Winners of GJR awards. The Gateway Journalism Review presented five awards at last week’s 7th Annual First Amendment Celebration. From left, Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist who received the Lifetime Achievement award; Dawn Chapman and Karen Nickel, co-founders of the Just MomsSTL environmental group, winners of the Whistleblowers award; Thomas Harvey, co-founder of ArchCity Defenders,
opinion One thing the press does badly in its admirable pursuit of balanced coverage is create false equivalencies. That’s what’s happening when the press says the exchange of accusations between former FBI Director James Comey and President Trump is just another “food fight.” That term – used by Fox’s Chris Wallace and House Speaker Paul
President Trump’s narcissistic claim that the search of his lawyer’s office was an “attack on our country” echoed from the days of Watergate, the Pentagon Papers and the imperial presidency. Trump, like President Nixon, is conflating himself with the country, mistaking his welfare for the nation’s. The press has a special role disabusing presidents of
America’s temple of democracy is built on the optimistic belief that free people can find the truth to run a democracy — if all people are allowed to say what they think. Citizens — not just kings and queens and presidents — have the inalienable right to use reason to discover the facts and make
