It is no Longer the Country I Grew up in

Though I’m not an avid fan of horse racing, I’ve visited a few racetracks over the years and do pay a bit of attention to the Kentucky Derby. Last weekend I was oblivious to the allegorical significance of the race until the stretch run, when it was announced, “Journalism and Sovereignty, nose to nose.” That seemed as it should be, with neither journalism nor sovereignty having the upper hand. But one of them seemed likely to win and I was pulling for Journalism, for obvious reasons.

In my life, we witnessed the resignation of President Richard Nixon, due to media reporting on the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up. In that instance, journalism trumped sovereignty, despite then Vice-President Agnew’s evident disdain of and confrontations with the media.

The call at the wire, “Sovereignty has taken the Kentucky Derby, Journalism is on the outside,” says it all to many of us in the media at a time when we see so many presidential indiscretions and seemingly obvious conflicts with the U.S. Constitution. Add to that a handful of felony convictions involving the current president. How President Trump continues to serve when lesser indiscretions have taken down so many presidential wannabes before him is a mystery to many of us in the media. We can report the news, but nothing happens unless others act on it.

On World Press Freedom Day, May 3, media support organizations as different as Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) turned their attention to the challenges facing media. In a press release, RSF said its press freedom index “revealed the dire state of the news economy and how it severely threatens newsrooms’ editorial independence and media pluralism.”

“Journalists worldwide continue to face threats, censorship, and violence. According to UNESCO, promoting the safety of journalists and combating impunity for those who attack them are central actions within its support for press freedom,” wrote NENPA in a press release. ​

In that environment, we received a story from Kelly McBride with the Poynter Institute titled, “People who fear the Trump administration are asking editors to remove their names from old news stories,” that we’ve republished as Another Opinion in this edition of The Gazette. Normally that wouldn’t be news for our hyper-local, 11-town coverage, but these are strange times.

Just minutes after reading that story, we received a message, and I had a subsequent conversation with an individual who requested we remove their name from our website. During our conversation it was revealed they feared for their personal safety. Without going into too much detail, the individual requesting the change is in the U.S. on a work visa and had made comments we reported on that might easily raise suspicion among certain government officials and agencies. Of course we agreed to remove the references.

Though we will take each such case individually and set the bar relatively high to erase what we see as the first draft of history, it should not be necessary to fear for one’s safety when making comments that threaten no one.

I hope you see how that request makes McBride’s article relevant to us and our community.

As we continue to cover the local activities of schools, governments, civic organizations and individuals as appropriate, we are now faced with the added impacts of capricious and immediate federal government effects on the lives of those in our communities.

It is no longer the country I grew up in when a person with legitimate and documented permission to be in this country fears for their safety. It seems we’ve lost the lessons learned from the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans.

Paul Fixx, editor

Paul Fixx

Editor

Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.