Newspapers: engines of democracy
James Madison, the architect of the First Amendment, credited the newspapers of his time for “much of the lights” that “conducted the United States to the ranks of a free and independent nation.” This year’s Pulitzer Prizes show dramatically how newspapers — above all other media — remain essential to Thomas Jefferson’s warning: “A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the powers knowledge gives.” And he cited newspapers.
In our war against terrorists, for example, human rights — respect for life — is a primary moral value we stand for. How much have you seen on broadcast or cable television about the genocidal holocaust in Darfur — which has lasted much longer and cost many more lives than the horrors in Rwanda?
But it took one newspaperman, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, this year’s winner of the Pulitzer for Commentary, to alert this nation and the world to these massive crimes against humanity. He made six dangerous trips to Darfur to report names and faces of victims of the genocide for which George W. Bush had long before indicted the government of Sudan — to the world’s indifference.
On the other hand, what has marred this country’s own human-rights record around the world — to the delight of terrorist recruiters — is our abuses, including torture, of our prisoners in this war.
Since 2002, Dana Priest of The Washington Post has regularly reported breaking news about these violations of our own statutes, and international treaties we have signed, by the CIA in official interrogation centers, as well as in CIA secret prisons. Exposing this, Priest embodies the very spirit of the First Amendment that, in a democracy, holds our government to account for lawlessness.
This year, Priest won the Pulitzer for Beat Reporting by putting light on additional CIA secret prisons in Eastern Europe. The CIA and the Justice Department have started investigations of “leaks” to her from sources.
For National Reporting, this year’s Pulitzer Prize went to James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times for greatly intensifying a crucial national debate across party lines, on whether the president can secretly and unilaterally bypass the constitutional separation of powers by allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants.
The depth and steadfastness of the reporting by Nicholas Kristof, Dana Priest, James Risen, Eric Lichtblau and the other newspaper journalists honored with Pulitzers this year — let alone the many others who disinfect, with sunlight, corruption and inhumanity in towns and cities throughout this country — take a lot of time, and support from publishers and editors.
When I find, increasingly, that many of the young no longer read newspapers — and get their “news” from Jon Stewart on Comedy Central or Jay Leno — I wish that newspaper publishers would make their papers much more available in schools, as they are at airports and on trains. And editors should give more support to the increasingly beleaguered student press in their towns and cities. Those are the kids who live the First Amendment by contrast with their fellow students.
Last year’s Knight Foundation poll of more than 100,000 high-school students, for example, revealed that 73 percent had no opinion of the First Amendment or “took it for granted” — and 36 percent believe that newspapers must first secure government approval before publishing.
How much do any of them even know about James Madison and Thomas Jefferson?
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.