Freedom of the Press Is Democracy. So What Happens When It's Gone?

Note: This piece was written just before this morning’s U.S. decision to claw back funding from public broadcasting. While that move directly impacts Americans, it’s a flashing warning light for Canadians too. Much of our media is already U.S.-owned or heavily influenced, and public broadcasting, here and there, is one of the last remaining tools for independent journalism and cultural integrity.

Walter Cronkite once said, “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.” Let those words sink in. Not “a part of.” Not “nice to have.” It is democracy. And right now, that democracy is on life support.

I spend all of my days now trying to gather my thoughts, too many thoughts, really, all swirling around one question: how the hell did we get here? I look at the state of the media, the state of our politics, the slow-cooked erosion of journalistic freedom, and I’m trying to understand why more people aren’t sounding the alarm. Or maybe they are. Maybe we’re just not hearing them anymore over the white noise of distraction and denial.

Stephen Colbert’s show was cancelled yesterday. And sure, not everyone loves his flavor of commentary, he wasn’t for everyone. But for many, he was the voice that helped them laugh when things felt unfunny, made them think without preaching, and reminded us that satire has always been a form of protest. Satire, like journalism, only survives when the powerful allow it to. When someone at the top decides it no longer serves their interests, it disappears, presented as a programming change, but no less political in consequence.

I grew up in a household where the newspaper was sacred. I watched my father, every single day with that great big broadsheet stretched out in front of him like a shield and a sword. He didn’t just read it. He used it, to understand the world, to prepare for conversation, to teach me that knowledge was the first defense against ignorance. He believed that if I could read the stock market page, the baseball scores, the opinion section, even the classifieds (some I was definitely not interested in), then I’d be able to speak to anyone about anything, at least with some basic context. That was the point: not that I would learn everything from the paper, but that I’d be inspired to keep learning. That foundation of curiosity was the real education. If something piqued my interest, I was expected to go deeper. And I did.

And yet in another breaking news twist, the Wall Street Journal now claims to have a copy of a letter Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein, one they’ve described as salacious in tone. That letter has sparked outrage, threats of lawsuits, and a fuming Donald Trump, who reportedly demanded Rupert Murdoch suppress its release. Murdoch, apparently, didn’t listen.

So now the question becomes: who’s controlling who? We used to worry about governments controlling the press. That was the red flag, right? Censorship. State media. Propaganda. But now it’s murkier, and maybe more dangerous. Because what happens when it’s billionaires controlling the press and the government? Or worse, when the lines blur so completely that you can’t tell who’s pulling the strings? Is it Murdoch controlling governments through headlines? Or is it governments using billionaire-owned media as their megaphone? When one feels slighted, can they take the other down with a few strategic leaks or lawsuits? Where exactly is the power wielded, and more importantly, who’s protecting the public interest in that game?

And here in Canada, we’re not immune. Most of our major newspapers are owned or influenced by American corporations. The rest lean heavily to the right, propped up by some provincial flirts with censorship through court-defying legislation and thinly veiled book bans. We criticize “state media” in Russia or China while pretending that corporate media, aligned with political interests, is somehow different. It isn’t.

We have been warned by leaders and scholars. Thomas Jefferson warned us: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Benjamin Franklin said: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” John F. Kennedy said: “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

That’s not just historical hindsight. That’s prophecy. And it’s happening now.

I'm not a journalist. What I write is opinion, informed by facts and shaped by lived experience. I try to get it right, but I’m not claiming neutrality. But I do know this: journalism used to mean something. It meant truth-seeking. It meant accountability. Now it often means survival in a market of clicks, outrage, and algorithms.

And if we’re honest, Donald Trump played a masterful role in normalizing the attack on truth. He stood at podiums and mocked reporters to their faces especially those who asked the hard questions. And we winced, or we looked away. But we didn’t stop him. And now that brazenness has metastasized. Now it's expected. And now we are watching American democracy slide into something much darker, much faster, than any of us thought possible.

We’re not just consuming the news anymore, we’re watching the news about the news. Meta-media. Layers of spin. Stories about stories. Satirists being silenced. Journalists being discredited. And citizens being told: don’t worry, we’ll tell you what to think.

No. I want to think for myself. I want to know that the press is allowed to press. I want to know that a government afraid of free speech is still seen as a threat and not just south of the border. Because when the freedom to say it disappears, the freedom to be disappears right behind it.

Walter Cronkite’s words still echo: “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.” That’s where we begin. And that’s where we end

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