With newspaper readership and circulation continuing to drop, more and more local newspapers are being forced out of business. However, as a recent poll by the Pew Research Center indicates: “Many of those who say the closing of the local paper wouldn’t make much, if any, difference in their communities note that there are other news sources available.”
Young people, in particular, are more inclined to get their news from the internet. According to Pew, only 27 percent of those born after 1976 read newspapers, as opposed to 55 percent of those born prior to 1946. One person who believes the closure of the local paper would make no difference to civic life stated: “There are other forms of communication that are more important and easier to follow. I either go to television or turn on the radio in my car.”
There are, however, serious problems with this line of thinking.
First, anyone who relies exclusively on television for knowledge of the world is making a serious mistake. TV news networks, having fallen prey to the demands of a celebrity-obsessed and entertainment-driven culture, provide viewers with what they want to see, rather than what is newsworthy.
Second, the emergence of the corporate media has ensured that a handful of corporations now control most of the media industry and, thus, the information dished out to the public by the national media.
Finally, there are very important things happening at the local level of government and community life that national newspapers, television news and online news do not — and cannot — cover. Local newspapers tell us what’s going on in our local councils of government, in our schools, on our streets.
The basic mission of the media is to serve as a check on the government. That is why the freedom of the press is such an integral part of our First Amendment. Our founders understood the vital importance of the press in maintaining an educated citizenry and a transparent government. However, even freedom of the press will not make much of a difference if there are no local newspapers keeping watch over what’s happening in our own back yards.
Local newspapers are the clarion call of democracy. “The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people,” wrote French historian Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, one of the definitive works on early America. Tocqueville understood that governmental power flows up from our local towns, cities and counties — that’s where democracy happens. Hence, the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words: “We, the people.”
However, we’ve been deceived into believing that the most important governmental matters are housed in Washington, DC. In truth, the real government, the one that Abraham Lincoln spoke of as being a government of the people, by the people and for the people, is housed in small towns across this country. That’s where democracy is being played out on an everyday basis.
Unfortunately, in subscribing to the false notion that national news are somehow more relevant than local news, we have mistakenly bought into the idea that what the talking heads in Washington, DC, have to say is more important than the dialogue taking place between average Americans and their representatives at the local level.
That’s where we’re failing in our democracy today. The founders did not establish a national government. Rather, America was intended to be a conglomeration of small governments, not one big government. In this way, the cities, towns and counties were to be the basis of American democracy. As Tocqueville wrote about early America, “every village forms a sort of republic accustomed to conduct its own affairs.”
This idea is at the heart of federalism. The founders would have looked upon the huge national machine that exists in Washington, DC, today and its claim of total sovereignty as a totalitarian horror.
The truly literate and involved American should be reading the local newspaper. Weekly newspapers and the internet are also vital to maintaining an educated citizenry. We must ensure that they continue to flourish because they are all important resources for maintaining a healthy democracy.
And you need to do your part, as well. Subscribe to your local newspaper. Read it so you’ll know what’s happening in your community. And when you disagree, let your local politicians know — even if it is with a picket sign in hand.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
