There is no democracy without journalism

GUEST OPINION

Currently, I live with a view of the Muckleshoot Casino and see its fireworks displays advertising their “Boom City” and heralding their upcoming end-of-June fireworks. With Independence Day and the freedoms it celebrates just around the corner, I can’t help reflecting on the many challenges we have faced as a nation and continue to face, and the role of our newspapers in that ongoing transformation. Washington State saw its first expression of the constitutionally enshrined Freedom of the Press 37 years before the state’s creation. When the First Amendment was being drafted, this coast was still being charted by explorers and settlers moving through the lands of sovereign tribal nations.

Through all of that, we have struggled to create a society that fully reflects our communities. The human need to express our views and to demand our civil rights is the bedrock of all just civilizations — and it’s why we enshrined Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of the Press in the First Amendment. This nation has been battling for that right, and sometimes against that right, since it declared freedom from the British, fought its own Civil War, reckoned through the Civil Rights Movement with its own transgressions against humanity, and continues to grapple with the rights of the very people displaced in the nation’s formation. Through each of those reckonings, it was the press that put the truth on the record. Today, the nation finds itself at a crossroads that will determine its future.

I was moved by the passion and devotion of Scott Pelley, the veteran 60 Minutes correspondent fired from CBS News, in a recent interview. He got it right when he expressed his devotion to his country: “You become a journalist because you love the First Amendment. You become a journalist because you love the country… There is no democracy without journalism. It can’t be done. That is why I am a journalist.”

The WNPA represents 70+ member newspapers, including The Miner, all of whom are staffed with impassioned people like Pelley, covering the news their community needs, reflecting the injustices and the beauty of their community, and holding the powerful to account.

“There is no democracy without journalism.” It cannot be said enough. And we can’t fight hard enough for it.