Every day, I am grateful to be a journalist in the United States.
Today, on World Press Freedom Day, it’s important to celebrate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. Our Founding Father Thomas Jefferson once said that he’d rather have “newspapers without a government” than a “government without newspapers.”
Independent newsrooms with no political ties best serve readers — and democracy. And they need freedom to do that.
Reporters living and working inside the community understand the undercurrents of what they report and are able to present information in a way that makes readers actually care. And when readers care, they engage with reporters. This feedback loop shapes coverage going forward.
Thanks to The Columbian’s readers, subscribers, advertisers and donors to our Community Funded Journalism program, we have 30 journalists in our newsroom, a relatively large number compared with other media outlets in communities about the size of Vancouver and Clark County.
Now, that isn’t to say that other papers aren’t producing excellent journalism that holds their communities together. They certainly are. But like all newsrooms, we are challenged by the internet’s rampant misinformation that draws the attention of the general public. It’s even more challenging now that some websites plagiarize our work with help from artificial intelligence.
We need people championing the truth. And that takes an established newsroom with institutional knowledge and a desire to report the truth without fear of persecution.
We, the press, are known as the Fourth Estate — a fourth branch of the government. Modern American politics allows you, the voter and the consumer, to use the power of your own slice of democracy in your own way. That’s where the press plays a crucial role.
Independent news coverage addresses key questions: Who is suffering or succeeding? What is a new law going to do or not do? When are people protesting or celebrating?
It shows you who, what, when, where, why and how leaders, organizations and everyday people are doing what they’re doing — whether you like it or not.
The press is there to enlighten you to these things and then let you decide how to react. It empowers you. It brings balance to the judicial, executive and legislative branches. Thomas Jefferson understood this.
On a day that celebrates press freedom, it’s important to recognize the ability of The Columbian and every other source of news to empower our community with truth and reality as it unfolds in bits and pieces, which we present to you as the stories you read here.
