Never has a Free Press been of More Need than it is Right Now

    Start underscoring those quotes on the importance of a free press.

   "Our liberty depends on freedom of the press. and that cannot be limited without being lost." -- Thomas Jefferson

   Our nation never has been so in need of the press as it is now. Truth has never been so assailed. In the very day when newspapers are folding, the need for them cries the loudest.

   We live in a day of the campaign flyer. Politicians pay thousands to tell their lies. A hit piece arrives in the mail, and nothing stands to defend against it. We need the newspaper.

   The newspaper -- if it were operating as it needs to -- would step in and scream the truth. No story would be more important than the one debunking the lies of campaign hit piece. But, it is not so these days. The press has so many other things to write about.

   I think of the Ben McAdams/Burgess Owens race for Congress, the millions of dollars being tossed by each side, the false accusations, the misleading statements. Where the press? So much we need the press to be stepping in each day, front page and center, reporting what the mailers from the current day said -- and telling why they are out-of-line, irresponsible, false or misleading.

   Pepper the news articles with quotes decrying the dishonesty of the mailers, quotes demanding that we do better than this. 

   These news articles are essential. Truth will not be told without them. Leave it to the mailers to fight it out, and one untruth will only be met with another. One upmanship. An arms war. The escalation of hatred and deceit. 

   Deceit is on fertile ground when that ground is strewn with money. Just like horse manure makes good fertilizer, so does money. Lies grow where money feeds them. If the truth is to be told, then, it must rely on a source that doesn't yield to money, that refuses to be dictated to by riches.

   That would be the press, the free press. We need it now more than ever.