Bread and Water

Early in his newspaper publishing career, Benjamin Franklin was offered a large amount of money to publish a defamatory and scurrilous article in his popular paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. Someone was seeking Colonial America’s version of zakazukha [pay-for-publish journalism]. 

Franklin writes that he went home, had a dinner of bread and water, slept on the floor and had a similarly humble breakfast. Finding himself none the worse for wear, he refused the money, writing: “Finding I can live in this manner, I have formed a determination never to prostitute my press to the purposes of corruption and abuse of this kind for the sake of gaining a more comfortable existence.”

Franklin’s admirable response was hardly typical of his age or ours. America’s colonial press was notoriously short on journalistic virtues, and objectivity and detachment are hardly the norm, even for modern media outlets. 

So why all the fuss of late about Russia’s less-than-free press – the lead story in this issue? Isn’t all media biased, and isn’t a State-run media fairly common? Yes and yes.

But the fuss is because it is almost impossible to have a free and healthy society without a free press. A free press is often the only check on governments’ and corporations’ innate proclivity to ignore individuals’ rights and interests. Without that check, governments and corporations have a tendency to act in ways that get lots of innocent people hurt or killed.

Without a press shouting at and embarrassing/challenging politicians and CEOs, nothing is safe. Sure, it is messy and loud and there is a lot of tabloid idiocy. But the alternative (particularly when an independent judiciary is also lacking) is rather horrific: e.g., Soviet Russia in 1937... (see page 19)

Consider this: most of what you will read in this issue of this magazine would never have seen the light of day 20 years ago. At that time, this magazine was state-owned, and were it still, we could hardly discuss Chechnya and press freedoms, or mention the names Boris Berezovsky or Alexander Litvinenko (this latter we for now leave to other media to cover, as it is simply too time-sensitive). 

The issue of smoking in Russia (page 51) would also have been treated very differently. For our part, I am not sheepish about declaring our editorial bias on this important issue. Cigarettes are, by some estimates, killing half-a-million Russians a year. It is unconscionable that the Russian government is doing almost nothing to counteract this phenomenon, nothing to curb corporate greed, nothing to truly educate people about the addictiveness or health dangers of smoking. (Disagreement is welcomed on our Letters pages.)

Media bias is not dangerous as long as it is not hidden. 

In fact: the more biases, the better. When a healthy media cacophony is reduced to a monotone chorus of supportive sycophants, when people believe “it is better to have a daughter who is a prostitute than a son who is a journalist,” (page 37), when a major TV anchor declares that “it is not our job to discuss or draw judgments about the actions of our president” (page 39), it is a clear sign that a nation’s press is not free and that its society is not healthy.

Enjoy the issue.