There must be 50 ways: Participating in democracy #33: Be a journalist

"Democracy dies in darkness" is the motto of the Washington Post, which has transmogrified from a brave calling to uphold the vaunted American free press to a mockery of itself under the ownership of multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos. Indeed, as Post columnist for many years Dana Milbank referred to it in an interview on Al Franken's podcast, "as the paper disintegrates around me." 

This allusion of Milbank's derived from the buck-naked pandering that Bezos made to Trump and to his fellow billionaires with several massive conflict-of-interest gestures, including ordering that a cartoon satirizing the obeisance of billionaires to Trump as soon as Trump won the 2024 election, but also including a massive "donation" Bezos made to Trump's inaugural ceremonies. 

Still, as a product myself of "J-school," I know from direct experience that both undergraduates and graduate students in journalism are taught excellent journalistic ethics and many hold onto those principles throughout their careers. 

Journalists engage in democracy in many ways. 

·       Both editors and reporters engage in gatekeeping, that is, choosing what topics to cover, what experts and laypeople to interview, which data to cite, and other important choices before developing the frame and content, during that development, and at the final stages of completion and release.

·       Journalists who choose to risk their careers, their access, their reputations, and even their family's well-being may decide to investigate people and scenarios that may bear directly on democracy, on politics, and even on history. Investigative journalism is, arguably, the bedrock task of the most robust and rigorous reporters. 

·       Commentaries by journalists on the opinion side of journalism can persuade electorates to vote in certain ways. 

America was founded in no small part on, and because of, the free press. This is unique in the world. Despite all other flaws in our troubled democracy, a free press is not guaranteed constitutionally in any other nation on Earth. Keeping our journalists free is engaging in democracy.