Is this really what the enemy looks like?
Climbing creaky stairs in old town halls for 7 p.m. meetings. Sitting on folding chairs for hours, sometimes the only people in the room other than the town officials. Writing stories that same night and sending them to editors who are also working late at night.
Sitting in court, rushing off to car and plane crashes, listening to grieving families, sifting through masses of government documents. Checking facts, calling people back, checking facts again. Shooting video, taking pictures, tweeting, posting online. Covering sports and music and the joyful parts of life, along with the tragedies.
Then, at the end of the workday, heading out to beat-up Honda Civics littered with McDonald’s napkins, driving home and trying to mollify their families for having missed the family dinner or the soccer game. Again. Because, you know, it was a big story
That’s the life of your typical journalist — the “enemy of the American people,” in the words of our self-serving and misguided commander in chief.
The enemy? Really? The president wants you to believe that we live to tear others down, to mangle the truth. The reality of daily journalism, the journalism that makes a difference, is that it is mainly about showing up, about listening.
It’s not about tearing anyone down, and it’s not about the money. It’s because words matter, truth matters. Because a story can change a life.
The Courant’s recent story about homeless college students moved a Hartford Hospital executive to reach out to one and offer her a job. The student had been attending community college while crashing where she could, often going hungry. We uncovered frightening stories about patient abuse at a psychiatric hospital that led the state to arrest those responsible. Want to know which of the candidates’ politics most closely line up with yours? Courant journalists put together that information. And then worked late into the night Tuesday to get out the results.
Reporters at The Courant write about seniors in probate court whose savings are at risk and about how leaders need to do more to help hundreds, maybe thousands of residents faced with crumbling foundations. We kept telling the story of tenants in Hartford living in substandard apartments until the federal government stepped in and agreed to help them find new places to live. We’re at high school football games, at zoning hearings and the latest show so that we can help you decide if it’s worth going.
And when the unthinkable happens and 6-year-olds are gunned down at school, we wrestle with our own shock and grief while telling a stunned state the story.
Doesn’t sound like the nefarious work of enemies of the American people. Sounds like people who care about the community where they own homes, pay taxes, send their kids to school. Who believe, simply, that truth can help us all lead better lives.
Journalists here at The Courant and at newspapers across the nation spend much of their waking hours trying to find out the truth, to demystify this complex world for readers, or just to chronicle the joys and sorrows of life around us — not to peddle what President Trump refers to as “fake news.” Do we get it wrong at times? Yes, and when we do, we go to great lengths to set it right.
Public officials are sometimes unnerved by what we do. Some people in power don’t like being questioned. They’d prefer to silence the questioners. But most of them — on some level — appreciate that the press plays an important role in the tricky balancing act that makes our democracy work. When President Trump brands the media as “the enemy of the people,” that balance is threatened. Our democracy is threatened.
Our Founding Fathers didn’t think the media was the enemy of the people. They thought the press served people by holding power to account. And so the founders told Congress, in the very First Amendment to the Constitution, that it couldn’t mess with press freedom.
Connecticut’s early political leaders felt the same. The Connecticut Constitution warns that “no law shall ever be passed to curtail or restrain the liberty of speech or of the press.” And when The Courant’s paper mill burned down in 1778, the Connecticut Assembly thought the newspaper was so essential that it raised money for a new mill.
Americans embrace their right to free speech. The press amplifies and defends that right. We’ll even defend the president’s right to express his criticism of our work. We will also never shirk from rooting out lies and deception in favor of well-researched facts that inform and strengthen us all.
Editor’s note: The Hartford Courant joins newspapers from around the country today to reaffirm that the press is not the enemy of the American people. The Boston Globe initiated the project, and more than 200 newspapers are participating.
