Viewpoint: Honor our right to free speech and press
Jane Smith
Last week was a big week for honoring human rights. Tuesday, December 10, was international Human Rights Day, and Sunday, December 15, was Bill of Rights Day, which honors the first ten amendments to our U.S. Constitution.
I spent some time last week comparing the two lists and, to keep my thoughts closer to home, I also reread the list of rights in our Montana state Constitution.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are included in all three documents. They’re listed in the very first sentence of our Bill of Rights. The rationale is simple: If governments derive their “just powers” only from the will of the people, as our Declaration of Independence claims, then the people have to know what’s going on. None of us sees every event in our complex world first-hand, so we depend on the media. And three important aspects of today’s media worry me a lot.
First, we don’t know how information is selected for us on the Internet. News feeds work like online advertising: If you shopped online for shoes or cookbooks last week, you’re probably getting ads for shoes or cookbooks this week. Similarly, if you browsed liberal or conservative articles about politics during the past year, you’re probably getting headlines with the same slant now.
To combat software that takes me deeper and deeper into my own biases, I ignore the headlines that my browser offers. Instead, I seek out information from a variety of sources, especially nonpartisan ones. Currently, my favorite website for national and international news is readtangle.com. Every day, this site prints excerpts on a single issue from several viewpoints. Then it offers a brief opinion on what it all means. You can access Tangle for free, but a paying subscription gets you more information.
My second worry is that local journalism doesn’t get enough support. Our Missoulian was locally owned until 1959, when it was purchased by Lee Enterprises. At that time, Lee Enterprises was a small corporation, but they’re now the fourth largest newspaper group in the U.S. Check out https://lee.net/markets/ to see the geographic range of their papers, and note that we are called “markets,” not “communities.”
I’m glad that we still have the Missoulian, but I don’t believe any national corporation will support thorough coverage of the most important issues in our community. To be better informed, I go to three online sources: Montana Free Press, Missoula Current, and Missoula Pulp. These outlets offer content for free, but I pay. They need all the support they can get to do this crucial, sometimes courageous work.
My third worry is that the owners of big news corporations shape and filter what gets published. Just before the November election, the owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times – both billionaires - nixed publication of the presidential endorsements that their editorial boards had been working on.
How often do owners intervene to select what gets published? How much do their biases influence the hiring and retention of staff? I’d rather pay for news from local journalists than trust Jeff Bezos to select what I hear. We have a free press, but good journalism is not produced for free.
To honor the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, our U.S. Bill of Rights, and the rights spelled out in our state constitution, let’s pay attention to the news and how we get it. Our Montana Constitution puts it simply: “In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities.” All of the good journalism in the world can’t keep us informed if we aren’t listening.
Jane Kapler Smith is a Missoula citizen and voter.