Times of crisis are difficult, anguishing, and maddening. They are also clarifying. Crises present the people involved with an opportunity to affirm who they are and where they stand. Recent events in Minneapolis and elsewhere reveal a crisis for racial justice that stretches back to the founding of the country.
As faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC), we affirm our commitment to the ideal of racial justice, to doing our part to “narrow the gap,” as former President Barack Obama put it, “between the promise of our ideals and the reality of [our] time.” We will confront our failures in the SJMC, and strive to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment within the School.
Our hearts go out to the people directly affected by the recent violence, and especially to the families of the men and women who have been senselessly killed. We stand in solidarity with the communities whose lives are ravaged by racist violence.
This time of crisis also throws into sharp relief the need for journalism and an informed citizenry. In the midst of the American civil war, perhaps America’s greatest national crisis, President Abraham Lincoln famously affirmed his belief in the American people. “If given the truth,” he said, “they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
But who is to bring the American people the “real facts” about our current crisis, if not journalists? The public cannot readily meet the moment if journalists are not allowed to do their jobs. Yet, in cities around the country, police and protesters are detaining, arresting, pepper spraying, and even hitting journalists who are doing nothing more than striving to give the public the facts. This treatment continues a worrying trend of press harassment in the United States. Where once press freedom in the United States was the envy of the world, according to the World Press Freedom Index, the American press today is at greater risk of violence than 44 other countries around the globe.
As educators entrusted with training the next generation of journalists, we feel compelled by the current crisis to declare where we stand.
We insist that the treatment of journalists we have witnessed in the past few days — journalists attacked in the streets of Washington, D.C., arrested in the streets of Minneapolis, blasted with pepper balls in Louisville — is unacceptable. We write to declare that we support the journalists in these cities and elsewhere who put their lives on the line to bring the public the “real facts.” Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to the values outlined in the First Amendment to our Constitution, values that unequivocally support the freedom of the press as vital to democracy.
We agree with President Lincoln. The American public is more than capable of meeting the challenge of our current crisis. However, for the public to do its job, journalists need to be free to do theirs.
David Ryfe Lillian Martell Travis Vogan
Venise Berry Daniel Lathrop Ann Haugland
Melissa Tully Frank Durham Jenifer Vick
Brian Ekdale Meenakshi Gigi Durham Rachel Young
David Dowling Kevin Ripka Kylah Hedding
Stephen Bloom Charles Munro Kajsa Dalrymple
Don McLeese Sujatha Sosale Tracy Hufford
Heather Spangler Tom Oates