I didn’t want the day to go by without a quick note on something that I believe merits everyone’s attention. The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. The Prizes, meant to encourage excellence in the areas of Journalism and Letters, Drama and Music, were first awarded in 1917. The full list of 2018 recipients can be accessed via the link below on the Pulitzer Organization’s website.
http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2018
To be completely transparent, I’ve always paid more attention to the Journalism awards – not so much the Letters, Drama & Music Awards – ironic for someone as passionate about reading as I am and not something I can explain. I do like to review the Journalism Award Winners every year, however, and this year I felt it particularly important to do so.
In a year where the Free Press has been under relentless assault from so many questionable actors of all political persuasions, my request to everyone is that you carve out some measure of your reading time every day and actually spend it with a newspaper. It’s my unshakable belief that if you rely on either the television or social media to get your “news” – you’re getting nothing at all.
I’ve stated in a past post that I find the 24 hour Cable news programs – all of them – to be travesties – delivering entertainment disguised as commentary. They’re not completely fact free but if you limit yourself to only one of these stations – CNN, MSNBC or Fox – I can assure you that you’re not getting a balanced and unbiased version of domestic or world events. I do not know how anyone could still have one iota of faith – after all we’ve come to know about the ability of malicious actors to disseminate inaccurate and / or inflammatory content – in social media as a source of reliable information.
I actually spend a fair amount of time trying to stay informed and , in my humble opinion, the only relatively reliable way to do so on a daily basis is to actually read several – not one – but several newspapers. I subscribe to both the New York Times and the Washington Post and read them every morning before I head in to work. On a daily basis, I also scan the articles pushed out through the websites for NPR, BBC News, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal. Finally, I read the Economist on a weekly basis. There’s enough diversity of thought across all those platforms that so that I feel fairly confident that I can make relatively informed decisions about what’s actually happening in the world.
I’m not looking for truth. I’m looking for information – for fact based reporting – for data points that help me form opinions and make decisions. I’ve become reasonably certain over the course of the last 56 years that this is the only way to get there and I’d encourage everyone to give it a try. It helps.
For those of you who might be curious, here’s the text of the 1st Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There’s a reason the Founders put this one first. It’s meant to provide the most critical fail safe for our Democracy. For the first time in my life – someone who’s always been a true and passionate believer in the principles upon which this country was founded – I worry about it’s durability.