In a world where attacks on media are in the vanguard of assaults on democracy, local media is the final beach head for freedom.
by Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Freedom House has for 50 years been tracking and reporting on democracy’s health across the globe. Since the turn of the millennium, freedom – the group has shown – has been in freefall.
In its 50th anniversary Freedom in the World report released in March, Freedom House finally had good news to share. Following 17 consecutive years of watching democracy in retreat across the world, 2023 offered reason to hope that things were about to get better.
“There were signs during the past year,” wrote the report’s authors, “that the world’s long freedom recession may be bottoming out, which would set the stage for a future recovery.”
Against the background of evidence supporting this optimistic outlook, however, was this chilling finding:
The number of countries and territories receiving the lowest score for media freedom has ballooned from 14 in 2005 to 33 in 2022.* In 2022, free and independent media came under attack in 157 countries and territories worldwide.
The worst perpetrators of media suppression are the obvious – China, Russia, and Iran. Though challenges aren’t limited to there. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that:
More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year, according to CPJ data. By December 23, at least 69 journalists and media workers had been killed since the October 7 start of the conflict. Of those 69, 62 were Palestinian, four Israeli, and three Lebanese.
When we talk about assaults on freedom of the press, we tend to talk in terms of government suppression of media. This is proper, and for this reason we don’t tend to think of the press in the U.S. as facing serious challenges.
But American media does have it challenges, and local media may be the last beach head of a truly free press.
Splintering Media
The press in America doesn’t tend to face the types of challenges our brothers and sisters contend with in more repressive states, but the rhetoric against the media in the U.S. has steadily been building.
To be sure, Donald Trump gets much of the attention for his menacing threats to undermine the American press. But the reality is, both national and local media in the U.S. have been under attack for over two decades by readers – especially conservative ones. Their complaints that media tack left are not without merit.
A recent report in the Economist tracked the left-lean of media from 2017 to 2022 and concluded:
We find that there is indeed an affinity between the media and the left, because journalists tend to prefer the language used by Democratic lawmakers. Moreover, this disparity has grown since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency. As a result, the number of media sources covering politics in balanced language has dwindled.
FOX News started in 1996 out of frustration with media that its founders and followers felt were not giving conservative positions a fair shake. And a number of high-profile legacy media members came aboard to join the movement. In the decades since, conservatives have become mass consumers of FOX News and conservative talk-radio.
Of course, FOX, which launched under the mantra that it offered “fair and balanced” coverage, was as guilty of partisanship as the media it criticized.
Rather than responding by tempering its own bias, however, progressives have adopted FOX-News-type-parallel institutions.
So today we have MSNBC running 24/7, with no more neutrality in its reporting and commentary than that offered by FOX.
Consequently, our media-consumption habits have splintered, and we no longer have national debates around shared reporting, but siloed screaming matches over whose “facts” are better.
And newsrooms, once the centers for sparking national discussion, have become the centers of our national ire.
Local Media Holding the Center
When I began covering politics in 2000, the assault on legacy media was in its infancy. While debate in Washington – where I was stationed – was showing signs of the splintering to come, the legacy media still carried the national debate. And people from across the spectrum worked with it.
That no longer is true. Kellyann Conway’s infamous “alternative facts” statement in 2016 served as a rhetorical Continental Divide that marked the days of civil debate through shared media channels over.
That toxic reality has filtered down into our communities.
… our media-consumption habits have splintered, and we no longer have national debates around shared reporting, but siloed screaming matches over whose “facts” are better. And newsrooms, once the centers for sparking national discussion, have become the centers of our national ire.
As opinion editor at the Free Lance-Star from 2022-2023, I found that many conservative politicians refused to cooperate by offering me interviews – a problem I did not often experience in my early years in Washington. Things have not improved since founding FXBG Advance.
Publishing a list of conservative offenders would serve no good purpose here. However, it is good to know that the wall of silence on the right toward mainstream local media is not absolute.
Over the years, Sen. Bryce Reeves has given freely of his time, as has Stafford Commissioner of the Revenue Scott Mayausky, and outgoing Fredericksburg City Council member Matt Kelly, to name a few of those I regularly consult with.
And then there is Shaun Kenney. This former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia (and early Never-Trumper) has shared freely with me over the years, and even began writing regularly for me at the Free Lance-Star. A move that surprised some, and frustrated others.
What united us was a commitment to free and open debate – especially when those debates turned thorny. That’s precisely the time to lean in to free debate, and not retreat to our silos.
The Birth of Multipartisan
This idea has been with the FXBG Advance from the beginning. Our leadership team – comprised of myself, Kenney, and Leigh Anne Van Dorn – are dedicated to building a publication where once again the entire region can engage freely in open debate about the issues that divide us.
We realized quickly, however, that flying the flag of “nonpartisan” would not be sufficient to carry the day.
The reality is that the war on media over the past 20 years has laid waste to the idea of “objectivity.” News organizations – as the Economist article referenced above makes clear – will skew one way or the other.
The question becomes, is that necessarily a bad thing? Only if an outlet clings to the idea that its coverage is “fair and balanced” (e.g., FOX), or if an outlet clings to the belief that its coverage is purely “objective” (e.g., CNN).
We believe it is time to own our biases, argue those positions responsibly, and let a thousand conversations bloom.
As Kenney has said to me on many occasions, “How we talk about things, matters.”
And of late, the way we are talking about things has not been healthy.
We believe, however, that people are ready for a change.
A Sign of Change
The recent election in Spotsylvania offers a glimpse of the future. The outgoing School Board majority – which ran the schools with an iron fist, dismissive attitude toward anyone who dared to disagree with them, and a level of incompetence that drew state- and nationwide attention – lost not for ideological reasons, but because they failed to advance the community discussion over public education.
Megan Jackson won her seat on the Board in the deep red Livingston District, which produced Kirk Twigg. Running as an independent, Jackson was able to pull votes from a large block on Republicans as she ran away with the race over Twigg.
No – we’re not going to see that kind of independent movement anytime soon at the state and national level. Party control of elections still dominates, making it difficult, if not impossible, for candidates running as Independents to have a legitimate shot in larger elections.
But at the local level, the independent mind still carries the day. We live too closely together, pass one another in too many public places, and interact with one another in too many public and private arenas to allow the national-level hardline thinking to dictate our ability to talk and work with one another.
For all these reasons, party-line talking points still more easily give way to pragmatic discussions about the problems before us. That’s why the election in Spotsylvania went the way that it did – people locally want to solve problems, not declare war on their neighbors.
And a local free press, one open to the full range of reasoned voices in the community, remains the best – indeed, in the eyes of the Founders – the only vehicle to make those discussions possible.
party-line talking points still more easily give way to pragmatic discussions about the problems before us. That’s why the election in Spotsylvania went the way that it did – people locally want to solve problems, not declare war on their neighbors.
Over the past year, we’ve seen what multipartisan journalism can be, and what it can do.
Strong, well-thought-out opinions from opposing positions on the same page create a new and better way of talking beyond siloed yelling matches.
We put our best arguments forward, and simultaneously must entertain the strongest arguments against those positions.
That rarely happens at the national level. Increasingly, it doesn’t happen at the state level.
At the local level, however, where pragmatism still trumps politics, free local media can still thrive.
So long as we continue to talk with one another.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit our website at the link that follows.
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Thank you for reading and supporting FXBG Advance.
-Martin Davis, Editor-In-Chief