Don't look away from the press

The media is essential to democracy.

I’ve heard a lot of people on Substack and elsewhere proudly crowing that they have canceled their subscription to a local or national newspaper because they didn’t like one editorial or the approach to a particular news story.

And I’ve heard from friends and family members who are now avoiding the news – some for their mental health – because they are overwhelmed and just can’t listen or read any more.

Both groups worry me, and not because I’m a journalist and have made a living with this work for more than 45 years. I’m worried as a lover of liberty and a proud citizen of the United States.

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

I’m far from the only American who treasures the freedom of the press. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 73% of Americans said press freedom is extremely or very important to the well being of society. Another 18% said it was somewhat important and just 8% said press freedom was only a little or not at all important.

Ignoring the news or relying on less reliable sources enables those who threaten our nearly 250-year-old democracy to do so behind closed doors. President Trump and his allies would be thrilled if the power of the professional media was diminished or even better, disappeared.

Substack, in the aggregate, is marvelous. I love reading and hearing the variety of opinions here, but this platform cannot replace the news I consume in my local newspaper, The Seattle Times, in The Associated Press and in the national newspapers and magazines I read and support with a subscription.

I cringe when I hear someone explain that they canceled their subscription to The Washington Post, for example, to stick it to Jeff Bezos and teach him not to mess with the content of his newspaper.

If only that could possibly be the result of such actions.

I can say with certainty the people who will suffer if The Washington Post has to answer for even a 10% drop in subscriptions – the number of digital subscribers the Post lost after deciding not to endorse a candidate for president during the 2024 election – are the journalists doing the reporting we all so desperately need them to do. And, by the way, most of the journalists in that newsroom likely did not agree with that decision.

Bezos either didn’t care or he thought those unsubscribers would come back in a few months. I hope you do because the Post’s journalists are doing great work in difficult circumstances and everyone in this country should be reading their work.

As far as I know, Bezos hasn’t interfered with the work of the newsroom, as he has with the opinion page – more than once – and I have my opinions about that but I’m not going to stop cheering on the journalists in the newsroom or those still in the opinion section and cancel my subscription. I doubt even the folks who left after Bezos’ February edict that the opinion page will now focus on personal liberties and free markets have canceled their subscriptions.

I have been a professional journalist for a long time, working for some of the biggest news organizations in the world, including the very independent Associated Press. But every news organization has a boss and an owner and just like all the rest of you with bosses, journalists sometimes have to do what the boss says, although most of the time they do not ask you to do anything unethical or just plain wrong. But sometimes they do.

When the publisher of a newspaper I used to work for insisted we endorse a candidate I didn’t believe in, I pushed back and argued why we shouldn’t go there. I lost that fight because I was the employee and he was the boss. And I felt bad about that decision and a couple of others the editorial board made but that didn’t drive me to stop subscribing after I decided to move on months later. I’m still a subscriber years later and I still appreciate the work of the journalists on staff and still disagree with some – but not most – of their editorials.

Journalism is important to democracy. As you already know, it’s the only profession mentioned in the Constitution, other than elected officials.

The founders believed a free press was essential to democracy because the institution:

– Is a watchdog against government overreach,

– Encourages a free exchange of ideas that lead to better decisions,

– Promotes and champions liberty and freedom,

– And gives a voice to people who critique the government.

As one of the framers of the Bill of Rights, James Madison, explained, “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.”

The founders of this nation probably didn’t foresee a time when news organizations would be shrinking and disappearing because the business model was failing. This has been the path of my chosen industry since I graduated from college, at a time when two-newspaper towns were mostly becoming one-newspaper towns. A variety of things have driven that change, from the cost of newsprint and delivery to people turning away from newspapers to TV news. Advertising kept newspapers and TV stations in business and paid the salaries of all those journalists. Now subscriptions are key but new models are developing.

Journalists making sure our elected officials do the job we hired them to do can only be paid if people voluntarily subscribe to for-profit publications, or donate to nonprofit newsrooms. While national papers, like The Washington Post and the New York Times, may not be hurt by losing 100 or 1,000 subscribers, those numbers would have more of an impact on your local paper.

Poynter, the journalism training and advocacy organization, says another good way to support press freedom is to pay attention to threats big and small like the White House banning The Associated Press from some briefings because the AP has refused to start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has a Press Freedom Tracker, which documents incidents across the country, including assaults and arrests of journalists.

According to the Democracy Fund, local journalism has impacts other than serving as a government watchdog; journalism and voting are deeply intertwined. Local news and political coverage has a positive effect on voter turnout. And voters are more likely to pick up their ballot and vote in every race, not just for president and governor, if they have a local newspaper to help them make their choices.