Lum For Information Minister

“He who owns the press has freedom of speech.”

July 13th, 2003

Lanita Lum, supervisor for Berks-Mont of The Saucon News, wrote me an email that contained only that line. I had asked Lum, with whom I worked when she owned The News of Saucon Valley, whether she would publish a column I wished to write in response to a column she published in The Saucon News. The column, by Mary Caruso is entitled “Oops! I made a mistake . . . ” When Lum denied my request on the grounds that I had burnt my bridges with her too many times, I responded, “So much for freedom of the press.” The line quoted above was her reply.

Mary Caruso’s piece was a long lament of a right wing conservative for good old times that never existed. Among other things, Ms. Caruso believes that abortion should be outlawed. A few paragraphs later, however, she says: “Why then, is government taking the stand that it can, and is, making laws that affect EVERY [emphasis hers] aspect of our personal lives? Morality is a conscious virtue, and does not belong governed by the state.” Gee, and I thought that was the argument of those who support a woman’s right to choose.

Adding bad history to foolishness, Caruso goes on to praise Columbus for his mission to proclaim “Thy Holy Name in this second part of the earth.” Despite what he wrote in his diary, Columbus was in it for the money. And Columbus, of course, no matter what his talents as a navigator, was nobody’s pussy cat. He managed to slaughter thousands of natives extend the faith.

But it is not my purpose here to reply to Caruso in detail. An obviously naive and misguided editorial by Caruso is not nearly as dangerous as Lum’s notion that she and her colleagues are the only ones with freedom of speech because they happen to own a newspaper. The very idea violates the spirit imbedded in the Bill of Rights. Americans have fought and died for many generations to preserve their liberties, not the liberties solely of newspaper owners.

Nationally, the Federal Communications Commission has just destroyed the rules that formerly prevented one company from owning two media sources in the same community. It has also permitted the huge media monopolies to greatly increase their holdings. This has an obvious chilling effect on Freedom of Speech in America. Are we to read or see only what Rupert Murdoch finds acceptable? And, in whose interest does Murdoch, or others of his ilk, exercise their power? Certainly not the poor, never mind the middle class. It is a truism that power is always exercised in the interest of those in power.

In our own community, as I have previously noted, Lum and The Saucon News have been extremely one sided in their coverage of the school board in general and the recent primary in particular. Given the politics of both local weeklies, freedom of speech in our community is effectively suppressed. Lum’s acknowledgment of this in her statement to me is doubly chilling. Are we to be allowed to read only what Lum or Ann Marie Gonsalves of The Valley Voice finds acceptable?

Perhaps there is a ray of hope. In a recent editorial in The Saucon News, signed by Jim Davidheiser who is the General Manager of Berks-Mont Newspapers, Inc. which own the paper, Davidheiser said that The Saucon News would provide fair coverage of matters of community interest. The implied rebuke to Lanita Lum was startling.

Freedom of speech and the press is the very essence of our democracy. Our Founding Fathers believed that if different views were permitted, the bad ones would sink to the bottom and the good ones would be selected by the public. The result of not having this freedom can be seen in the recent primaries where voters were misled by biased reporting and the refusal of The Saucon News to either admit its mistakes or permit rebuttal.

Without an informed electorate, we might as well have Saddam Hussein as our leader. He would probably appoint Lanita Lum as his information minister.