I have learned many valuable lessons in life from watching Monday Night Football. I learned about team, dedication, vanity, and defeat. I rooted for underdogs and hopeless cases; I had to because I was a Seahawks and Bills fan. One lesson has resonated with me stronger than most. One night, game and teams forgotten, I remember an announcer quoting Murray Kempton, “A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.” After hearing those words I knew I did not want to be a critic. I never wanted to be the man who puffed himself up by lowering those around him. I wanted to be the guy on the battlefield—I have been the guy on the battlefield.
Times change, my battlefield days are at a close and my family days are just beginning. I too must change with the times. I am, with the help of academia and professors, changing my intellect from reaction to critical reasoning. I am learning to be a critical thinker. It is in this light that I write a criticism of the Clackamas Print. Not as someone shooting the wounded for kicks, but as someone who sees that the paper could be much more than it is.
My complaint starts in the year 1791, December 15th to be exact. It is the date the first ten amendments to the US Constitution were ratified. It was the birth date of the Bill of Rights. It is also where any discussion on modern American journalism must start. The famous First Amendment is very unique: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The amendment protects only one industry out of the entire vast American economy, the press.
The founding statesmen of our country did not protect the press on a whim, nor did they do it out of a corrupt self interest. No, they did it because of complex philosophical and legal reasoning. Alexis De Tocqueville, a French observer of the American experiment, wrote about his nine month journey across America in 1831. His understanding of the importance of free press is very noteworthy. He wrote, “In a country where the doctrine of the sovereignty of people obviously holds, censorship is not simply a danger; even more it is an enormous absurdity.” The free press, like voting, private property, and market economics is fundamental to a republic; take one away and you are no longer in a free republic. Again Tocqueville explains:
In certain nations who claim to be free, any agents of the government may violate the laws with impunity and the constitution of the country gives no power of judicial redress to the victims. In such a nation the independence of the press must not be considered one of the guarantees but the only guarantee remaining for the freedom and safety of their citizens.
The idea that the press is more than just an industry, that it is in fact a protector of freedom—even more, a protector of the citizen—is at the heart of my complaint and disappointment with the Clackamas Print. The Print has forgotten why it is protected by the US Constitution.
The federal government cannot censor the Print, but the Print, whether intentionally or unintentionally, has in essence censored itself. An example of this is the article “Tuition Increase Predicted to Turn Away Returning Students,” by Brain Baldwin. Again, I write this not as an attack on the work of Mr. Baldwin but as a necessary complaint. The article deals with the raise in tuition voted on by the school board. It is almost fatalistic in its acceptance of the decision to increase tuition. The article reports that the board was forced to raise tuition because of a drop in state funding, propounding a view of the situation as given by members of the school board and members of the ASG. This is classic run-to-authority reporting. You should ask yourself if you are getting the whole story.
The opinion article by Annemarie Schulte entitled “Rising Tuition Costs Continue to Cause Anxiety for Students” takes us one step further down the slippery slope. The article starts nicely by saying that knowledge is power, but then Schulte somehow spends the rest of the article bemoaning the cost of tuition without ever offering any fix or even knowledge of the causes. The article vaguely blames the economy and asks the question why tuition always seems to go up but gives no answers. Schulte even goes so far as to say that fewer students are being admitted, which is factually not true. But the real blunder is this: why doesn’t either article ask the obvious question? How is the school spending all the money and why does it always seem to need more?
I did a quick and simple Google search to find the Schools proposed budget for 2010-2011. It is a treasure trove of financial foolishness and overspending. One graph clearly illustrates how Clackamas has continually overspent the state average for community college to educate students. Another telling section of the budget shows that the school is one hundred and twenty three million dollars in debt. A little investigative journalism on my part and you have a very different picture than the one the school board wants you to see, or consequently, what you find in the Print. I don’t share Schulte’s anxiety from feeling at the mercy of forces I can’t control or understand. It’s all there in black and white and red, mostly red. The current budget crisis has as much to do with a history of fiscal irresponsibility as it does with the current funding shortage. We are only short because we overspend and overgrow. This is the story the Print completely missed.
The tuition debate was the best chance for the Print to stand and defend its readers, to cry out against the tuition increase by promulgating the real facts of the matter; sadly the opportunity was lost. Some might argue that the Print should be objective and not take sides, but this is easily refuted. Objectivity in the face of injustice is no virtue. An objective industry needs no special protection in the Constitution. The press is not privileged without reason; it has a moral responsibility to its readers. It must be the champion of justice and truth for it readers. The Print, unintentionally or intentionally, did end up choosing sides in the debate. It did so by reporting only the words of the board members or others working for the school. It chose the school’s view at the expense of the students. Where was the Print when we needed its voice? It was justifying the tuition raise by censoring out important bits of the truth when it failed to report them. The battle was lost; the tuition went up.
The battle may have been lost but the struggle remains. There are other stories to write, and other injustices to right. If anything needs a good looking over, it is the ASG. Why do the ASG students never take a class on governing and then get a trip to Washington? Why does someone running on a “green” platform plaster every flat surface on campus with posters, thus destroying the natural beauty of the school? Just who gets those scholarships and how? The Print needs to remember why the press is so important to a healthy society. It needs to get its hands dirty and kick over some rocks.
I started this post not wanting to be a critic, and end with the same intention. No one admires the man that sits on the sidelines while there’s work to be done. This fall I plan to add my pen to the Clackamas Print. I want to be protected by the First Amendment as I challenge injustice. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. I have used the sword and found it lacking. It is time I use a pen, not to shoot the wounded, but to help fight for the common good. After all, Murray Kempton—he was a journalist.
