To Mr. Defund: Your sweatshirt is fascist

Critics like him should remember that freedom dies in darkness

The value of media and local journalism was lost on a sunglasses-wearing  pedestrian I passed near St. John Medical Center on a rainy afternoon earlier this month.

A message on his sweatshirt asserted: “Defund media.”

Like the neocons who take their anti-media cue from the likes of Sarah Palin and former president Donald Trump, the man clearly understood nothing about the press and its role in a democracy. (He also misunderstood business: The press is private enterprise and, with a few exceptions like PBS, does not get government funding.)

I’d  have liked to ask Mr. Defund a few questions.

Would he know about the many ethical breaches of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas without the reporting of the independent Pro Publica news organization? The revelations are spurring the high court to finally consider a code of conduct.

Would he have known about the failure of airport security to detect a gun that Longview state Sen. Jeff Wilson (unknowingly, he says) brought aboard an international flight to Hong Kong had it not been reported here and elsewhere? 

Without the recent work of former TDN reporter Rose Lundy,  would her readers in New England know of regulators’ unwillingness to penalize rest home facilities for egregious lapses in care?

Would Mr. Defund have any hope of understanding the local homeless crisis without the work of TDN and this newsletter?

Would local food drives for the needy succeed without local press coverage?

Does he not realize that people who seek and hold public office should expect to be held up to media scrutiny and not kill try to kill the messenger or hold grudges when they’re justifiably made to look bad?

Newspapers and the press in general make communities better in many ways, especially by playing a watchdog role.  A notable 2019 study — Financing dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance — makes this point. (The authors are Pengjie Gao of the University of Notre Dame and Change Lee and Dermot Murphy of University of Illinois at Chicago.)

It found that when newspapers close, municipalities pay more interest to borrow money. They also increase staff and raise taxes. The reason is simple: There is no watchdog, and public discourse suffers  “increased informational friction” without media scrutiny, reporting and refereeing.

Is there bad journalism out there? Of course. But the tonic to bad journalism is more good journalism. It’s not censorship or attempting to cut out the financial underpinning of a private enterprise that works best when it serves the public good.

Without realizing it, Mr. Defund and others who advocate for muzzling the press are supporting autocracy at best and fascism at its worst. 

The first thing any oppressive regime does is silence or seize control of the press. As a lifelong journalist, I’ve always been chilled by accounts of how the Nazis physically destroyed the Munich Post and sent its editors to concentration camps because its had fearlessly reported Hitler’s dark plans for the holocaust and the elimination of representative government. 

Hitler tried to make journalists the enemy of the people, too. One of them was Fritz Gerlich,  editor of the Munich paper Der gerade Weg (The Straight Path). One of Hitler’s fiercest critics, Gerlich was arrested after Hitler came to power and murdered in the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. His ashes were sent to his widow, who apparently first learned of her husband’s death that way. Imagine her horror and sorrow.

As in any profession, there are good, bad, mediocre and dishonest journalists. The vast majority of them work for low pay, put in long hours and endure the criticism of officials and other sources they anger from time to time. Their greatest compensation is the knowledge that their work makes a difference by informing people, even through such basic reports as those explaining why public school teachers are striking or why city water rates are rising. Public service journalism is not just reporting a scandal the scale of Watergate.

Mr. Defund, remember that journalists are not your enemy. Your enemies are those who tell you that we are.

So think a little deeper before you wear that sweatshirt again.