Choosing concerns

Some people, according to waves of social media posts and television news reports, are worried that the president-elect won’t follow through on his campaign promises. Others are just as afraid that he will. His selections for various powerful posts in the upcoming administration, along with his attacks on presumed enemies and frequently modified or seemingly reversed positions on everything from climate change to waterboarding, make it hard to be sure what to fear and what to ignore, regardless of your personal political stance.

My own worries cover the waterfront, but if I were limited to only one worry, I would have to choose the constant attacks on the free press. Please note, I am not a professional member of the press community. I write opinion pieces. I try to make sure my opinion is based on facts, not wishful thinking, but I am not a reporter. I’m not employed by a news organization, either print or broadcast. So the ax I am grinding here has nothing to do with employment or pay, but everything to do with citizenship and freedom.

Politicians and the press are natural opponents. Nobody enjoys having the details of their lives, their thoughts, their mistakes picked apart and announced to the world by a tormentor who seems unerringly to discover and trumpet the most embarrassing facts. That they are facts and not fiction doesn’t make them any more pleasant for the tormentor’s target.

Still, most politicians and others in public life understand that there is a greater goal than an individual’s avoidance of shame and censure. That goal is the uncovering of fact and announcing it. Because citizens of a free country remain free only if the actions of those who lead, but who have the potential to rule, are open to the probing light of the press. Power really does tend to corrupt, and transparency provides a healthy dilution of that power and helps to excise any corruption that develops.

As respect for a free press weakens, the tendency to seek “news” from unedited and unsubstantiated sources grows. Browsing through the cable news channels and surfing social media online reveals a burgeoning tendency to select viewpoints that align with one’s own preferences and preconceived notions, then declaring those viewpoints “truth.” This trend has escalated dramatically, then metastasized into the practice that has recently come to light of deliberately planting on social media lies and manufactured stories designed to misdirect.

An egregious example of results of this practice was the nut case who entered a pizzeria in Washington and fired an assault rifle. He was there, he said, to investigate the report, circulated during the recent presidential campaign, that Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager were running a child sex ring out of the restaurant’s back rooms. The nonsensical report was a fantastic lie, planted deliberately, and you might wonder how anyone could believe something so irrational. The problem is, there are plenty of people ready to employ, as one does when reading a novel, the willing suspension of disbelief when a juicy bit of idiocy masquerades as news.

The desire for privacy is human. The excessive drive to protect it has cost both politicians and the public in the past and no doubt will in the future. Attacking the press and vilifying individual members of the profession seems to offer little benefit to either side of the equation. The ill effects of such actions on the attacker may be of short duration, but damage to the ability of all of us to know as much as possible about the actions of those who control so much of our lives will last through generations to come.

Freedom of the press is clearly far more valuable to all of us, no matter our race, religion, or political views, than is the privacy of any political leader.

This story was originally published December 10, 2016 at 1:56 PM with the headline "Choosing concerns."