OPINION | If We Let Journalism Die, Our Democracy Won't Be Too Far Behind

by Marcus Harrison Green

(This article has been copublished with The Seattle Times under an agreement.)

Editor's Note: This piece is adapted from a recent talk by Marcus Harrison Green at Town Hall Seattle.

Not too long ago, I was speaking with a friend who recently left journalism for much more lucrative pastures, and who is seriously thinking about expatriating from the United States.

I chided him for being overly cynical about the state of journalism and our country, and he replied that in this day and age, "to be cynical is simply to be paying attention."

I understand the temptation to believe that. He's hardly alone in reaching those conclusions.

A recent study showed that 71% of Americans believe that our country is headed in the wrong direction, more than 50% believe that our national media purposely misleads and misinforms, and more than 2 in 5 Americans believe that another civil war is likely in the next decade.

Coupled with these sentiments is a rising tide of polarization and violent extremism — and as a byproduct, a widening gulf of unshared ideologies, unshared information sources, and most frighteningly unshared realities.

While national news struggles for trust, local news, which is more trusted and which links people overwhelmed by otherness and isolation, has seen declines, with 20% of communities now at risk of becoming news deserts. Seattle of course has not been immune, with recent layoffs, such as those at Crosscut, requiring even the largest of our outlets to cover more with proportionately less.

As my friend illustrated, it's easy to be fatalistic. It's easy to tap out of civic engagement, believing there is nothing to be done, and that decline in our democracy and our fourth estate is inevitable, that our story is done.

But personally, I reject that notion, not out of denial or delusion (though I've certainly had people accuse me of both) but because I simply pay attention.

There is a reason why Walter Lippmann called journalism the "bible of democracy," the book by which a people determines its conduct — the only institution named in our constitution.

Because throughout our history, it has been integral to dragging us from the murk of an existing condition to the dazzle of a fulfilled promise.

When used wisely, it has been wielded as a compass to navigate change — from a nation hesitant to expand its democracy to one that produces an amendment abolishing slavery even without one Black vote, and an amendment franchising women with the right to vote despite not a single woman being eligible to vote that right into law.

When used wisely, it has revealed the corruption and deception of presidents, Supreme Court justices, governors, and mayors who believed they were above the law.

When used wisely, I know firsthand that it has helped an 83-year-old grandmother, who is battling health problems, and living near the poverty line, as she raises three grandchildren. She nearly lost her home until a story about her appeared in The Seattle Times and the South Seattle Emerald. It inspired three different people to contribute to her monthly rent and utility bills, allowing her and her grandchildren to remain housed.

I'm not Pollyanna-ish about our media. I know that it can be used for malevolent intent, and too often is. But God, I also know its force as a tool to level our society's power differentials, to remind each other that we are not alone and that what we do, how we act, and how we conduct our lives in the shared act of living matters. That these problems of complexity we face, whether racial, environmental, political, or economical, will not be solved by simplistic reactions but by meaningful responses.

A force that powerful is worth saving — even if you don't always agree with it, even when it sometimes falters — because it reminds us to pay attention to the possibilities that are still yet to be in our country, even in its darkest moments.

And that is a story that is far from done.

Editors' Note: This story was updated on 07/27/2023 to credit the South Seattle Emerald in releasing a story about a grandmother battling health issues while raising three grandchildren.

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Featured Image: A crowd of journalists, reporters, and camera men conducting an interview in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 12, 2021. Photo via Oleksandr Polonskyi/Shutterstock.com