The people’s press
The Fourth Estate is not the enemy but rather the strongest ally of democracy.
The president would have you believe that we — the reporters, editors, opinion writers, photographers, designers of the newspaper you are reading now — are your enemy.
He is only right if your friend is unchecked government power.
If your allies are corruption and misuse of taxpayer dollars. Biased grand juries and wrongful convictions. A state policy illegally denying special education services to thousands of Texas children. Short-sighted policies that worsened Harvey’s epic destruction. Unpoliced stockpiles of deadly chemicals across Houston that leave residents and first responders vulnerable.
These are the true enemies of everyday Americans. They are among the problems that journalists at the Houston Chronicle have worked to expose, to critique, to change.
President Trump’s hostile rhetoric — declaring journalists “very dishonest people” and branding stories critical of his policies “fake news” — is concerning in a democratic republic that can’t survive without a free, vibrant and, yes, trusted, press.
Is Trump the first president to excoriate the news media? No.
Thomas Jefferson famously wrote “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” When the papers — which fell far short of today’s standards of fairness — began to attack Jefferson as president, he returned the insults. But he never stopped defending newspapers’ right to publish such offending words.
President Nixon had a list of press “enemies” audited, his Justice Department unsuccessfully sued the New York Times over the Pentagon Papers and he called reporting during Watergate “vicious, distorted.” President Obama said the right things supporting the news media’s role, but his administration was known to be opaque and his Justice Department prosecuted leakers and seized journalists’ phone records. The American Society of News Editors had to fight for access for photojournalists to cover Obama.
What makes Trump’s undermining of the press worse is that it’s not taking place in bureaucracy’s back rooms. Trump’s insults directed at reporters and news organizations, and his threats to limit press access and freedoms, are front and center at news conferences, at rallies, on Twitter. And they’re incessant.
Not only do they pose a danger to journalists’ safety — history tells us mere bias can progress to harsh words, to bullying and even to violence if society comes to accept the escalating forms of ridicule as normal — but there’s a more insidious threat. Trump’s broad brush undermines the collective credibility of thousands of American journalists across the country,
and the world, who make up the Fourth Estate — so called for its watchdog role over the other three branches of government.
“The only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution,” as President Kennedy once said of the press.
The relationship between the press and power was never designed to be comfortable. No leader wants to have her actions questioned, his words scrutinized, her spending subject to open records laws.
How easy it would be for our elected officials to govern without that pesky impediment called the free press. But how easy it would be for an unhindered government to become a regime, for people deprived of information to become subjects, for individual freedoms to evaporate.
That impediment — a free press — is the most powerful tool Americans have to protect other constitutional rights. Without the press, how would you know if Congress one day decided to curtail your right to own a gun, or to vote? There would be no one to text you a breaking news alert.
The Founders understood that the First Amendment, protecting speech, the press and religious expression, is the bedrock of any free society. We set the standard for the world.
If Trump continues to attack the messenger, the public will lose trust in truthful messages. Fact will become subjective. Americans may come to believe that the best version of the truth is a news release on official letterhead written by someone on the government payroll.
While the news media, like any other institution, is made up of humans who harbor bias and make mistakes, it’s also made up of professional skeptics who abhor groupthink and prescribed agendas.
That insolent gaggle of questioners and sleuthing malcontents that Trump likes to lump into one foe actually work for hundreds of different news organizations. They compete. They scoop each other. They check each other.
Somewhere in that messy process of competitive newsgathering, a consensus arises — a truth derived from reporting, interviews and observation — not from a corporate statement or government mouthpiece. Much of journalism is hard, thankless work. For many, it is a calling to wake up every morning, seek the truth, tell the stories of regular folks.
Chronicle journalists have a track record of rooting out corruption, waste and injustice. Readers, trusting in our work, have demanded change. We strive to keep that trust. In the end, we’re fighting for you.
The next time the president starts in on the press, remember: Journalists who report facts that powerful people don’t want you to know are not the enemy; they’re the strongest ally democracy has.