Regarding A.G. Sulzberger’s Sept. 6 column, “How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America”:
By Letters to the Editor
Just a few years ago, our historic and beloved Pueblo Chieftain was a respected, award-winning and self-contained daily newspaper. Today, it is only a shell. The newsroom has shrunk from more than 30 journalists to just six. The commercial press operation was shut down, costing another 50 people their jobs. The building is for sale. Business processes are centralized somewhere. Home delivery is no longer an option.
What happened? In 2018, the paper was sold to GateHouse Media, one of the largest publishers of locally based media in the United States, which in 2019 rebranded as Gannett after GateHouse’s parent company took over the Gannett newspaper chain. With that transaction, the Pueblo Chieftain became a tiny part of a complex global financial business. The dramatic changes at the paper in the years since lead me to conclude that the Pueblo Chieftain, along with hundreds of other U.S. newspapers, are no longer being run in the interests of communities they ought to serve. Instead, they now exist for the profit of organizations such as Fortress Investment Group or SoftBank, the diversified Japanese tech firm, which has each owned Gannett’s parent companies at various points.
This story reveals that private companies as well as governments can follow the playbook for the “quiet war against press freedom”: Concentrate troubled newspapers, sell off assets, reduce costs, and siphon off any residual cash for the benefit of investors. Yes, Mr. Sulzberger, I am sorry to report that this existential conflict is well underway here in Pueblo.
Iris Clark, Pueblo, Colo.
A ‘free press’ costs money
To save America’s independent media, journalism outlets must work harder to get people invested in the industry’s utility and survival. Try harder to convince them that a “free press” does not mean everything they read, watch or hear must be free of charge. Make the patriotic case for paid subscriptions — and hold prices down so they are affordable. If lower subscription prices mean fewer overseas bureaus or fewer overseas trips by reporters and photographers, so be it. Use the work of trusted freelancers and established news agencies instead.
In the meantime, build up national coverage in America’s “flyover country.” Open more domestic news bureaus. Bring back the old “stringer” system for small-town coverage. Encourage more rural availability of newspapers, radio news and TV news. Help prop up and improve rural newspapers, radio stations and TV stations. Focus, focus, focus much harder on reporting news from all of America’s states and territories.
Si Dunn, Franklin, Mass.
The left’s ‘fake news’ problem
A.G. Sulzberger notes that many countries have passed “fake news” laws used to punish journalists for reporting on unpleasant realities.
The same thing could happen in the United States. In a 2019 speech to the NAACP, Kamala Harris called for a government crackdown against “misinformation” on social media, though she did not lay out how such policies would be enforced. The U.S. government has funded progressive “misinformation” monitors that flag publications as “risky” for advertisers and that call for cracking down on speech alleged to fuel so-called adversarial narratives.
Punishing speech as disinformation because it is “adversarial” toward governmental institutions is a bad idea. The press is supposed to be a watchdog over the government, exposing its wrongdoing, not be the government’s lap dog.
Governments around the world have a long history of using laws against “fake news” or “misinformation” to punish truth-tellers and whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing. One of the doctors who tried to raise the alarm about the risk of covid-19 was accused by Chinese authorities of spreading medical disinformation and threatened with jail if he didn’t recant his warnings. He died the next month from the pathogen he tried to stop.
Judges have warned that the government cannot be trusted “to separate the truth from the false” for its citizens. Politicians on both sides of the aisle would be wise to remember that.
Hans Bader, Arlington
Authoritarians aren’t the only threats
Thank you for publishing A.G. Sulzberger’s op-ed in favor of ensuring press freedom in the United States as a bulwark against authoritarianism, with insights drawn from the experiences of other countries. But I want to point out that his argument for how to protect this freedom rests first on a general hope of continued support for such work and second on the ongoing bravery of journalists.
While Mr. Sulzberger drew a distinction between the more subtle campaigns in countries such as Hungary, as well as in countries where journalists face violence, I still wish he had taken time to discuss the messier situation in Mexico, where journalists are under grave threat from gangs, drug dealers and corrupt public officials. Mexico may not have a true authoritarian political leader, but the deterioration of institutions, civil society and public safety can cause the same loss of press access and freedom.
Press freedom doesn’t depend all that much on what formal access politicians provide to the press. Instead, it matters much more that journalists are able to ask questions without the threat of jail or death. There is always an important story to tell. And I’m glad to see The Post and the Times united in continuing to tell such stories without fear or favor.
Thomas Bartholomew, Washington
The Times’s gamble
A.G. Sulzberger’s warning about the current threat environment to the Fourth Estate is chilling. But he isn’t as perspicacious about his own paper’s coverage of a candidate who promises to finish the job he started eight years ago of delegitimizing the press.
It’s admirable to insist that a newspaper remain objective. But when the paper’s primary concern appears, at least to this reader, to be to provide “balance” about political opponents who are radically dissimilar, and that “balance” results in content that blurs reality, then the publisher incurs two unnecessary risks.
First, he risks his paper’s credibility with readers who have the time to listen to the candidates and can easily see the vast discrepancy between what they see and hear, and how the Times reports it back to them.
Second, but more critically, it risks not informing the rest of the public about who these candidates really are and what is really at stake.
By all means, Mr. Sulzberger, be committed to “refusing to be baited into opposing or championing any particular side.” But please do report what the candidates say verbatim. Don’t ignore outrageous statements or attempt to gloss away insensible gibberish. Don’t write misleading headlines. And please don’t engage in false equivalencies to generate an equivalent number of articles or controversies about each candidate. Coverage cannot possibly be “equivalent” when one candidate produces a fire hose of newsworthy lies and outrages every day, while the other engages in normal politics.
It’s not the mission of the Times or any journalist to create a level playing field when there isn’t one. Doing so risks an election outcome that would enable the autocratic takeover of our free press that Mr. Sulzberger detailed and fears. I guess it’s a good thing, as Mr. Sulzberger said, that the Times is preparing for it.
Natalie Lauren Patten, Washington
Respect your readers
Three critical comments regarding Mr. Sulzberger’s column:
First, the belief of many journalists that they have to tell us how we should interpret the facts is very distracting and offensive. Present me with the complex themes and facts, and leave the work of interpreting to me. In my experience as a doctor, the majority of patients in a rural farm area are able to understand complex health problems when I take the time to present them in clear language. Journalists should show the same faith in their readers.
Second, too many media outlets have embraced the same methods for winning readers’ attention as social media services. This is counterproductive and alienates the serious reader, in the same manner as junk food does a healthy person. Instead, publications should be concentrating on the core readership: all the people who digest the material they are reading and then reflect upon it.
Third, it is certainly Mr. Sulzberger’s right to voice his political opinions. But to say it is not appropriate as a journalist to get involved in the political race and then to go on exclaiming against the dangers of Donald Trump is very far from being apolitical. This contradiction is just another example of the free press distancing itself from its own code of ethics.
I find it tiresome to repeatedly hear how important the free press is, as if we didn’t already know that. It’s like saying again and again that oxygen is vital for human existence.
John Lawrence Crum, Worpswede, Germany
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