Area journals and journalists not ‘enemies of the American people’

At least one former president, and Virginia native, knew the value of an independent and truth-telling media in the preservation of democratically-based systems of government.

Today, I picked up the daily newspaper, read the headlines, and thought how proud I was of myself, a professional journalist for almost 70 years.  I am not, and neither were my journalism colleagues of yesteryear and today, “enemies of the American people” – OR an enemy of the people of the three countries in which I’ve plied my now dubious — according to President Trump – trade.

I was old enough post-World War II to recognize what happened when an independent press was muzzled under some of history’s worst tyrants: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and later Mao Tse Tung.  Being branded an “enemy of the people” during their eras brought at best suspicion and stigma, at worst hard labor in prison camps or death – the words of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

I am as proud today, writing for Front Royal’s online newspaper, as I was when, as a 16-year-old “cub” reporter, I began work at my hometown newspaper in the north of England where my editor’s first words were: “Write the truth and double source your information.”

The people I worked with on newspapers in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States did that, and continue to do so, on this newspaper and other newspapers that cover the Northern Shenandoah Valley.  Our individual politics may differ, but when we write our stories, my observations tell me we keep truth and objectivity foremost in our minds.  The three countries I’ve worked in happen to be the greatest democratically-based systems of government in the world today.  I like to think the press helped them all to achieve those heights.

It was Virginia’s own Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence, who commented, “If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without a free press or a free press without a government, I would prefer the latter.”

Yes, we are inquisitive and often ask awkward questions.  None more so than my colleague, Roger Bianchini, whose reputation for local investigative reporting is well known and not always welcome.  But, at the end of the day, his quest for truth is more often welcomed than shunned and our town and county are the better for it.  An investigator for the people he may be; an enemy of the people he is not.

That is not to say that our politicians, and President Trump for that matter, should not take exception to an article.  They would, I’m sure, prefer upbeat stories making them look like heroes.  But, as one of my former colleagues at The Associated Press recently wrote, “the truth is that it is not the job of reporters to make everyone happy; it is the job of reporters to tell the truth.”

This caused me to reflect on the loss of my best friend in the AP who received a shot through the head while covering the Vietnam conflict and died back home in America as a result of one of the most controversial wars in U.S. history.  May God rest the soul of my buddy, Bill Barton of Mississippi who passed in 1972.  He was just one of hundreds of journalists who through the years have given their lives while writing the truth, and in those days of ‘Nam, the truth was forever ugly.

In a conversation with our publisher, Mike McCool, during the early days of this online newspaper, I learned that what he expects of his writers harkened me back to my editor back in 1949 who exhorted me to always “write the truth.”

It is a privilege to write and report for the Royal Examiner and my public, our public, may be assured that we are not the enemy.

We are just a small bulwark of our democracy, the greatest democratic society in the world which we will continue to strive to keep that way.