The Media Blame Game

An opinion piece by Len Niehoff in the Detroit News articulates much of what I've been thinking the last several years as it relates to blaming journalists for the ills of society. While he uses the arrests and physical harm of journalists in the Black Lives Matter movement to highlight recent events, Len also points out that the United States has slowly become a more hostile place for journalists. In fact, he points out that the organization "Reporters Without Borders" now ranks the United States as 45th out of 180 countries for press freedoms.  This is astonishing, considering the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects several basic freedoms, including freedom of the press. The framers of the amendment understood that the public's right to know what is going on in their world is part of what sustains a democracy. Without it, authoritarian governments or ways of thinking prosper. I encourage you to read Len's piece and dive into the Reporters Without Borders press freedom study. These are also issues we discuss in both Introduction to Mass Communication and Beginning Newswriting, courses I teach at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.