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The assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi this year underscores the dangers some media members face around the world in doing their jobs.MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH/AFP/Getty Images

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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What is the role of a free press in 2019? I will try to keep it simple and to the point. A free press is essential for any open, representative society. It plays the critical roles of keeping governments and businesses – including the press itself – accountable for facts and acting as a counterbalance to false claims.

A free press keeps the population informed about policies, news and other information that adds value to their awareness and the decision-making process. Without a free press, citizens are beholden to the messaging of their governments and corporate executives, with unbound incentives for keeping unfavourable information or facts as far out of the reach of the public as possible.

But the free press must continue to earn its keep.

It must continually strive to be more impartial and objective, and depend far less on reporting based on “anonymous sources” and “opinions.” The latter two have the economic benefits of being cheap and plentiful, but are worthless when measuring value in terms of facts.

Amir Ahari, Toronto

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The question should be: “What are the roles that a free press should be concerned with upholding and defending?”

Because these roles are not only manifold, but they can be easily undermined, usurped, subsumed, or abandoned relative to the influence and agendas of those who would have only their points of view and narratives made available to the public.

Aside from the basic function of informing, a free press should also serve to:

– Encourage critical inquiry and analysis, as well as respectful and informed debate.

– Defend the public’s right of access to all information (thereby supporting the exercise of free will).

– Provide exemplars for rational discourse.

– Provide a reliable source from which our children and grandchildren can develop a broader and deeper understanding of the world they live in.

– Ensure that what is recorded and reported by the press helps to add clarity and precision to the historical record that will be referenced in the future.

History provides ample evidence that one of the first orders of business in the playbooks of despots and tyrants is to demean and then eliminate freedom of the press. (Thought Control 101). Little else needs to be said in the face of that fact, especially given that currently there are several countries in the world where the press has been successfully muzzled and controlled by totalitarian leaderships.

Ray Arnold, Richmond, B.C.

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Once the biggest worry we had about freedom of the press was the concentration of corporate ownership in the media industry. While we still recognize that corporate influence over the media is a serious problem, we are worried about something very different today.

Now we are deeply troubled by the surveillance of media and journalists, by the imprisonment of journalists without a just trial, by the bombing of newsrooms, and by the murdering of journalists. All of these actions are most often state-approved, if not directly state sponsored and ordered – either by dictatorial states or by sham democratic governments.

And, let’s not forget U.S. President Donald Trump; he stands out for his affection for the dictators who order that a journalist be murdered and for his unstinting efforts to kill the idea of a free press.

Today, we see journalists working in more and more violent environments. Despite this, I don’t see or hear the corporate owners of the mass media speaking out on the immense damage such violence is doing to the cornerstone of our democracy – the freedom of the press. They do not publicly protest, they do not call to account those who are responsible. It’s past time for them to speak out

Esther Shannon, Vancouver

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Given the new potential conflict of interest because of the media funding announced late last year by the federal government, I think one of the most critical concerns is that media organizations that accept that funding – including The Globe and Mail, if it does so – ask themselves if, and how, coverage is being influenced by the expected opinions of that government?

There is enough media groupthink now without a further shrinkage of acceptable opinions due to potential government influences.

George Olsen, Calgary

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A free press presupposes free thought. The Western world has more or less abandoned the concept. And the press has a huge responsibility for this.

The press has become a cheerleader for thought conformity. When was the last time The Globe and Mail wrote convincingly against any so-called “progressive” viewpoints? So spare us the press-freedom sanctimony. And start exercising some real independent thought. You might find it liberating.

David R. Wingfield, Toronto

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For the past two years, the free press has used its clout like a sledgehammer on the minds of readers, displaying extreme bias against U.S. President Donald Trump. His whole family has been attacked. Even his wife, Melania Trump, an immigrant with knowledge of five languages, is not exempt. The press becomes the arbiter of what we should believe.

Cherryl Katnich, Maple Ridge, B.C.

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Although some in the United States have demanded journalists go down on their knees to beg for forgiveness for existing, millions more Americans such as myself consider a free (and standing) press to be crucial to our democracy.

But when I was a spokesperson for a university medical centre and other large organizations, I sometimes was angered by reporters who would do anything (like going into pediatric intensive care units) to get a story.

I remember being incensed by such once when I was a very young spokesperson. An older reporter who had become one of my greatest mentors patiently listened to my desire to ban some journalists. Then he asked me to think for a moment about a planetary catastrophe. And wouldn’t I like journalists free to practise their profession to provide information that might allow me to buy time, or even an escape?

I can still hear him telling me I was right to expect journalists to work responsibly but that “you never have a right to stop them from doing their jobs.”

Gordy Slovut, wherever you are, I’ve tried to follow your counsel. And I’m so sorry some call your fellow journalists the “enemy of the people.”

Mary Stanik, St. Paul, Minn.

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The media’s response to criticism of its approach is often to defend the “freedom of the press.” Not stated in the discussion is the need for “responsibility of the press.”

For example, I watched an exchange between U.S. President Donald Trump and CNN’s Jim Acosta last November. Thanks to modern technology, which allows for almost simultaneous viewing, I was able to closely observe the coverage, on a comparative basis, as produced by CBC, Fox and MSNBC.

Not one of these networks showed the entire incident. Each sliced and spliced a segment that represented its particular bias. Only by watching all three could I compile the complete view of the actual events.

If these media outlets want to operate under the shield of freedom of the press, then they better lift their standards on the other three Fs – fair, factual and fullness.

John Budreski, Vancouver

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Press freedom seems an easy concept to understand – we can safely print what we want as long as it is true, but the reality is far more complex.

Sadly, there are dangers in being a journalist, as shown by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, and with the imprisonment of Australian journalist Peter Greste in Egypt for more than a year. The real concern is that their stories are not unusual, just better known, as Reuters states 34 journalists were killed in 2018 (although Al-Jazeera suggests it may have been closer to 100). The number of journalists imprisoned in 2018 reaches into the hundreds.

Killing or imprisoning journalists are effective ways of silencing the voices of a free press – although there are other approaches, too. In Australia, at least 36 editors, journalists and media groups are facing contempt charges, which potentially could see them imprisoned, fined or both. Their “crime” was not publishing the outcome of a court case, the conviction of a cardinal for child sex offenses, but publishing the fact that they could not publish this story. Most led with a blacked out front page. It took only a matter of seconds searching the internet to find this suppressed information. Perhaps the most important point from the Australian case was that it is becoming harder to suppress stories, as it can be around the world in seconds.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This is never truer than with press freedom. If journalists are not able to tell the public the truth, the darkness that ensues means the corruption of our freedom will be so much easier to achieve.

Be thankful that most of us are able to read the truth, and remember what that it has cost many journalists their freedom and their lives.

Dennis Fitzgerald, Melbourne, Australia

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I long for and crave a free media in Canada. I fear the issue today is a lack of accountability and lack of free speech within news media organizations. You still have not published the cartoons that led to the riots overseas many years ago, for example. That cowardice cannot be squared with calls for media liberty.

You say you are there to hold the governments in Canada and others to account? In a world with fewer and fewer media owners, journalists have to play musical chairs with their careers in a very limited number of companies, being careful not to tread on someone’s toes in another company. This does not produce bold, courageous results. We can no longer buy nor withdraw funds from poorly producing news media to promote nor negate their publications as the government rescues them when profits fall.

I ask then, who holds you to account? And why are so many in the media so thin-skinned when it comes to receiving criticism?

You still are the best news media organization in Canada but more can be done.

S. Michael David Tripper, Vancouver

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