Rash: Unite on the right to, and rights of, a free press

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

The world has become accustomed to President Donald Trump using his metaphorical bully pulpit to attack journalists by labeling them an “enemy of the people.”

So it seems novel when a new global leader from America with a literal pulpit instead prays for journalists — and praises them.

“Let me, therefore, reiterate today the church’s solidarity with journalists who are imprisoned for seeking and reporting the truth while also asking for their release,” Pope Leo XIV said last week in his first address to the media.

The church, he continued, “recognizes these witnesses — I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives — the courage of those who defend dignity, justice and the right of people to be informed, because only informed individuals can make free choices.”

A pope’s “main job is to communicate the gospel, the good news for humanity, so they think very deeply about communication,” said the Rev. Christopher Collins, vice president for mission at the University of St. Thomas. This thought process, he added, “is about as foundational as it gets.”

“On the contrary, they demand that each one of us, in our different roles and services, never give into mediocrity. The church must face the challenges posed by the times. In the same way, communication and journalism do not exist outside of time and history. St. Augustine reminds us of this when he said, ‘Let us live well, and the times will be good. We are the times.’ ”

For those more amenable to a secular rather than sacred appeal like St. Augustine’s “times,” there’s New York Times’ publisher A.G. Sulzberger’s striking speech at Notre Dame, recently reprinted under the title “A Free People Need a Free Press.”

The “role of a free and independent press in a healthy democracy is under direct attack, with increasingly aggressive efforts to curtail and punish independent journalism,” Sulzberger said.

Media-freedom organizations also apparently don’t think it’s an overstatement to warn about how Trump has gone beyond his Stalinesque “enemies-of-the-people” rhetoric.

“Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy,” headlines an extensive report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, detailing a period that has already “been marked by a flurry of executive actions that have created a chilling effect and have the potential to curtail media freedoms. These measures threaten the availability of independent, fact-based news for vast swaths of America’s population.”

Numbers like 427 million, the weekly worldwide audience of U.S. Agency for Global Media news outlets silenced by Trump — a void that will be quickly and cynically filled by China, Russia and other repressive regimes. Relatedly, this figure: 3,500, the number of USAGM journalists at risk of losing their jobs, including 84 who face deportation to authoritarian countries they bravely chronicled.

Other numbing numbers include 8,000-plus U.S. government web pages removed from public view; or 180, the number of public-radio stations that might go off the air if public-media funding is eliminated. Sulzberger’s key numeral is five, for the number of key components of the anti-press campaign, leading to his singular conclusion that “If the free press is designed to be a watchdog, the playbook’s goal is to tame it so it becomes a lap dog.”

Some news organizations and other entities have reacted with caution, or compliance, or capitulation. Sulzberger said this may be understandable, but “On the other hand, your rights can hold only if you use them.” Fear, he said, “is contagious. But courage is also contagious.”

Leo XIV also lionized courage when he concluded with these words to journalists: “You are at the forefront of reporting on conflicts and aspirations for peace, on situations of injustice and poverty, and on the silent work of so many people striving to create a better world. For this reason, I ask you to choose consciously and courageously the path of communication in favor of peace.”