How to Support a Free Press

On our role as citizens in supporting quality information

Then-ABC News anchor Peter Jennings interviews Bill Clinton in New Delhi in March 2000. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons.)

Given the decades-long assault on the news industry, I think it’s time for those of us who seek information to take a step back and reevaluate what a free press is and how we can support it.

I find myself in this weird place where I grew up watching the evening news with Peter Jennings on ABC at dinner, which spurred conversations about the country and the world. The oddity of it is now there is so much information but so little of it is news.

What Happened to the News?

Quite literally, news is new.

This means that what you are consuming has been brought out of the shadows into a new place where you can see it, evaluate it, and react to it as a citizen. Reporting should show us what truth is, put it in context, and show us why it matters.

The problem with most of what is available is that it is derivative. The news happened, and we are reading reactions, increasingly by people with whom we agree.

This is a major problem because we are no longer being challenged, just reinforced.

We see this a lot in comment sections and social media. Instead of pressure-testing the news or opinions, too much of it has the vibe of “you’re bad because I don’t agree with you.” Both Red and Blue believe they are defending Democracy. Those relatively few in the middle just want to avoid the discussions altogether and vote quietly.

Online, we have seen X become the home of the Right and Bluesky the new home of the Left. We’ve opted out of even seeing each other’s content, let alone the news itself.

This is both a reflection and a result of our political polarization. We no longer see ourselves as Americans but people who have strong opinions and associate with those who are on the “right” side of them.

Consensus is weak. Conviction is strong.

We’ve even self-sorted into living communities where we are more likely than not to live near people who agree with us.

News, the reality of what is happening in the public square, is expensive and requires a level of commitment to objective truth that seems almost naïve.

Of the major cable networks, CNN’s audience share is lagging behind both Fox on the Right and MSNBC on the Left. CNN was once the default for understanding what was happening, and that would inform your opinions.

Now we have Left, Right, extreme outlets that do this in reverse, sometimes never ending up with the news itself.

The Problem is Us

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this is a demand-driven problem. It’s on us. If we want our biases to be comforted, we are willing sliding back into the Partisan Press Age.

There is a grand tradition of this going back to the nation’s founding where proto-bloggers like Thomas Jefferson would write under pseudonyms about the Washington administration to attack his future opponent John Adams. The vice president also employed this tactic, of course.

Today, under the guise of authenticity, we have “news influencers” who simply read and react to others who gather the news and then put on a Red or Blue hat POV to connect with their audience.

I think this is not only limiting but inauthentic. Most people hold heterodox views and we shouldn’t be forced into silos. We should be more than that. We should expect more than that in our media diets.

The problem is that we are not asking for more.

We want to spend our valuable time in a cozy sweatshirt, not a tight-fitting muscle shirt that exposes our flabby middle-aged dad bod (okay, that’s me).

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Recommitting to Citizenship

Instead, and this includes yours truly, need to find voices that are reporting news but from other points of view. We cannot pressure test our own views without hearing from and understanding other voices and news we might not like.

- There were reporters who were focusing on Biden’s decline that I avoided, who I should’ve paid more attention to in the moment. Like many, I was shocked by the debate, but others had reported on it long before, and I tuned out.

- I actively ignored reports of the border becoming more problematic because it didn’t fit with my worldview that immigrants are a net-good, when it’s clear that border states are not equipped for the mass incursions.

- I overlooked the reporting of the fall of Afghanistan in part because I couldn’t get myself to engage the sheer humanitarian disaster but also because I had no way of finding out if a female student who was elected to office was okay.

That’s all on me. Maybe you feel this way, too, on these or different issues. The bottom line is we need to be more inquisitive about the news and not simply accept the Blue or Red colored screens we are presented with by our preferred cable talking heads or social media algorithms.

I don’t have the answers on who to watch, read, or listen to for news. But I do know that I am opening my mind to other voices that, frankly, I have ignored because they didn’t fit with my worldview. We live in an unprecedented era of freedom of information and expression.

But we need to heed what Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about ourselves, “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”

We have freedom, but instead of supporting a free press, we are supporting the voices that comfort us. Freedom isn’t free, and neither is a free press. We need to think outside of ourselves and support those who are willing to report the truth and challenge our reality.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.