipulation, which does not seem particularly free to me. 

Power-brokers Corrupt

The problem is that most of the major media networks and newspapers in this country today are backed by some big money sources, each of whom seem to be intent on pushing some kind of agenda.  This makes it hard to get balanced, insightful information for sound decision-making.  Perhaps it has always been this way to a lesser or greater extent.  But we have raised this tendency to a fine art in recent years, and that has been to the detriment of real freedom.

Integrity in Journalism

What we need (and have lost to a great extent) is a mainstream press that puts the needs of our citizens first and foremost.  That means having serious journalism – a balanced statement of the facts, probative questions that shed light on the gray areas associated with any issue, and investigative integrity focused on teasing out truth, not spin.  This takes effort and time, and unfortunately, runs counter to our current culture of “sound bites” and abbreviated statements as found on the likes of “Twitter” / “X Media” – but it is an essential component for preserving everything we hold dear.