Soon after Jefferson came to power, he, like Adams, developed doubts about the unbounded liberty of the press. Printers, Jefferson complained, just days after his election, “live by the zeal they can kindle, and the schisms they can create.” In his second Inaugural Address, Jefferson ranted against printers who had assaulted him with “the artillery of the press,” warning that he had given some thought to prosecuting them. During his beleaguered second term, Jefferson suggested that newspapers ought to be divided into four sections: Truths, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Lies. What Jefferson wanted for the nation under his governance was a “union of opinion.” But that, of course, can never be the aspiration of a democracy—a point that newspapers have been very good at making over the two centuries since.
Jill Lepore, "The day the newspaper died," The New Yorker (01.26.09)
I don't have to like or approve of what is written to staunchly defend the medium of the free press. In fact, there's lots that is written that gives me heartburn. I particularly don't like yellow journalism and the personal and political hatchet men that use the press in one form or another to unfairly, often untruthfully, denigrate or undermine those they don't like or whose ideas they find objectionable. I suppose we all feel that way about some elements of the press, don't we? Truth be known, many disapprove of just about anything that fails to approve or applaud who they are, what they do, and what they believe. That's the human condition, our human nature.
And yet, our indignant disapproval of some elements of the press is the best evidence that freedom of speech is alive and vibrantly afoot. For the heart of freedom is found in freedom of speech and, therefore, freedom of the press--no matter how untrue, threatening or harmful, how unseemly or offensive, it may sometimes seem to us to be.
In her New Yorker article, Jill Lepore explores the current preoccupation with the death watch over the American newspaper. And to provide some perspective, she offers an informative, illuminating look at the importance and struggles of the early American press, and how it was at least as opinionated--and often more purposely hurtful or harmful--as anything we might find in print today. In discussing the press in these times, she observes:
Most struggles, like most lives, are mess[y]. Newspapers aren’t always on the side of liberty. Not everyone agrees on what liberty means. Some struggles never end. [But] it’s not the newspaper that’s forever at risk of dying and needing to be raised from the grave. It’s the freedom of the press.
Its only natural to want silenced the liars and purveyors of the absurd, especially those we may consider destructive, even evil. We all have that instinct from time to time. (Although we often have different notions of who those people are, don't we?) If we need an example, the most unlikely might be our second president, John Adams, a strong, consistent advocate for freedom, including especially freedom of speech and of the press. Like Jefferson, he often spoke prominently and with strong opinions about freedom from the pages of the few fledgling newspapers of colonial America. But that same John Adams grew frustrated, angry, and greatly concerned over distorted or untrue allegations directed at him and his presidency by the opposition press.
He finally acceded to the recommendations of the federalists and signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts--which included provisions that effectively made defaming his administration a crime. It was perhaps the greatest mistake of his presidency--and certainly inconsistent with the characteristics of the free country and free speech that he had advocated as strongly as any of the revolutionary leaders. If John Adams can in times of weakness be led there, so can many of us.
Of course, the point is not the near death of newspapers in that fragile colonial period when the printers art withered under the weight of the King's stamp tax, or in the early years of the republic under the Aliens and Sedition Acts--although those are important, instructive examples. The point is that the press, the newspaper--freedom of speech, if you will--will find a way. And if trampled under foot, it will sprout and flourish again as soon as conditions allow. It is a force of human nature and an inseparable adjunct of freedom.
Moving back into the 21st century, if we may, we now engage the technological advances and frontier of the new print media: the internet news outlets and blogging. They further democratize and expand freedom of public speech, to be sure, but also provide an unnerving array of voices, topics and opinions--and with them an unnerving lack of organization, predictability, discipline and regulation. Many would say its all for the good; but predictably, many would say it is not. Lepore in The New Yorker:
"The newspaper is dead, long live the newspaper!” has lately become the incantation of advocates of e-journalism, who argue that the twenty-first-century death of the newspaper hardly merits a moment’s mourning, since it is no death at all but, rather, a rebirth....
The newspaper is dead. You can read all about it online, blog by blog, where the digital gloom over the death of an industry often veils, if thinly, a pallid glee. The Newspaper Death Watch, a Web site, even has a column titled “R.I.P.” Or, hold on, maybe the newspaper isn’t quite dead yet. At its funeral, wild-eyed mourners spy signs of life. The newspaper stirs!
The truth is that though readers of on-line news venues and blogs have grown exponentially, those on-line newspapers, especially the best reporters of news, have also enjoyed a growing and enthiusiastic readership--even among younger readers. An article in Time magazine, "How to Save Your Newspaper," by Walter Isaacson, makes this point clear, but also the reality that the on-line model has cost newpapers needed revenue, and as a result, many are failing. From the article:
Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of newsmagazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever — even (in fact, especially) among young people.
The problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying. Instead, news organizations are merrily giving away their news. According to a Pew Research Center study, a tipping point occurred last year: more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines. Who can blame them? Even an old print junkie like me has quit subscribing to the New York Times, because if it doesn't see fit to charge for its content, I'd feel like a fool paying for it.
This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to when Web advertising was booming and every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who "got it" by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported Web was "the future." But when Web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings.
Newspapers and magazines traditionally have had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertising. The new [on-line] business model relies only on the last of these. That makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens — as countless publishers have seen happen as a result of the recession — the stool can't possibly stand.
Of course, as the article points out, the only way to save our newspapers--in print or on-line--is to understand we will eventually have to pay the reasonable cost of producing them. And given the choice of paying a modest amount for excellent reporting or accepting poor reporting and unrealiable blogging for free (which includes some of the most unreliable and misleading political writing in our history), most discriminating readers will quickly sign up for the more reliable, better-crafted product.
And many will also continue to prefer the tactile printed paper product--all the time, on Sundays, or occasionally. For some of us, at least some of the time, only the paper product will do.
The compelling ideas that newspapers feel the responsibility to express, the events they feel accountable to report, and the public demand for their presentation in print, will always find a way--whether on-line or on printed paper. And most likely both will find their place and serve their market. The mere issue of necessary adjustments to market pricing, finding their marginal point of pricing viability, is more a question of time than survival. And our personal sense of unease or objection to expanding yellow journalism, objectionable topics, unseemly or pandering reporting, is also just a question of time and discipline--the time it takes us to accept a broader range and more democratic expression of free speech, and the discipline it takes to tolerate expression of the objectionable in order to assure expression of everything that could possibly be true, important, or illuminating.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191,00.html
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