Know any good tyrannies?
If so, then perhaps this column isn’t for you. But if democracy is more your cup of tea – which you could throw into a harbor – perhaps this week should have more meaning in your list of B-holidays.
Oct. 7-13 is National Newspaper Week, and there will likely be no parades. But there should be.
People should be dancing in the streets and toasting the memories of Horace Greeley and Joseph Pulitzer. Large helium balloons in the form of rolled-up issues of The New York Times and The Dallas Morning News ought to be floating down Main Street with confetti falling from above.
Like other unsung “heroes,” there will be no marching bands or celebrations honoring newspapers. But where would America be without its pioneering free press?
Newspapers have been the battleground where civil liberties were championed long before the birth of our nation. The ideas of right to privacy and freedom of speech were heralded in early publications.
Colonial writers, editors and publishers used their presses to defy the crown and defend the belief that men should be able to speak the truth about leaders – or to criticize them.
Take newspapers out of the Revolutionary struggle and how would citizens have been aware of injustices their neighboring colonies suffered? How would they have known of battles waged a day’s ride away? How would they learn of the philosophies and writings of freethinking men who believed in ideals taught in ancient Greece instead of rural farming communities?
If newspapers didn’t matter, then why were editors and printers punished by British troops? Power only fears power.
Even today, when coups attempt to seize control of a city, they always seek control of the media: radio, television and newspapers. Some say the newspaper industry is dying, and it is past its prime. They contend the morning paper is a waste of precious resources and the Internet is all modern people need to stay informed.
Perhaps that may be the case soon, but it is not true yet.
Where would the all-important Internet be without its newspaper cousin? The freedoms the Web surfers and chat room bloggers exercise by critiquing, criticizing, “cracking on” and chewing out others would not exist without its four-color press forerunner.
Maybe it was an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” or perhaps a philosopher or something I heard in a class once. If a society is said to have truly existed and mattered, it will leave behind a record of itself. I believe newspapers are the most honest and thorough account of the history of a people. A blind Burgess Meredith would have likely agreed.
If all the world had to rely on was information presented as electronic blips on a flat-screen monitor as opposed to three-dimensional, ink-smudged, cyan-magenta-yellow-and-black sheets of facts, figures, comics, crosswords, opinions, sports, obituaries and wedding announcements, it would be the worse for it.
I have never seen someone save a print out of a Web page, frame it, point to it and say, “My daughter was on MySpace!”I have seen dozens of clippings with proud parents remarking, “My son made the newspaper!”
The newspaper is a protector of freedom and a record of history of our lives.
Celebrate it.