Editorial: Standing up for all our freedoms

Newspapers play a vital role in communities across America, and to raise awareness about the service our industry plays, October 8-12 is dedicated as National Newspaper Week. It is a time when papers across this great nation will remind their readers about what newspapers do and about the rights that we enjoy and help to protect.

For any free society, two things are vitally important – free speech and a free press. While those are two separate freedoms, they go hand in hand, and one really can’t exist without the other. If there is no freedom of speech (or expression), then it really doesn’t matter if you can publish freely. And likewise, if there is no way to disseminate ideas (i.e. via the press), then free speech is pretty much limited to what you can say while standing on a soapbox on the sidewalk.

Newspapers understand the value of the freedom they enjoy, and by and large newspaper men and women use that freedom to not only make a living but also to keep an eye on government and generally make sure that We the People are as informed as we possibly can be.

There are other members of “the media,” namely radio and television stations, which also enjoy many of the rights and responsibilities of “the press,” but there is a major difference. Those outlets are regulated to some degree by the federal government. Since they use the public airwaves, they are compelled to follow the guidelines of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which can sometimes act as a bit of a leash on their freedom.

Newspapers by comparison have pretty much unrestricted freedom to publish as they see fit. Ultimately, the decision to run or not run an article, a photo, or an ad, in our case, comes down to one person – your humble editor. In broad strokes, many community newspapers – whether they realize it or not – follow the rule set down by the longtime editor of the Perryton Herald, Harold Hudson. That rule is simply this: “If I want it run when I want to run it and edited as I see fit, it’s news. If you want to run it the way you want to and when you want to, then it’s an ad and you pay for it.”

The Clarendon Enterprise does its level best to keep its eye on local governments and report the news to you as accurately and fairly as possible. Sometimes we fall short, but it’s not for lack of trying. We try very hard to keep bias out of our news reporting (although we admittedly show some favoritism to the Broncos, the Owls, and the Bulldogs). When this newspaper has an opinion, it’s expressed right here with my name on it and on the page labeled “Opinion.” Other opinions expressed by Fred Gray or other guest columnists are those of the authors and may – or may not – be shared by this newspaper.

We welcome Letters to the Editor as a mean to further public debate, but again those thoughts are those of the authors, and they must conform to a few guidelines that we set down regarding length and identification and may be subject to editing for style, grammar, and length. Sometimes we choose not to run a letter for various reasons. That’s my prerogative since I own the paper.

If people especially want a forum for their thoughts and we don’t feel it fits our criteria for a letter, we sometimes allow them to buy an ad to express their view. Again, their viewpoint is their own; they have a right to it; and if someone doesn’t like it, they can send us a letter.

I think I can count on one hand the number of times that we have just outright refused to print something for someone. Usually, we try to err on the side of letting people express their opinions.

Not everyone agrees with this philosophy. To some people, viewpoints that are not politically correct should be squashed and banished. They never want anyone to be offended, and to those ends they attempt to intimidate or stifle anyone who disagrees with them.

It’s easy to defend free speech and free expression when you agree with someone. It’s easy to say someone has the right to put crosses and “the end is near” signs up and down our highway. But how ready would people be to support Islamic verses posted along the same highway. Would our community support statues of Buddha around our town?

Defending free speech means you have to stand up for rights of even those who express views you hate. The pornographer and the flag burner have as much right to free speech as the preacher and the poet, and defending the rights of all those people is not always an easy thing. If we are not all free, then none of us is free.

As newspapers, we have a duty to protect the rights of free speech and a free press. It is not always easy or popular, but it is essential if Liberty is to endure. And if you don’t like it, you are welcome to pen a well thought out letter, sign your name and address to it, and mail it to us. But don’t hide in the darkness behind the anonymity of the Internet or the telephone. Stand up in public for what you believe. We do.