Editorial | A free world demands a free press

Many graduating seniors are leaving The Pitt News editorial board after the close of this school year. They have spent hours and hours each day following tips and stories, overseeing staffs of student journalists and working to make The Pitt News an ethical and reliable source of both news and opinion for the Pitt community.

After years working as student editors, they have learned a lot about the challenges and importance of a free press — especially in an age where that freedom may be at risk. Each editor has engaged with this newspaper in a very different way, and as such, each editor has learned a very different lesson about what journalism looks like in a free world. 

Giving a voice to the voiceless // Brian Sherry, Managing Editor

I haven’t had the most conventional student journalism career. I spent three years as a sports editor and writer before I jumped head first into covering protests, politics and more in my role as managing editor. But the one thing I loved to do the most throughout my career was to provide those with interesting and powerful stories a platform to share their experiences. From high school football players and up-and-coming racecar drivers to protesters and professors, my favorite part about journalism was giving a voice to the voiceless.

I also believe that this goal of giving a voice to the voiceless is the most important aspect of journalism. There will always be time to cover and talk about the big hitters in our society — the politicians, billionaires and celebrities. But there are eight billion people on this big floating rock, and they all have a story to tell. Journalism can and should be the force that brings those stories to light. 

The right to critique // Thomas Riley, Opinions Editor

As an editor of the opinions desk, I’ve spent a lot of time reading critiques. Our job is not uncommonly a pessimistic one — identifying what’s wrong in the world, how we got to that point, and hopefully, some way to fix it. We’ve criticized the presidential administration, the entertainment industry, a whole swath of corporate entities and even our own University. I have my personal qualms with our current political landscape that I’m glad to make apparent through my columns and alongside the other editors in the weekly editorials, but even if I lived in a world that fit my exact political vision, I hope it would still be rife with critique. 

Criticism holds everyone accountable. A free press allows for opinions that challenge the status quo. If those challenges are valid, they will ideally lead to change for the better, and if they aren’t valid, they will at least demand we reaffirm our trust in the status quo. A free press is not just one that can report objective news but one that can criticize injustice wherever it may be.

Makes the hidden transcript known // Livia LaMarca, Assistant Opinions Editor

The importance of journalism and press freedoms cannot be overstated. In a class I took this year, we read a book by James C. Scott where he discusses the differences between public and hidden transcripts. Public transcripts are things we can see or observe — inaugurations, public speeches or parades. Hidden transcripts are behind closed doors across kitchen tables, discussed over glasses of wine in hushed whispers at the bar, in private Instagram DMs beyond the view of your followers. They are private, unseen by the public. The hidden transcript is how we actually feel, how we actually understand the political world around us. Journalism is the main tool to make the hidden transcripts known, to share opinions and to force the ugly into the light. No one wants to read about the shortcomings of their government, the injustices in their prisons or the violence that takes place behind closed doors. But without free journalism, holding these shortcomings accountable and striving to be better would be next to impossible. 

A free press needs at least a crumb of your trust // Livia Daggett, Copy Chief

Americans don’t trust the news. Many people hate doomscrolling for news on social media, and they’re worried about misinformation, but they also have little faith in traditional media. The journalists trying to reach them, who overwhelmingly come from elite universities, feel like they’re talking to a wall after they spend months interviewing people for a story only to get no readers. 

I don’t want to live in a world where all news comes from billionaire-funded conglomerates, and I also don’t want to get my news from Twitter bots and provocative podcasters. I get the sense that most people agree. If we’re going to build a culture of truly free press, we need a baseline of trust on all sides. 

Newsrooms and journalists must realign their priorities and invest in news that matters to the average person and connect more meaningfully with the people they’re reporting on. Copy editors like me need to make sure our publications’ writing does justice to every reader. 

Readers and viewers, meanwhile, can help build that culture by reading widely, sharing feedback with the people who make their news, accepting that paying for news is better than the alternative, and choosing local — which they already tend to do, where it exists. And when political institutions and powerful people start trying to silence journalists, we’ve all got to recognize it as our problem, too.

That doesn’t mean agreeing with everything you read. Every outlet is inevitably at least a little loyal to some funder or friend, and every journalist has a worldview that shapes their pitches. And because so many journalists are trained on the same materials and to the same standards, they tend to recycle the same charged language and euphemisms while covering the same old beats. 

Journalists need readers to trust them enough to engage with them. Almost every journalist I’ve interacted with in my admittedly limited world genuinely cares about serving the public. They make mistakes and don’t cover everything they probably should, but the majority are trying, and they need you. 

Ultimately, on either side of the page — or screen — is a human being. A free press needs them both.