Is press damaging its own freedom?

Dear editor,

Good timing: A Thanksgiving hit piece on the very day families gather in these trying circumstances to celebrate all that we have to be thankful for, including the bravery of those who landed on Cape Cod’s desolate shores 400 years ago this month.

So now the progressive chisels are out to chip-chip-chip away at Thanksgiving. Just as they are chipping away at other core tenets of our shared history. The re-sculptors or “re-imaginers” will not be satisfied until the essential goodness of our country and culture is re-shaped into a narrative of cruelty, racism and oppression. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, the Fourth of July, Abe Lincoln and now the Pilgrims — they all must be reshaped to fit the new narrative.

OK, “don’t kill the messenger,” you say. Mr. Dixon was just reporting a straight news story on bill before our state legislature to mandate new teaching in our schools. But in his “news” story, Mr. Dixon takes a shot at Thanksgiving calling the original event a “fluke” and stating (authoritatively?) , “there is no proof that the pilgrims ever shared a meal with their indigenous neighbors.”

But did Mr. Dixon go to the trouble to interview any dissenting voices on his take on history, or speak with anyone who stands against the proposed legislation? Perhaps he tried, but those individual were afraid to speak up against the new group-think about Thanksgiving? Or perhaps he did hear another point of view but you were afraid to publish it? Afraid to stand up to the woke chisels?

I am thankful for our many freedoms that are connected to those Pilgrims landing here 400 years ago. I am especially thankful for freedom of the press. But if the free press does not “freely” report all the news from all angles, does the press, itself, become an agent in chipping away at the very concept of freedom of the press?

Clif McFeely New Canaan