from my E.mail : April/May Newsletter 2019 - Celebrating World Press Freedom Day . PEN Canada

3-5-2019  World Press Freedom Day

"While in Paris during the French Revolution, the future U.S. president wrote to an associate back home that if he had to choose between government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, 'I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.'" --The Shattered Mirror, quoting Thomas Jefferson On World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2019, we celebrate freedom of expression and reflect on the dangers of living without it. Even if you are not a journalist, press freedom helps you access information about your life and the world around you. Journalism keeps local governments in check, according to a report published by The Brookings Institution, it even affects how much your local government costs you directly: “closing local newspapers increase government borrowing costs because (1) less information is publicly available, and (2) local officials are no longer monitored as closely, reducing the quality of governance.” Local newspapers ensure better government, reducing corruption by increasing transparency. Without them, costs go up for everyone. Wherever the public sphere is impoverished, democracies fail. Governments everywhere, at all levels, can only be held accountable when speech remains free and journalists can do their job without interference. This sentiment is echoed throughout The Shattered Mirror, a 2017 Public Policy Forum study of the erosion of democracy in the Canadian digital public sphere. The report warns that too much money has been diverted towards online sources that have proven a poor substitute for local newspapers. Even worse, many social media outlets and online platforms are actively used to spread misleading information, often to attack or destabilize the flow of true and accurate journalism. =====