On Aug. 11, 2023, police in Marion, Kan. — inhabitants 2,000 — raided the workplaces of the native newspaper, the Marion County File, in addition to the household residence of its writer, Eric Meyer.
The File’s reporters had been trying into allegations of misconduct on the a part of the police chief who led the raid. Meyer’s 98-year-old mom, Joan Meyer, was current whereas the chief’s officers rifled by way of the house. She died the next day.
This story could sound acquainted. It made nationwide information, because of coverage by NPR, native and community tv information, and The New York Times. The Biden administration weighed in forcefully with a statement by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre from the rostrum of the White Home press briefing room.
Meyer mentioned what heartened him about this in any other case devastating assault was the “patriotic response” of fellow members of the information media. “An assault on one,” he mentioned at a latest convention hosted by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Aspen Institute, “is an assault on all.”
Defending the rights of an unbiased free press — the one occupation enshrined within the U.S. Structure — is certainly an act of patriotism. Our nation might positive use extra of that type of patriotic spirit.
Not solely is our new president intensifying his assaults on the press, the American information media have to this point appeared curiously flat-footed and uncoordinated of their response.
Contemplate the ferocity of assaults in simply the previous few weeks.
President Donald Trump has taken aim at CBS News in a case accusing the community of manipulative enhancing of a “60 Minutes” interview of Kamala Harris, nearly definitely inside the community’s First Modification rights. The Federal Communications Fee (FCC) is investigating diversity, equity and inclusion policies at Comcast, and sponsorship gross sales practices that assist to assist each NPR and PBS.
Final week, The Related Press, winner of 59 Pulitzer Prizes and amongst our nation’s most revered nonpartisan information organizations, was banned from the press pool covering some White House events as a result of it continues to seek advice from the Gulf of Mexico reasonably than the “Gulf of America,” as President Trump has decreed.
President Trump has been a critic and manipulator of the information media for nearly his whole private and non-private profession, so we shouldn’t be stunned by these newest assaults.
What is shocking — and disappointing — is the shortage of collective motion and response on the a part of the press itself.
In The Related Press case, for instance, what would occur if the AP’s erstwhile rivals, together with Reuters, CNN, The Washington Put up and The New York Occasions, refused to attend comparable White Home occasions until and till the AP’s entry is restored?
This collective motion would go away the White Home talking solely to media properties like Fox Information, OAN and Newsmax, favored solely by its base. The loss of a bigger megaphone would harm the administration’s voice and offend its appreciable ego.
The phrase “an assault on one is an assault on all” is drawn from Article 5 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty that created NATO — one other group underneath criticism by President Trump. What would such a dedication to collective motion, a “NATO for information,” imply in sensible phrases?
What would occur if information organizations refused to attend White Home occasions till a ban on The Related Press is lifted?
Information organizations have a number of highly effective property with which to come back to at least one one other’s protection.
They’ll, after all, deploy their reporters and editors to cowl assaults on fellow press as they might different abuses of energy or felony acts.
Information organizations may also leverage their opinion pages to precise the official views of their house owners and publishers, unbiased of their information pages.
They’ve advertising and marketing, advocacy and authorized assets they will and will deploy to assist the reason for a free press broadly, not solely the narrower pursuits of their very own information enterprises.
Maybe most powerfully, they will take the view that an assault on the freedoms and independence of one among us is actually an assault on all.
As fellow Philadelphia newspaper writer Benjamin Franklin mentioned, “We should dangle collectively, or, most assuredly, we will dangle individually.”
