Why societies need a free press

I really enjoyed the movie, The Post, which is based on the role that the Washington Post, and particularly the Publisher Katharine Graham, played in publishing the Pentagon Papers after the Nixon White House obtained a court order stopping the New York Times from doing so.

One intriguing aspect of the movie was it showed how much the world has changed since 1971, particularly with regard to technology and gender issues.

Newspapers and secret military documents were all hard copies. This made stealing, copying, and distributing the latter difficult. Articles were written on typewriters and newspapers were mechanically typeset. Photocopies were done page by page. The only phones were land lines and pay phones.
It is a long way from today's fast-paced and highly connected world of the internet, email, Wikileaks, and mobile phones.

The journalists and politicians were largely middle-aged white males. The movie shows what a pioneer Katharine Graham was and how hard it was for her to be taken seriously. She had the added obstacle that she had been belittled as a child and as a wife and so struggled to overcome her low self-confidence. Meryl Streep brilliantly shows this increasing confidence. The movie also shows how Graham became much admired by younger women.



The movie briefly mentions how Graham's husband died by suicide, leaving her to take over the newspaper. It does not discuss the associated mental health issues.

The main issue in the movie is resolved by a 6-3 ruling of the US Supreme Court, which allows further publication of the Pentagon papers. Justice Black wrote:

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

Some of this is quoted in the movie. I also recommend the earlier movie, The Pentagon Papers, which focuses on the role of Daniel Ellsberg who was the source of the leak to the New York Times and the Post.

Where did universities come from?

This video nicely answers the question, showing how many universities, even in the non-Western world, had origins that were rooted in the church, mission, theological education, and service.



Today many of these universities have quite different goals and values. Some seem to want to deny their origins or are embarrassed by them.
Important questions that this raises include:
Are these origins irrelevant today?
Has something been lost?
Are the many problems universities do have today, particularly those associated with the focus on money, metrics, management, and marketing, due to the loss of a theological basis for their mission?

A classic movie confronts anti-intellectualism

During the holidays my family watched the classic 1960 movie, Inherit the Wind, loosely based on the infamous Scopes trial, held in 1925 in the USA.

Only after I watched the movie and read the associated Wikipedia page did I learn that the movie was not meant to be so much about the issue of Evolution vs. Fundamentalism. But rather was meant to cast a poor light on McCarthyism, which was happening around the time the movie was made.

There is much in the movie that one could be concerned about, particularly from a Christian point of view. First, it is not historically accurate. This problem and all the nuances of the trial were discussed in detail in the Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Summer for the Gods, by Edward J. Larson.

Second, the Christians in the movie are "red-necks" who come across as unthinking and unfeeling. On the other hand, unfortunately, there are Christians who do act like some of the characters in the movie.

The title of the movie is based on Proverbs 11:29

Whoever brings ruin on their family will inherit only wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise.

This is quoted during a powerful and tragic scene when a fundamentalist preacher verbally attacks his own daughter.