{"id":193,"date":"2018-08-16T14:04:28","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T14:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newrivervoice.com\/newrivervoice\/?p=193"},"modified":"2025-12-18T16:01:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T16:01:39","slug":"onpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newrivervoice.com\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"Enemy of the People? Not so"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took this photo during the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Bill Kovarik<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Donald Trump claims that the press is the ‘enemy of the people.’<\/strong>\u00a0 Let’s think about that.<\/p>\n

Was Joe Rosenthal<\/a> an ‘enemy of the people’<\/strong> when he climbed Mount Suribachi\u00a0 on Iwo Jima and came back with a photo of the US Marines putting up the Stars and Stripes?\u00a0 \u00a0The Associated Press photo ran in newspapers and magazines around the world on February 25, 1945.\u00a0 It became so iconic, so loaded with meaning about sacrifice and service, that it would be adopted as the<\/em> Marine Corps\u00a0 monument in Washington DC.\u00a0 Think about that.<\/p>\n

Was John Hersey an enemy of the people<\/strong> when he wrote about the heroic struggle of a PT Boat commander to save his crew after his boat was destroyed in combat?\u00a0 The June 17, 1944\u00a0\u00a0New Yorker story about Lt. John F. Kennedy’s ordeal<\/a> in the Solomon Islands added to the luster of the man who became president in 1960.\u00a0 \u00a0After Kennedy left the Navy, he served for a brief time as a journalist himself.\u00a0 Think about it.<\/p>\n

Was Benjamin Franklin an enemy of the people<\/strong> when he used his position as a printer, editor, scientist and ambassador to make the case\u00a0for an independent United States in the 1770s?<\/p>\n

Was NY World publisher\u00a0\u00a0Joseph Pulitzer<\/a> an enemy of the people<\/strong> when he established the Pulitzer Prizes, the American hallmark of excellence in writing and publishing?\u00a0 Did his principles somehow miss that mark when, on\u00a0April 10, 1907,\u00a0 he said:<\/p>\n

[The press]\u00a0 “will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ida B. Wells, American journalist who exposed lynching in the South in the 1890s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Was Ida B. Wells an enemy of the people<\/strong> when she documented the horror and injustice of lynching, or when her newspaper presses were destroyed in 1892\u00a0 by a mob of crazed white men who were afraid of the truth?\u00a0 It wasn’t the first time that racist mobs destroyed newspapers.<\/p>\n

Was\u00a0Elijah Lovejoy an enemy of the people<\/a>?<\/strong> In Alton, Ill, on Nov. 7, 1837, Lovejoy was killed\u00a0 \u00a0as he tried to defend his press and anti-slavery publication from a mob enraged at his strident abolitionism. His name is one of the first names on the memorial to journalists who have been killed in the line of duty.<\/a><\/p>\n

The list of American journalists<\/strong> who have always remained devoted to the public welfare is actually very long.\u00a0 It includes Isaiah Thomas,\u00a0<\/strong>who reported the Battle of Lexington in 1775; CBS anchor Walter Cronkite<\/strong>;\u00a0 ABC anchor Barbara Walters<\/strong>;\u00a0 NY World editor Walter Lippmann<\/strong>; soldier’s writer\u00a0Ernie Pyle; <\/strong>War correspondent Richard Harding Davis;\u00a0 <\/strong>CBS reporter George Polk, <\/strong>killed while covering the Greek Civil War; Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee<\/strong> and Katharine Graham<\/strong> of the Washington Post;\u00a0 Bill Moyers<\/strong> of PBS; and many more.\u00a0 (See NYU’s list<\/a> as a starting point).<\/p>\n

A list of American journalists<\/strong> also includes:<\/p>\n