What We Believe

Wednesday, 12 November 2008 17:20

Burke, the anti-Jacobin, was a supporter of the more modest (less European) Revolution stirring the American colonies. At least he was an opponent of British folly. More importantly, he was an advocate of “limited government”, which in the context of late 18th century Britain was revolutionary conservatism.

Burke would have felt quite at home among our Founding Fathers, sitting in Constitutional Convention, as they debated the role of the press in the new republic. It was a debate which would begin with the crafting of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In elegantly simple language; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.”

The founding fathers anointed the often rowdy, always cynical, hyper-opinionated press with a constitutional halo of public responsibility. Watchdog of unpopular opinion. Megaphone of dissent and controversy. Permanent critic of the state. What did Edmund Burke understand that John McCain and Sarah Palin did not?

At every campaign stop the GOP dynamic duo railed against the elitist press, and late in the campaign Sarah Palin even began to rant that her freedom of speech was being threatened by the revelations of the press. Burke could have offered a tutorial. There is a linkage between the idea of limited government and the idea of a free press. It is the press that keeps government limited, against all the headwinds of special interest, money, and privilege. The louder politicians scream that the press is “elite”, the more we should worry. The more politicians complain that they are “victims” of the press, the more we should cheer. The finest tradition of the press is to enforce the limits of government.

And so, the great debates of American history have been played out in the press with just as much vitality as the halls of Congress. The Federalist Papers, Hamilton’s and Madison’s arguments in defense of a strong central government, are now read as if they were written as a book. They were, in fact, first published as newspaper columns, read and debated in pubs throughout the infant nation. The abolitionist movement made its case against slavery in the pages of newspapers like The Liberator, and the New York Tribune. Newspapers followed wave on wave of immigrants from the ghettos of Europe, and then west onto the frontier, always giving voice. In the late 20th century the case against reckless war found its expression first in the streets and second through the voice that despised dissent was given by the press. Who but the press is capable of standing up to the hissing whine of established power that it is unpatriotic to oppose the Imperial Presidency.

The Golden Age of Television was born not in the over-amped exuberance of reality show challenges, but in Edward R. Murrow’s Cold War challenge to Senator Joseph McCarthy, and CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite’s verdict upon returning from Vietnam that Johnson’s War was not winnable. President Johnson grasped the consequences. “If I have lost Cronkite, I have lost middle America.”

We continue to play out the tragedy of 9/11 and Iraq, and we have the wilting, pandering, corporate press to thank for the calculation that there is more profit in waving the flag than playing its constitutional role to ask, “Where are the weapons of mass destruction.” The activist press in popular culture requires not just public tolerance, but popular defense of the idea that democracy thrives when many voices are given ink or time in front of the camera. And that requires competition.

But times have turned hard for the press. Television, which was born a two-headed beast, fed the head of greed and celebrity, sensation and corporate concentration, while the head of public service and fairness was starved to death. Television drove the economic and content transformation of the traditional press, and gave birth to the hybrid vigor of the Internet; the pretense of cool objective “facts” combined with the raucous opinions of bloggers and “reader replies”.

Look at the websites of major newspapers (look at the website of the Rapid City Journal) and you will see the bright reflection of television. Glittering, oversized headlines (everyday is Victory Day), sensational leads (every controversy is “breaking news”), every interview an “exclusive”, front pages are built around huge photographs that yank at our emotions, surrounded by brief headlines and short summaries, and copious white space. Look at the television networks and you will see breathless reporters interviewing all-knowing experts (who are never held accountable the next day), crunched into the corner of the screen stripped with headlines, ticker tapes, and teases for “what’s coming up after this commercial break.”

Now we come to the Black Hills, a perfect storm of darkness.

Edmund Burke would cringe. Western South Dakota continues to be a one-party state, as it has been for half a century, comfortable with the quaint abstractions of libertarian individualism, while greedily devouring all the public largesse it can suck from the nation’s taxpayers. We are the most bold ostriches in the nation, rivaled only by the sudden election year rise to prominence of those $3 for every $1 welfare Alaskans.

Our fantasies of rugged individualism are served by a monopoly newspaper only too willing to reflect our narcissism back to us. It is one thing for a citizen editor with deep roots in the community to hue to odd perspectives. The history of the American press is full of crusading editors, whose views begin unpopular and end up shaping history. It is quite another predicament for a monopoly newspaper to be owned by an out-of-state corporation whose primary goal is to maximize profit for the mother ship, and whose service to the community is to shrink from anything controversial that might provoke debate or make a difference. What a waste of public trust.

So into this darkness we come. The Dakota Day, full of promise and idealism and faith that we too might some day be considered the “elite” press because we dare to criticize absolute truth. Perhaps it is good that the situation is so dark. If there was just a little light we might be so terrified by the daunting task of brining a new voice to the Black Hills that we would turn around and run. We know no better than to write.

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Written by Sam Hurst