Sometimes I don’t know what to write about the current #stampoftheday; sometimes I know what to write about but not what to say. Today is one of those days. The topic is obvious because the 4-cent stamp, which was issued on September 22, 1958, celebrates “Freedom of the Press” – an ideal that is again under attack.
Why did the Post Office celebrate the freedom of the press in 1958? The stamp was issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, which, when it opened in 1908, was the first journalism school in the US and only the second in the world, preceded only by The Superior School of Journalism of Paris, which opened in 1899.
I know what to write about: the juxtaposition of this stamp’s call with our current president’s attacks on the press. Google Donald Trump and freedom of the press and you’ll be flooded with articles and images. When I did, I got 48,300,000 results. The first page alone had the following:
- Donald Trump Thinks the Freedom of the Press Is ‘Disgusting…www.aclu.org…
- Trump’s Attacks on the Press Are Illegal. We’re Suing. – PEN…pen.org…
- Trump 2020 plan poses new risks to press freedom and trust…www.usatoday.com…
- Attacks on press credibility endanger US democracy and global press freedom….cjp.org
- Opinion | Trump keeps threatening the freedom of speech…www.washingtonpost.com
- Opinion: How Donald Trump undermines press freedom at…www.dw.com
- Trump’s Warped Definition of Free Speech – The Atlanticwww.theatlantic.com
- Freedom of press under attack by Trump | Columnists…missoulian.com
- Trump v CNN: lawsuit becomes test case on press freedom…www.theguardian.com
While these are odious, they are not unique, as historian Harold Holzer points out in his new book “The Presidents vs. The Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media – From the Founding Fathers to Fake News.” In the first paragraph of his review of the book, which was published in The New York Times, Jack Shafer wrote: “The next time President Trump chafes your free-speech sensibilities by yanking the White House credentials of a reporter who questioned him hard, insulting journalists at a news conference, tweeting about “fake news” being the enemy of the people or threatening to retaliate against one of the media outlets whose reporting has offended him, calm yourself by opening [the book] to almost any page. For all of Trump’s transgressions against the press – and they are many – Holzer’s book offers evidence that he’s not the greatest enemy of the First Amendment to have occupied the White House. He might not even rank in the top five.”
The fact that presidents have jousted with the press since the Republic’s earliest days doesn’t diminish the importance and danger of the current moment. In fact, if anything those battles underscore the importance of fighting for continued freedom of the press—even while acknowledging that as the great press critic A.J. Liebling once noted, “freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” The need to push back against current attacks is critical because, as Holzer warns towards the end of his book “the Trump era may usher in a permanent upheaval in which Americans never again agree on basic information or trust in traditional sources of news.” That, as another reviewer noted, “would be a threat to our democracy.”
So, as I knew when I started writing, we have to keep fighting to protect and preserve freedom of the press, now and into the future.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice (and freedom of the press), and work for peace.