We live in what many of us understand is a dangerous moment for press freedom. Our own country’s government is as hostile to independent journalism as it has been in more than two centuries — at the very moment that the business of journalism is in its toughest shape in modern times. There is lots of speculation, some of it off-target, but not all — of a loss of trust in our work. But this week I want to talk about a deeper problem, one that may lie close to the root of these others.
What values are really shared?
The problem can be summed up this way: We often assume in our rhetoric, and I think in our daily lives, that the value of a free press enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment is, or until very recently was, a universal value. For some segments of our society, especially those who feel generally secure in their lives, that is probably true. But for many of our fellow citizens, it is not true, and may never have been.
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