A free press

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a free people





On the wall by my desk in the old Courier building I had a poster that read “A Free Press, A Free People.”

It is in countries where the press is censored or government controlled that free speech is curtailed for all citizens.

I recall during the Bosnian War that it was the newspaper staffs who literally risked their lives to keep their presses running in basements of war-torn cities where they had to dodge real bullets to distribute their precious products.

Our American presses are not stained with blood, and the bullets we dodge are (generally) not deadly.

However, our purpose must be the same as those brave reporters in countries where “free presses” are costly.

Those who founded the United States of America believed this aspect of a free country was so important they expressly provided for it in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1791: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Granted, those of us comprising “the press” are human and as such are inherently flawed, so our product is flawed as well. However, we have the freedom to publish our work for the people, flaws and all. Members of the public, likewise, have the opportunity to respond to us, and to their fellow citizens, in an open, published forum.

Ours is not a perfect system but one that can be open about its mistakes.

Members of the local media, including Courier reporters, recently encountered a pretrial publicity order or “gag order,” as it is often commonly called, in an emerging criminal case in our San Luis Valley community. As a member of the press, I am always upset when a “gag order” is imposed because such rulings affect our ability to operate as a free press in a free society. Such orders affect our ability to accurately inform. Such orders affect our ability to chronicle the history of a community.

The importance of chronicling history was reinforced to me earlier this week when I was trying to find out if the City of Alamosa had ever had a lady or Hispanic mayor before, because whoever won the election Tuesday night would probably be the first. If this was a historic moment in our town, I wanted to make sure I recorded it accurately.

Finding the information was more difficult than I thought it would be. I appreciated those at the city hall, library, museum and ultimately the college library who assisted me in my research. I am sure there is a tidy, neat, comprehensive list somewhere but I could not find it. I was able to close many of the gaps between Alamosa’s first mayor D.R. Smith in 1878 and our most recent long-time mayor Farris Bervig who has served our community for a quarter of a decade.

It was in newspaper clippings that I learned the fate of former Martin Husung, the gentlemen who ran against each other in the 1977 election (Dr. Everett Manchester and Ray Carter, Manchester being the winner) and many other tidbits about our municipal history. If those had not been written, history not recorded in this manner, we who now live in a new century would not be able to look back and see what transpired before.

Now, of course, people conduct many searches on the Internet, but the Web does not provide a comprehensive (or always trustworthy) record.

As a side note, these are some of the gents who served as Alamosa mayor: D.R. Smith; Billy Adams; F.W. Swanson; Everett Cole; A.K. Taylor; Martin Husung; Everett Manchester; Cliff Hartman; and of course Farris Bervig who ironically told Cliff Hartman he would run after Cliff twisted his arm, but he expected he would only try it out for one term.

We now welcome our first lady mayor, Kathy Rogers, and a new era begins.

We promise as a newspaper to continue to chronicle our community’s history, both in our Alamosa headquarters and in our broader San Luis Valley coverage area.

We will share the triumphs of the sports teams and election candidates. Likewise, we will share the misdeeds of our fellow residents.

We will try our absolute best to inform our readers in an accurate, objective and fair manner.

We will fail, because we are human.

We will succeed, because we are free.