Nostalgia
has set in. It started earlier this year when I
saw a movie about a shop in San Francisco that repaired
and sold old typewriters. This week I saw The
Post. I could almost smell the printer’s
ink. And the longing I felt for renewed respect
for what the press does for our democracy was palpable.
Then
only a few days later I received a copy of a book
called Stop the Press: How the Mormon Church
Tried to Silence the Salt Lake Tribune by
an old pal of mine in every sense of the word—James
W. Ure. We both started learning our craft as
“reporters” for our high school newspaper,
The Thunderbolt, an apt name for a bunch of young
muckraking journalism apprentices bent on making
out school (the world, to us!) a better place.
It happened to be nonfiction published by Prometheus
about the newspaper that gave me my first professional
job in journalism, The Salt Lake Tribune.
Its crack marketing department had dubbed it “A
Great Pulitzer Prize Winning Newspaper”
for its coverage of a devastating earthquake in
Alaska in the 1950s. Jim’s book is about,
in spite of the US separation of church and state,
tried to silence its voice which was probably
the only alternative voice in the State of Utah—a
contrarian voice in a state where conservatism
ruled and the newspaper they own, The Deseret
News, is under their jurisdiction.
Those
readers who happen to be conservative may think
that is not a problem. Newspapering is a business,
after all, and in a capitalist society, businesses
are competitive. Some win, some lose. If they
aren’t journalists or lawyers or constitutionalists
they may not be familiar with the First Amendment.
However,
I think they should be just as devout about protecting
both power and the freedom of the press as I am,
because all of us are writers. As writers, we
all enjoy the protections of that amendment. We
can choose to write what we want. Put our opinions
in a book or on the web—from academic studies
to erotica if we so choose. We can rant. Do satire
(which I was once told by a British journalists
Americans don’t really understand!). Say
exactly what we think about anyone as long as
they are public figures or can prove that what
we are saying is fact and not libelous. That is
why Michael Wolf’s new book, Fire and
Fury, is supported by its reputable publisher,
Henry Holt. And despite their distribution booboos,
it sold out in its first and second days on bookstores’
shelves. According to Publishes’ Weekly,
it was the “hottest book of the year.”
To their credit, Holt is standing by its author
in spite of the political kerfuffle and printing
as many books and shipping them as fast as they
can to fill their orders for one million books.
If they are smart—will print using digital
presses as well as offset so they miss as few
sales as possible.
Perhaps
the longing I feel for the days when Wolf’s
right to report a story he feels the public should
know can never be universal. But I hope writers
everywhere (and readers who benefit from the choices
available because of this freedom) will stand
up for Michael—and my friend Jim. For their
right to write, so to speak. Regardless of whether
their beliefs—political, religious, or gender-related
may be. Freedom has always been something that
runs both upstream and downstream. When we shut
freedom down, we may suffer when someone who agrees
with us no longer has that right or when the tables
turn and we are the ones being shut down.
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