A friend recently came up from Tuscaloosa to visit over a few beers at The Garage Cafe on Southside and brought along an old newspaper article he found while cleaning out the closet. He thought I would be interested, since it is a column by Ted Bryant from the March 8, 1982 edition of The Birmingham Post-Herald, back in the day when this little city had two daily newspapers and two wire services which actually competed with each other for news.

Bryant, an old friend, died at the age of 64 on June 30, 1999, just as we were putting out the second issue of The Southerner magazine online in Knoxville, Tennessee. We acknowledged Bryant’s death in this column.

Bryant wrote a couple of columns a week for the editorial page. He also covered state and local politics for the paper, a dual role that no one at today’s New York Times could ever understand. We don’t have time to explain it here, so let’s get to the point.

In the lead of the old article, which is mostly a feature about the courageous retired editor of the paper, James E. Mills, Bryant quotes from an even older article from the Nov. 6, 1962 edition of the Post-Herald. The article is a direct frontal assault in print of old Birmingham Mayor Art Haynes - who ran things back in the days of Bull Conner and the City Commission - for ordering city employees not to talk to reporters.

This is unlike anything you would see in a newspaper today. Back in the so-called good old days, you see, newsmen had guts.

“If Mayor Hanes displays such arrogant disregard of the public’s right to know on the eve of the election, what can we expect in the future,” Mills is quoted as saying. “Let’s take no chances. Birmingham and the people of Birmingham deserve a better break. A vote for Mayor-Council government will give it to them.”

Guts. In the newspaper.

For that comment, Mills was charged with violating the Alabama Corrupt Practices Act, which forbade electioneering on election day. He was convicted by the lower courts. But he was saved by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, a former Sunday school teacher from Alabama, who said in his ruling: “Suppression of the right of the press to praise or criticize governmental agents and clamor for and against change … muzzles one of the very agencies the framers of our Constitution thoughtfully and deliberately selected to improve our society and keep it free.”

Amen. And amen.

Where is the courage in the news business today?

Well, folks, you will find it right here in the blogosphere. Bring ‘em on.

The problem is that the Bush administration and the so-called conservative judges the president is actively appointing do not share our belief that a Web-based publication, such as this blog, deserve the same protections under the First Amendment as a newspaper published with ink and paper on a printing press. And that does not bode well for democracy or freedom of the press.

If this is not the modern equivalent of a printing press deserving of Constitutional protection, I will kiss George Bush’s … (bad word, to quote Big and Rich).

This is only one of the causes we are actively fighting from here. But as usual, we can’t do it all alone. Get onboard.

Tags: Death of Newspapers

This entry was posted on Friday, August 12th, 2005 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.