Slovak and American Journalists Perform Crucial Role in Promoting Civic Values in Democracy

The Indispensable Role of a Free Press

In American terms, I’m a First Amendment absolutist; I believe the U.S. Bill of Rights prohibits any real limits on speech, expression, or freedom of the press. As such, I tend to agree with Thomas Jefferson, the author of America’s Declaration of Independence and our third President, when he wrote: "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

But while my government accepts some restrictions on speech and the press, our laws regarding what can be considered slander or libel are quite limited and thus allow the American news media to operate virtually unhindered. In the U.S., newspapers, magazines, television journalists, and now internet bloggers freely investigate and report on official waste and fraud or governmental abuses of power.

Thus, in recent years we’ve seen the Washington Post detail sub-standard care for U.S. veterans returning from war, the CBS television network break the story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the New York Times uncover and report on corruption in government, and TPMMuckraker.com tenaciously pursue accusations of malfeasance made against numerous public officials.

Such reports can and should outrage the public – the voters and taxpayers – and sooner or later they lead to reforms in government policies (or even changes in the governments themselves) as Jefferson envisioned when he wrote in 1823: “The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure."

Thus, when World Press Freedom Day took place May 3, President Obama described it as “a day in which we celebrate the indispensable role played by journalists in exposing abuses of power.” But he also lamented that too many reporters “face intimidation, censorship, and arbitrary arrest – guilty of nothing more than a passion for truth and a tenacious belief that a free society depends on an informed citizenry.”

The statistics are shocking. In 2008 alone, 70 journalists were killed. 673 more were arrested and 125 imprisoned. New York Times reporter Barry Bearak was jailed in Zimbabwe on charges of “committing journalism,” an act that should be honored rather than criminalized. While Bearak was released after 5 days, 49 Russian journalists have been killed since 1992.

And yet, every day, dedicated reporters and editors put their lives on the line to expose corruption and injustice or to cover wars and disasters.

Over a century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt used the word “muckraker” to refer to those who, through their reporting, sought to cleanse the ‘filth’ from America. The term eventually became associated with investigative journalists who exposed corruption in American public life and big business. The muckrakers’ journalistic efforts helped reform and regulate Wall Street and exposed a variety of societal ills.

Like the muckrakers, Slovak reporters recently published the story of police abuse of Roma children in Kosice, leading the government to commit to improved police training. Extensive media coverage of the so-called “bulletin board tender” informed the public about the improper use of EU funds. And Slovak journalists aggressively pursued the story of the non-transparent contract to sell CO2 emissions quotas at less-than-market prices. Clearly, the need for a “muckraking” press is as important today as it was a century ago.

But there exists an inherent – and necessary – tension between the government and the Fourth Estate. Governments often fear reporting that threatens their policies or their popularity. Yet our greatest leaders have embraced that tension, acknowledging its purpose and value. President John F. Kennedy once said that “we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.”

As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote in a landmark decision permitting the New York Times to publish the so-called Pentagon Papers (a highly-classified analysis of U.S. involvement in Vietnam that was leaked to the paper) against the government’s wishes: “the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power … may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government."

Mr. Jefferson would have agreed completely. And so do I.