It must be buried somewhere in the Constitution that newspaper readers should always hate the press. Suffice to say, newspaper- and reporter-bashing by loyal readers is long and storied. I should know, after almost 50 years of working as an ink-stained wretch, as we called ourselves in the era of typewriters and carbon paper.
Until relatively recently, however, reader antipathy was tinged with reluctant affection, which could morph into outright adoration when reporters were needed to shed light on a corrupt politician or, as in a recent case, to help someone in distress.
I happened upon the story in the Guardian, written by a Canadian actress and entrepreneur named Jasmine Mooney. She told of her horrifying experience being detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for two weeks without so much as an explanation. This line jumped off the digital screen: “I told her [a friend] about the conditions in this new place, and that was when we decided to go to the media.”
The media were her last — and only — resort.
I can’t retell Mooney’s extensive account here, but you can find it online. In short, she was returning to the United States on a work visa for a job with a California company. In an immigration office at the southern border near San Diego, with no warning or provocation, she was told to put her hands against the wall and patted down before being sent to a detention center. Her visa hadn’t been properly processed, she was told. Rather than sending her back to Canada (she offered to pay for a ticket), agents eventually jailed her in Arizona. She and 30 other women were transferred there at 3 a.m. and forced to share a single concrete cell with 24-hour fluorescent lighting, no mats or blankets, and limited bathroom use.
All were required to take pregnancy tests: Lined up, they took turns over a communal toilet, holding a paper urine cup into which an agent dropped a test strip. Mind you, Mooney was never charged with a crime. During transfers to other detention centers, she and the other women wore chains around their waists, hands and feet. Never during her detainment was Mooney allowed to talk to a representative on the outside, according to the article.
That is, until her friend went to the media.
Not everyone needs to be rescued by journalism, obviously, but newspeople are sort of like the police: People don’t like them until they need them. Unfortunately, the days of needing the media are well and truly upon us. Yet thanks to President Donald Trump’s war on “fake news,” many MAGA Americans think of newspeople as public enemies.
Lately, Trump’s heated anti-media rhetoric has morphed into action. This week, he signed an executive order cutting funding and staff for the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the umbrella organization that supports Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, among others. There’s some question about Trump’s authority to undo what Congress has created. But if he’s successful, Trump will have effectively cut off the only trustworthy news source for millions of people who otherwise have access only to state-supported propaganda.
It isn’t surprising that Russia and China have signaled their approval.
The importance of these news agencies to people living under dictatorships can’t be overestimated. When my son worked for Radio Free Europe in the Czech Republic, he would sometimes write profiles about dissident reporters who had to remain anonymous to avoid execution for failing to toe the party line. Journalists from countries with repressive leadership would report on their government’s activities and find ways to get the stories into those countries, whether by radio or leafleting or other, more complicated methods.
American interests in the world aren’t limited to new Rivieras and mineral rights; they include the propagation of healthy democracies and the expansion of liberties. The US has an interest in telling stories of freedom and demonstrating the principles that undergird free societies.
Trump, of course, sees no purpose in media beyond outlets that praise him. (Russian President Vladimir Putin feels the same way.) And Elon Musk, the cost-cutter-in-chief, surely sees USAGM as just another unnecessary expenditure — an easy sell to Trump, who has long disliked Voice of America (or, as the White House put it, “the Voice of Radical America”). Permit me to translate for the president: These news organizations sometimes mention my name in unflattering contexts, otherwise known as facts.
I’m not accusing the president of being a dictator (yet). But freedom, like civilization, hangs by a thread. Lately, I’ve found myself revisiting Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a postapocalyptic novel wherein cannibals thrive. The story focuses on a father and son who travel by night for safety. They carry a lantern that symbolizes the fire they carry within, which is the commitment to goodness, law and order, and virtue. They don’t kill and eat other people. As long as the fire survives, they survive.
As it happens, The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, read the book around the same time I did — a coincidence we discovered during a dinner conversation several years ago. He probed my thoughts on the lantern’s meaning. “Civilization,” I said without hesitation. He agreed enthusiastically, and I remember thinking that perhaps this was why he wanted to own a newspaper. A free press is the lantern that represents the fire we carry within. It might flicker now and then, but with care, it remains a beacon of light that illuminates the darkness, revealing corruption, lies, brutality and now, thanks to our draconian approach to immigration management, unfairly detained citizens such as Mooney.
I haven’t always been a fan of the motto that runs across The Post’s masthead: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But lately, it makes a great deal of sense, and I’m hoping it stays. Bezos came up with the line, I’m told, and I find solace in this. I don’t know about you, but I’m banking on the light to make America great again.
Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post.
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