A Free Press is the Bulwark of Liberty
In the past two years, every time I hear a charge against the integrity
of the news media, I hear the voice of Pete Colbey encouraging me to push back.
R. Peter Colbey was my eight-grade English teacher and the advisor to our
high school newspaper. He loved the idea of the newspaper as a defense against
tyranny and a watchdog for democracy. Each year, he took his students on a
field trip to the then Erie Times,
which was his favorite day of the school year. He clearly believed in the noble
potential of the power of the Fourth Estate, and he wanted us to inherit his
reverence for a free press and other news media to make our world better.
I remember
coming to class one day with the First Amendment of the Constitution written on
the chalk board: “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.”[1]
The lesson became an open discourse on Voltaire and Patrick Henry and our shared
responsibility to defend our collective freedoms. It was heady stuff for a room
full of 13-year-olds, but we were inspired.
Mr. Colbey was a fan of the American pamphleteers and the printers of
broadsides. I remember him quoting Thomas Paine: “It is error only, and not truth, that
shrinks from inquiry;”[2]
and George Mason: “The freedom of the
press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained
but by despotic governments.”[3]
He regaled us with orations on the role the founding fathers played in
preserving an open marketplace of ideas. A term first used by Justice Douglas in
1953: “Like the publishers
of newspapers, magazines, or books, this publisher bids for the minds of men in
the market place of ideas.”[4]
In defense of
the marketplace of ideas, I imagine Mr. Colbey invoking another passage from
Thomas Paine: “I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to
his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies
to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because
he precludes himself the right of changing it.”[5]
Mr. Colbey had seen Edward R. Murrow take on Joseph McCarthy, Woodward
and Bernstein expose Watergate, and the transformation of public opinion about
the war in Vietnam shaped by the independent news community. We had seen the
latter two events as children, but couldn’t appreciate how rigorous reportage
and a public faith in our news organization had shifted the views of the populace.
We also weren’t able to fully appreciate how those influences strengthened
democracy, but we did know that it was important.
Throughout our nation’s history, the freedom of the press has varied. The
Alien and Sedition Acts signed into
law by John Adams were seen as a threat to a free press by Thomas Jefferson. It
is important to note that both men were staunch supporters of an informed
populace.
Jefferson wrote: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press,
and that cannot be limited without being lost.”[6]
Thirty-three years before signing the Alien
and Sedition Acts, Adams established his reputation as a legal thinker in
the brilliant document, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal
Laws in which he stated: “Liberty cannot be preserved without a
general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their
nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has
given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they 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. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees,
of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously
betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the
authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better
agents, attorneys and trustees.”[7]
The Sedition Act of 1918 sought to limit criticism of the U.S. government
by the press. In the dissenting opinion in Abrams
v. United States (1919), which unsuccessfully challenged the Act, Oliver
Wendell Holmes called for the “free trade in ideas.” This sentiment helped fuel
support in congress that led to the repeal of the Sedition Act the following
year.
During the subsequent decade, President
Coolidge celebrated what he saw as an era of unprecedented freedom and
integrity of the press in an address to the Society of Newspaper Editors in
which he declared, “The
relationship between governments and the press has always been recognized as a
matter of large importance. Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public
information are the first to be brought under its control. Where ever the cause
of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the
guarantee of the freedom of the press.”[8]
A generation
and a half later, President Kennedy reiterated the importance of a protected
forum in which a free people can wrestle with ideas of the day. In a speech to
the American Newspaper Publishers Association, he said, “Without debate,
without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no
republic can survive. ... And that is why our press was protected by the First
Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the
Constitution — not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the
trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it
wants" — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and
our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold,
educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.”[9]
During my lifetime, one of the great national transformations has been
South Africa. Nelson Mandela reaffirmed the paramount importance of the press
as a protection of democracy when he said, “A critical, independent and
investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy. The press must be free
from state interference. It must have the economic strength to stand up to the
blandishments of government officials. It must have sufficient independence
from vested interests to be bold and inquiring without fear or favour. It must
enjoy the protection of the constitution, so that it can protect our rights as
citizens.”[10]
As an educator,
I have always felt especially indebted to Mr. Colbey. He used the curriculum as
a platform to help us understand that there were principles worth fighting for,
that an exchange of ideas had the ability to alter the framework of human
rights, and that we had the ability and obligation to be the agents of our
respective beliefs. We were still children, but he challenged us to take adult
responsibility for our intellectual lives.
That is my
greatest hope for our work with students, that we give them the tools to act upon
fruit of their reason. Through that reason, they, as citizen leaders, must demand
a free and rigorous press, which in turn will hold our leaders accountable as faithful
stewards of our democracy.
[1]
Constitution of the United State of
America, First Amendment, 1791.
[2]
Paine, Thomas: Letter Addressed to the
Addressers, 1792.
[3]
Mason, George: Virginia Declaration of
Rights, Article 12, 1776.
[4]
Douglas, William O.: United States v.
Rumely, 1953.
[5]
Paine, Thomas, The Age of Reason,
1794.
[6]
Jefferson, Thomas: Letter to James Currie, 28 January 1786.
[7]
Adams, John: A Dissertation on the Canon
and Feudal Laws, 1765.
[8]
Coolidge, Calvin: Address to the Society of American
Newspaper Editors, 17 January 1925.
[9]
Kennedy, John F.: Address to the Society of American
Newspaper Publishers Association, 27 April 1961.
[10]
Mandela, Nelson: International Press Institute Congress, 14 February 1994.
