'Be nice' is not needed during crisis — but a free press is

  “Be nice” — two words not found anywhere among the 45 words of the First Amendment.

  Also not found: “positive,” or “get ya” or “trust.”

  All of those words are out of place in a brief statement leading off the Bill of Rights at the start of our Constitution, the document that empowers all of us to express ourselves as we wish, regardless of whether others agree with or like what we have to say or write.

What’s the ‘true threat’ to American journalism and democracy?

  Threats to the survival of a free press seem much in the air these days, from the near-daily online insults hurled from the White House podium to the lunatic who opened fire on an innocent group of news people in Annapolis, Md., on June 28.

  But the greatest danger facing our shared freedom of the press and to journalists’ role in our democracy is not so much either of those factors, as important and tragic as both are.

  Perhaps the greatest — and just as immediate — threat is the ongoing decline in the sheer numbers of those involved in the operating and staffing of newsrooms, for now, felt most strongly in the “print” sector.

Gene Policinski: Wrong. Good idea – if it works both ways. Missed the point

  In order: Wrong. Good idea — if it works both ways. Missed the point. And, wrong.

  Trump administration senior advisers Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway each vented — again — against “the media” in the midst of a turbulent week. Their comments are worth parsing.

  Bannon, not long departed from the perpetually vocal, ultra-conservative Breitbart News online site, said on Jan. 25 that “the media should … keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” In that rare news interview, he also called the news media “the opposition.”

  And then there’s Conway, complaining to “Fox News Sunday” on Jan. 29 that “Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go….”

Gene Policinski: Threats of murder, injury are not ‘politics’ — nor patriotism

  Let’s put this as simply as possible.

  Patriotism does not involve threatening others with injury or death, no matter how dire you believe the results of voting on Nov. 8 will be for you or your fellow citizens.

  Sending such notes or leaving such telephone messages for reporters, editorial writers, television correspondents or newspaper publishers is not defiant bravery. Death threats are unhinged criminal acts that debase the very notion of a democratic republic on which the United States was founded.

Gene Policinski: What a strange year it’s been for First Amendment freedoms

  What a strange, challenging and dangerous year 2015 was for First Amendment freedoms, at home and abroad.

  2015 was but seven days old when terrorists, claiming to be angry over the publishing of satirical drawings of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, burst into the offices of the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people.

  The tragedy sparked a worldwide outpouring of support for free expression — remember the signs and t-shirts declaring “Je suis Charlie” — I am Charlie? But the incident also prompted draconian proposals in France to limit certain kinds of free expression and new restrictions on Muslims simply because of their religious faith. And Nov. 13 attacks in Paris in which 130 died only added fuel to that.

Gene Policinski: Who “owns” the news in a digital age?

  Who owns the news?

  The glib answer is “no one.”  But of course, the full answer is more complicated than that.

  Famously, news is “who, what, when, where and why”– the “five Ws.”  That mantra was drilled into the minds of generations of journalists, the essentials around which a news report is constructed.