Adversarial Press and News

The value of a vigorous adversarial press is hard to argue against when one sees the efforts that dictators around the globe go to in order to silence dissenting views. In Russia, the vibrant and irreverent press that emerged after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. has been throttled, and in China the Communist Party maintains a stranglehold on coverage that it views as threatening the Party’s rule or counter to the Party’s policies.

The Bush administration was hardly comparable in its efforts to control the press, but under the proclaimed “War on Terrorism” it had systematically narrowed access to government records of all kinds and assailed news organizations that challenged its behavior as unpatriotic or worse. For instance, President Bush denounced the Times in December 2005 for reporting that he had, according to the front page article, “secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government offi cials.” The Obama administration has promised greater openness, but press clashes with the president are almost inevitable—and healthy.

It is an article of faith among journalists that what they do is essential to democracy. Indeed, if one were to eavesdrop on a gathering of traditional journalists deploring the state of the news media, it would be easy to conclude that without high-quality journalism, American democracy would be hugely diminished.

This is a view also shared by many non-journalists of all political persuasions, even though these same people might also be very critical of the media. Despite their quarrels with the news, they recognize that reliable news is important. If news isn’t credible, it loses its ability to persuade. If news institutions cease to be trusted to be honest brokers of information, then disagreeable or politically unwelcome news will be dismissed as spin and bias. In such an environment, the argument goes, a genuinely informed citizenry is replaced with an anarchy of half-truths, misinformation, and propaganda.


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