compiled for GJR
What is new … right now … is after years of Americans wondering if journalism matters … we have a renewed fascination and curiosity about what journalism is, what it does and what are the ethical and professional obligations upon which it stands.
The audience … hasn’t been this curious, this attentive in years. What will government do? What are the checks and balances? What are the institutional levels of power? How will the elegant system of co-equal branches of government the founders bequeathed us function amid the unpredictability of a Trump presidency? The stakes feel high and real and vivid. And they are.
Time magazine asked this week if truth is dead? It asked if god was dead in 1966…. God was no deader then than he or she is now. Neither is truth. Did truth die when John Adams signed the alien and sedition act? Did it die during the 19th century when politicians large and small bought newspapers, reporters and editorials like so many trinkets? Did it die during teapot dome or when robber barons tried to turn government into a clearinghouse for greed and corruption? Did it die during the cold war, during Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-contra, Bill Clinton’s impeachment or Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction?
Truth did not die… because the search for it did not perish. Truth may have been delayed… but it was not denied. The question is not whether truth is dead … but will the search for it ever die. I say on behalf of journalism and the first amendment … never … not ever.