essential actors, part 1

reminders on how democracy functions

Our next Timely Topic for Concerned Citizens will be Friday, 19 May when we will discuss Israel with Adam Oler of the National War College. Put it on your calendar.

The Biden administration announced further sanctions on Russia and Iran, hardly two of our bosom buddies, regarding their incarcerations of U.S. citizens. Both of these states, along with several other governments, hold Americans as hostages on the grounds they were engaging in espionage while it certainly appears instead that the individuals were pursuing legitimate activities, often simply visiting relatives. These egregious acts stifle much support for ameliorating what are invariably tense state-to-state relations.

Just yesterday, the long-held WNBA basketballer Brittney Griner spoke emotionally of her ten-month imprisonment at the hands of the same Russian regime. Griner’s case resulted from illegal possession of drugs, which ironically is taken more seriously in many other countries than it is in the United States despite our six decade-long ‘war on drugs’. The Russians swapped Griner for arms dealer Viktor Bout, a Putin ally, in December. Griner could have been kicked out of Russia but became useful for Putin’s aims.

It’s the messaging that the regimes holding hostages want something from the United States that is most frustrating to the families and citizens here at home. The idea that random citizens are pawns in geopolitical drama offends our sense of justice. We probably all assume the government designates missions for some folks to go overseas to collect information but those people understand they are on official missions. The vast majority of arrested people, such as Paul Whelan, are simply living their lives, even if some times individuals do use pretty poor judgment such as backpacking in Iran which led to their seizure between 2009 and 2011.¹ The point is that hostage-taking is a menacing behaviour without cause except political whims of regimes who care little about anyone but themselves and their survival. These people deserve freedom to return home.

This is phenomenon includes Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich who the Russians arrested for spying while he was working in Yekaterinburg last month. Son of Russian emigres, Gershkovich lapped up Russian culture, language, politics, and history for several years as he reported from that country as he had done previously for The New York Times and other publications.

Major newspapers in the United States continue printing full page adverts demanding his release, pressuring the U.S. Government to use its full powers to expedite that process. Instead, the Putin continues blocking visits by Embassy Moscow to assure his state of mind, his physical condition, and the normal activities in a democracy.

And that is the point. Democracies rely on journalists while authoritarians detest and fear them. Journalism, carried out professionally and faithfully, shines a light on activities—good, bad, or mostly average and normal. Reporting on what goes on in a society is utterly the foundation of a democracy surviving and thriving.

The Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Saudis, among others, have shown their fear of unflinching looks at behaviours in their societies. These regimes fear the spread of knowledge, recoil from explaining why some actions benefit friends of friends in power rather than the whole of the country, and reject the notion of accountability to all. There are reasons that Xi Jinping and Vlad the Impaler call themselves ‘dear friends’, sharing fear of their own citizens’ potential fury at how showing government decision-making clearly favours only a few.

Sadly, journalism in the United States is increasingly under siege. We have confused reporting with rants about endorsing or rejecting political positions. I don’t always like what I read but I owe it to myself to assure I read as broadly as possible in sites where they must provide me with evidence of their sources. I am free then to decide whether to accept or reject any particular story based on data rather than screaming (on the right or left) about political motivations.

I regret that not every single person labelled a journalist holds the highest standards in their field any more than every single college football program follows the rules set forth by the NCAA (whole different set of problems to discuss) or every professor updates her lectures weekly to include new materials; there are bad apples. I am saying that the phrase the Washington Post uses, ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’, is true because those of us who cannot see what is going on in our society are sentenced to ignorance which undermines everything about our way of life.

Evan Gershkovich as a journalist was doing his job. David Rohde, decades ago after Bosnian Serbian forces seized him for reporting on the Srbrenica massacre in 1995, was doing his job. We must never forget how vital that job is for each and every one of us to be able to do our parts as members of participatory societies, a gift of unbelievable measure. Democracy must have good journalism to provide us knowledge with which we can functions as a society. FIN

1. ‘The freed American hikers speak of their captivity in Iran’, CBSSunday.com, 16 March 2014, retrieved https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-freed-american-hikers-speak-on-their-captivity-in-iran/