Straight From The Hart
Joan Rowden Hart
As much as I enjoy using the Internet and my computer, nothing
compares to reading my daily newspaper while sitting in my recliner
with my feet up and slowly sipping my morning cup of coffee.
Cable TV will come later in the day with breaking news, and
commercials, and talking heads speaking at breakneck speed, but just
for a while I can savor the quiet and the luxury of reading the
newspaper at my own pace.
I wrote the following essay thirty-some years ago as my submission to
an essay contest sponsored by the National Newspaper Association and
the Missouri Press Association. The Lebanon Daily Record participated
in the contest, and my submission won 2nd place. The theme of the
competition was “A Free Press, My Window To The World”.
John Milton, in his “Areopagitica”, a tract addressed to the English
Parliament in 1644, said: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and
to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
I can remember vividly when my love affair with the printed press
began. It was sometime during the early fall in 1949. I was barely
six years old and had just enrolled in Washington country school (here
in the county).
Learning to read was the most exciting experience I had ever
encountered in my short lifetime, and I was so eager to put my
education into practice that I picked up the only reading material we
had in our home – an old newspaper – and I was hooked from that time
on.
Certainly I had no concept at that age of the meaning of a free press.
I only knew that I could discover, even as a child, all kinds of
things from reading the newspaper, and it really did become a window
to my young world.
A few years later, I made another fascinating discovery. When I was
about nine years old I found an old schoolbook which my grandmother
had converted into a scrapbook by pasting newspaper clippings and
photographs over the pages.
I soon memorized every item on every page, and my mind began to grasp
the idea that newspapers and magazines were a valuable source of
historical information and research material which could be handed
down from generation to generation.
The newspaper became then, not just a window to the world in which I
was living, but a window to the past, through which I could look back
to the world my grandmother had lived in when she was a young woman.
That realization was my motivation to begin a hobby that has continued
for a period of almost 35 years. I decided that I would collect a bit
of history and preserve it for my children and grandchildren – history
in the form of news clippings and photographs that would be a “living
history”, not just a paragraph in a school textbook.
Little did I know when I began to save newspaper clippings and file
them away for safekeeping that they would become such an important
part of my lifestyle when I became an adult.
As my interest developed along the lines of teaching, lecturing,
composing and writing, I found the material I had accumulated over
the years was invaluable to me as a reference and research aid – and
that the freedom of the press which had provided me with newspaper,
magazines and books all those years of my childhood was no longer just
a window to my world, but had become a doorway through which I could
walk and become an active, informed and participating citizen in that
world.
My love for the printed press has increased over the years as I have
grown in my understanding of the meaning of a free press.
Although I know, of course, that many countries in our world, even
some highly developed countries, do not have the freedom of the press
which we enjoy, it is still difficult for me to comprehend that fact
because we take our freedom so much for granted.
Freedom of the press does not guarantee that we will always and
consistently receive an unbiased view from the media. Many problems
exist in this country in this regard, and the criticisms are valid,
because unscrupulous journalists and authors have abused this freedom
we enjoy, and at times the press has presented a distorted view of the
world through that window.
But there are always risks inherent in any freedom we possess, and I
prefer to take the risk of having a free press. There is no
alternative. After all, the ultimate responsibility for what we
know and perceive to be the truth lies with us and with our
obligation to evaluate the information which we receive from the press
over a period of time.
Exiled Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn (now deceased) was
forcibly expelled from Russia in 1974 by Soviet authorities enraged
over publication in the West of “The Gulag Archipelago”, a massive
study of the Soviet penal system. Solzhenitsyn’s basic theme in his
messages to the American people has been that men who do not value
freedom, and who divorce it from morality, will not long possess it.
Without a free press, our window to the world would be closed just as
it has already been closed to more than 80% of the world’s population
who live in a closed society. Not only do they have no window to the
world, but they have no window to their own neighborhood, nor to
their own situation as it exists relative to freedoms possessed by
others.
We must not take this freedom for granted, nor forget the price paid
for it. We must be willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to maintain
our liberty “to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience”.
Freedom of the press is not just a window to our world – it is the
very essence of all freedoms in our world.
