Independent media are essential to good democratic governance. Adolf Hitler’s minister of armaments, Albert Speer, upon his release from prison in 1966, was asked what lessons he drew from World War II and the related deaths of an estimated 50 million people. He replied that the catastrophe was primarily the result of Germans losing their independent press during the 1930s.
Abraham Lincoln believed so strongly in newspapers and their role in public debate that he owned one in Illinois the year he was elected president in 1860. But even with a guarantee of freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the United States this year is ranked only 45th out of 180 countries in the annual Index of World Press Freedom by Reporters Without Borders.
