21 Sep 2026 The solution to everything?
There are older newspapers in the world than The New York Times – including some current papers in Europe that have existed since the 1600s. Yet the 175th anniversary of The New York Times offers its publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, an opportunity to reflect – nationally – on “a great and imperfect newspaper steadfastly chronicling a great and imperfect nation” as well as – universally – the existential challenges facing public interest journalism.
Reciting examples of Times’ coverage and the courage of its correspondents over decades, he reiterates the fundamental purpose of journalism: “Self-governance requires citizens to have access to reliable sources of information to make informed choices and know when their leaders aren’t acting in their best interests. This is why the press is the only profession explicitly protected in the [United States] Constitution. It is, as the founders believed, ‘one of the great bulwarks of liberty.’”
But the pressures today have hollowed out much of the news media industry. Sulzberger notes that the collapse of the advertising business model led to the closure of almost 3,500 newspapers in the US alone, as well as cost the majority of local journalism jobs in just two decades. In addition to the multitude of pressures from digital platforms – from demands of 24-hour news coverage to rampant misinformation and disinformation – tech companies are training artificial intelligence in part on scraping and reproducing articles and news at vast scale without permission or compensation. Add to this the direct political attacks the weakened press are now facing constantly.
The result is that there are fewer reporters, and fewer institutions “to witness events that might otherwise go unseen, to uncover abuses of power that have never been easier to obscure.”
This reflection on the current state of journalism comes when the United Nations General Assembly opens its 81st session, idealistically aiming to “revitalize global cooperation, give a critical push to the Sustainable Development Goals and drive collective action for peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet.”
As WACC has stated repeatedly, none of the Sustainable Development Goals, nor indeed, any of the immense challenges we face today – from worsening climate change to unregulated development of artificial intelligence – can be tackled without universal rights to communication in the fullest sense – what we are now highlighting as communication justice. And a free and diverse press is an essential element of that.
As Sulzberger states, “The current period of democratic erosion around the world offers a clear warning that when a free press is undermined, other freedoms will soon fall as well. If this sounds overstated, I challenge anyone to find a country where people are free but the press isn’t.”
A free press – and the larger environment of communication justice – may not be the solution to everything needed to bring peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet – but it is an essential ingredient. In a world now rife with deliberate misinformation, abuse in the guise of “free speech,” together with opaque companies and politics seeking greater power and wealth without accountability, supporting public interest journalism is more important than ever.
Photo by Ana Martin on Unsplash