Joan Rowden Hart
As much as I enjoy using the Internet and my computer, nothing
compares to reading my daily newspaper while sitting in my recliner
with my feet up and slowly sipping my morning cup of coffee.
Cable TV will come later in the day with breaking news, and
commercials, and talking heads speaking at breakneck speed, but just
for a while I can savor the quiet and the luxury of reading the
newspaper at my own pace.
I wrote the following essay thirty-some years ago as my submission to
an essay contest sponsored by the National Newspaper Association and
the Missouri Press Association. The Lebanon Daily Record participated
in the contest, and my submission won 2nd place. The theme of the
competition was “A Free Press, My Window To The World”.
John Milton, in his “Areopagitica”, a tract addressed to the English
Parliament in 1644, said: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and
to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
I can remember vividly when my love affair with the printed press
began. It was sometime during the early fall in 1949. I was barely
six years old and had just enrolled in Washington country school (here
in the county).
Learning to read was the most exciting experience I had ever
encountered in my short lifetime, and I was so eager to put my
education into practice that I picked up the only reading material we
had in our home – an old newspaper – and I was hooked from that time
on.
Certainly I had no concept at that age of the meaning of a free press.
I only knew that I could discover, even as a child, all kinds of
things from reading the newspaper, and it really did become a window
to my young world.
A few years later, I made another fascinating discovery. When I was
about nine years old I found an old schoolbook which my grandmother
had converted into a scrapbook by pasting newspaper clippings and
photographs over the pages.
I soon memorized every item on every page, and my mind began to grasp
the idea that newspapers and magazines were a valuable source of
historical information and research material which could be handed
down from generation to generation.
The newspaper became then, not just a window to the world in which I
was living, but a window to the past, through which I could look back
to the world my grandmother had lived in when she was a young woman.
That realization was my motivation to begin a hobby that has continued
for a period of almost 35 years. I decided that I would collect a bit
of history and preserve it for my children and grandchildren – history
in the form of news clippings and photographs that would be a “living
history”, not just a paragraph in a school textbook.
Little did I know when I began to save newspaper clippings and file
them away for safekeeping that they would become such an important
part of my lifestyle when I became an adult.
As my interest developed along the lines of teaching, lecturing,
composing and writing, I found the material I had accumulated over
the years was invaluable to me as a reference and research aid – and
that the freedom of the press which had provided me with newspaper,
magazines and books all those years of my childhood was no longer just
a window to my world, but had become a doorway through which I could
walk and become an active, informed and participating citizen in that
world.
My love for the printed press has increased over the years as I have
grown in my understanding of the meaning of a free press.
Although I know, of course, that many countries in our world, even
some highly developed countries, do not have the freedom of the press
which we enjoy, it is still difficult for me to comprehend that fact
because we take our freedom so much for granted.
Freedom of the press does not guarantee that we will always and
consistently receive an unbiased view from the media. Many problems
exist in this country in this regard, and the criticisms are valid,
because unscrupulous journalists and authors have abused this freedom
we enjoy, and at times the press has presented a distorted view of the
world through that window.
But there are always risks inherent in any freedom we possess, and I
prefer to take the risk of having a free press. There is no
alternative. After all, the ultimate responsibility for what we
know and perceive to be the truth lies with us and with our
obligation to evaluate the information which we receive from the press
over a period of time.
Exiled Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn (now deceased) was
forcibly expelled from Russia in 1974 by Soviet authorities enraged
over publication in the West of “The Gulag Archipelago”, a massive
study of the Soviet penal system. Solzhenitsyn’s basic theme in his
messages to the American people has been that men who do not value
freedom, and who divorce it from morality, will not long possess it.
Without a free press, our window to the world would be closed just as
it has already been closed to more than 80% of the world’s population
who live in a closed society. Not only do they have no window to the
world, but they have no window to their own neighborhood, nor to
their own situation as it exists relative to freedoms possessed by
others.
We must not take this freedom for granted, nor forget the price paid
for it. We must be willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to maintain
our liberty “to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience”.
Freedom of the press is not just a window to our world – it is the
very essence of all freedoms in our world.
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