Exploring four walls of freedom

By Joe Sheller / Guest Editorial

In March, my wife and I visited Washington, D.C. While there, I experienced a few hours at the Newseum, a museum devoted to news media.

What drew my attention most were four walls that each had something important to say about the role of free speech in our society.

Wall one, from Berlin. There are pieces of the Berlin Wall, which fell in 1989. On the side that faced West Berlin, you see a mass of graffiti, with some slightly inexplicable political slogans often written in English. “Act Up” enjoins one.

In contrast, the side that faced East Berlin was bare – deliberately tinted a light color to make it easier for guards to shoot anybody who got too close to the wall at night.

It was a powerful symbol of the difference between a society where free speech flourishes and one that regimentally controls information. We may not always like our raucous news media, but life without it loses its color.

Wall two, from New York. Rows and columns of newspaper front pages were on display, all published on Sept. 12, 2001. The headlines screamed phrases like “U.S. Attacked” (headline from The New York Times) and “Day of Death.” The 9/11 tragedy allowed many journalists to rise to heroic action to try to get the story. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, managed to pull itself together and publish despite the paper’s newsroom being damaged beyond use in the attack.

In the floor in front of the wall was a twisted piece of metal with a pole on top. It was the transmitting antenna located on top of one of the World Trade Center towers, used before the attack by most New York City television stations. It reminded me that, among other things, the 9/11 attack was a primal scream against an open society that allows diverse voices.

A decade and a half later, the American news media that covered the 9/11 attack has unfortunately become far less robust than it was. It’s a chilling thought that, to some extent, the land of the free is doing the work of our enemies by allowing our best sources of news to atrophy.

Wall three, from all over. The top floor of the Newseum has a fascinating display that changes daily. It shows hundreds of newspaper front pages published that day. On that day, I saw the front pages for March 26, most of which led with the German airline co-pilot’s fateful decision to lock the cockpit door and crash the plane. “Pilot Locked Out” shrieked the front page of the New York Post – a bit more dramatic, but consistent with most of the newspapers on display. But in the New York Daily News, the headline was “School let tutors beat my baby.”

The display made me grateful for our state and local newspapers, like the Register and the Gazette. They may not always be the best newspapers, but their just news is on the “Pilot Locked Out” end of the spectrum rather than the “beat my baby” end. At the same time, I also felt amused gratitude for a free media that includes a diversity of offbeat content.

Wall four, in memoriam. Recent years have been particularly dangerous for the men and women who run toward danger so the rest of us learn the story. The fourth wall on display featured portraits of journalists who were, in effect, killed in the line of duty.

It made me think of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine where 11 journalists were murdered by terrorists in January. I am not a fan of the often-offensive content of that particular publication, but even offensive communication should not lead to murder.

And most of the journalists memorialized at the Newseum had nothing to do with what you and I would call offensive content – they were merely outsiders in the wrong place, or tellers of stories that those in local power would rather not have told. Journalists who give the last full measure of devotion to their craft are unsung heroes. It was good to see a museum that does a small measure of singing.

Finally, the Newseum had a literal Iowa tie. In a room about freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment was a black ribbon, pinned to a notebook page in a hand-written school report.

The ribbon was worn in protest against the war in Vietnam to a Des Moines school in December 1965 by 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker. The polite and orderly Ms. Tinker was, along with her brother and a friend, suspended from school. Their parents sued, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1969, the court ruled, in a ringing endorsement of the First Amendment, that the Des Moines schools had gone too far: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

A free media – it’s an important asset of a free society that we don’t always appreciate.

Our side of the Berlin Wall is not orderly nor always polite. But it is full of color, as it should be.

 

 

Joe Sheller is associate professor of communication and journalism with Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids. He can be reached at jsheller@mtmercy.edu.