I’m always called to pause and think at this time of year.
I think about what freedom means. I wonder about our Founding Fathers – Adams, Jefferson, Washington and their contemporaries.
What was going through their minds? Did they have even the spark of an idea of what their actions would mean to future generations? Did they pause and think about the import of their every decision, how we would eventually hang on their every word?
Several years ago, while working at a newspaper in northeast Iowa – one of the first newspapers I worked at – I wrote a column, similar to this one, positing those same Founding Fathers, spinning in their graves at what the country they planted the seed for had become.
The growth of intolerance, of open contempt for anyone who didn’t fit into someone’s little mold of “normal” has continued, even to this day. The ideal that anyone who disagrees with your position, your outlook, your beliefs, is inherently evil has gained an even firmer foothold in modern-day society.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the open hatred evidenced right now against the media. True, sometimes we get it wrong. And the recent resignation of three CNN staffers related to their failures to properly source a story on the current administration is proof, not in support of claims the media is corrupt, but of the fact the self-imposed system of checks-and-balances which is the hallmark of modern-day journalism works.
I read an interesting piece in Politico the other day, talking about just this topic. Journalists, you see, are first and foremost human. And humans are fallible.
Sometimes, we get it wrong. It’s as simple as that. What we also do, however – and this is something the “alt-media” with their “alternative facts” don’t do – is generally admit when we’re wrong and work very hard to correct our errors.
In the June 29 Politico piece, senior media writer Jack Shafer noted: “In hindsight, it’s easy to say CNN shouldn’t have gone with such a flimsy, improperly vetted story. Unfortunately, journalism isn’t a hindsight business. Journalism happens in real time, against a deadline clock, and in a competitive atmosphere. Only ombudsmen, press critics and libel attorneys get to second-guess what they do.”
Journalism today, in all its forms, is a business. And it’s a very competitive business at that. We’re competing every day for your eyes, your ears. And, not to put too fine a point on the matter, the payoff for us is that, while those eyes and ears are reading, listening to or watching our publications and broadcasts, they’re also being exposed to the people who pay our bills: the advertisers.
As a consumer, if we don’t provide the information in a timely manner, you’ll go somewhere else, to another source that does get the news out there first. But first isn’t always best. And it isn’t always right.
Now a household word, the Washington Post duo of Woodward and Bernstein, on their way to exposing corruption at the highest seats of power in America, made plenty of mistakes. But they persevered and, eventually, many of those who claimed they were fabricating their stories, making up facts or even outright lying were the ones proven wrong.
Consider, as you celebrate our Independence Day, the institutions that make those freedoms possible.