Free press in Kansas and the U.S. faces a post-truth world. Surrendering can’t be the answer.
Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer answers reporters questions outside Oct. 7, 2024, outside the newspaper office. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
The turbulent 1960s prepared a generation of K-State students for journalism. The Collegian, where I learned reporting and which I edited, was embroiled in a crusade against using student fees for a new football stadium.
I was a nervous kid with a notebook interviewing an important athletic official after a particularly rough Student Senate meeting. “About your comment —” I began.
“I did not say that,” the official said.
“But we have you recorded on tape,” I said.
He replied: “The tape is wrong,”
It was an early welcome to today’s post-truth world.
Carl Bernstein, of Watergate reporting fame, defined journalism as finding the most accurate version of truth available at the moment. That was always a challenging task.
Finding truth in today’s facts-are-wrong political environment may be impossible unless journalism finds a new way forward.
These are extraordinary times. Corporate broadcast entities relinquish their right to free speech just to gain approval for big business deals. Shari Redstone’s sell-out of CBS to seal a Skydance deal is a prime example, as is NBC’s corporate owner Comcast’s donation to President Trump’s ballroom project.
Corporate-owned news organizations settle frivolous lawsuits instead of defending our vital free press. On the print side, corporate newspaper owners put their balance sheet first, readers second. When nearly seven million people participated in the No Kings protests, it barely made the front page of The New York Times.
The concentration of media and a hodgepodge of regulation have made it much easier for government to blackmail media outlets into airing and printing only what the government wants. New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court case that has been the primary protection for media holding public officials accountable, likely would not have been handed down today.
Journalism educators and journalists have not adapted to this new environment. Speaking truth to power and casting light into darkness has been the motto of the press.
Today, that is no longer enough.
I once heard the publisher of a storied national newspaper claim the press has no stake in elections, no stake in governmental or political debates. He also said reporters should be so neutral as to not vote.
The free press exists only because the First Amendment grants it as a right in a constitutional democracy. When democracy and freedom are attacked, press neutrality equals surrender, threatening the media’s right to exist. Surrender damages every citizen.
Today’s press must fiercely advocate for all freedoms and for democracy itself. This is not a new idea. Early in the 20th Century, an advocacy press pushed cleanup of labor abuses and gave standing to the suffrage movement.
Let’s abandon outdated and unworkable rules. Giving equal time to both sides doesn’t work in our post-truth era. Don’t ask if it’s raining. Look out the window and say so.
Corporate press is fond of the line, “President Trump said, without evidence.” Call a lie what it is — a lie. All positions are not equal. Political reporting fails when politics is treated as a game for the press to total up winners and losers.
Relying on official sources does not work when those official sources don’t tell the truth. Many reporters knew former President Biden’s frail condition and did not report it, resulting in the infamous debate, Biden’s withdrawal from the race and the unusual 2024 election. Today, editors avoid nonsensical elements of President Trump’s speeches and treat them as normal.
Above all, the obligation of fairness should be to news readers and viewers first, sources second.
Democracy is not a partisan issue. It should not be treated as partisan by the news media.
When an administration or any public figure attacks free speech and tries to destroy the government and cultural entities that serve as America’s foundation, the press must speak, act and lead — in aggressive news coverage as well as in editorials. There are not two sides in this.
Marty Baron, former editor of The Washington Post, put it this way: “I think it’s very important that the press explains just how extraordinary this is and how out of the norm it is, and how unconstitutional it is, and how undemocratic it all is.”
Trump and his allies have filed frivolous lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and will continue to do so. The goal is to intimidate the press and to make editors fearful of being sued.
Editors and publishers must push back, as The New York Times did when sued in September: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
Kansas journalists aggressively pushed back against attacks on free press rights in Marion, winning important victories. The same energy is sorely needed nationally to preserve all our rights.
We need to pay more attention to nonprofit media, free of government and corporate profit constraints. We already have models for that in ProPublica, which revealed ethics lapses of the Supreme Court. Here at home, the Kansas Reflector and its national group of state reporting affiliates have done a great job as statehouse reporting staffs have been hollowed out.
There are new and promising independent sources of news, as established reporters and news influencers flock to Substack, podcasts and video, and find new uses for social media. Legacy media, facing its ongoing legitimacy crisis, would do well to pay attention. The rest of us should encourage the innovation.
These issues affect us all, and the ramifications are local as well as national, with democracy in the balance. Ordinary people in Kansas have been fired from their jobs because of organized intimidation against their speech. Others have been threatened — not just entertainers like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.
It falls to every generation to defend our freedoms, and a free press is citizens’ sword in that fight. As Susan Edgerley, member of the Kansas Hall of Fame and formerly of The New York Times, wrote: “For generations we let ourselves off the hook with false equivalency, and what we called balance. Today calls for deeper, harder thinking.”
Our freedom depends on it.
This column was adapted from remarks delivered at the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Nov. 13.
Jean Folkerts served as interim director at the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism at Kansas State University and is a member of the Kansas Press Association’s hall of fame. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.