Use it or lose it

On Tuesday, Donald Trump tweeted that “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag—if they do, there must be consequences—perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Whether the tweet was meant as a distraction from other issues, it nonetheless served to remind that Trump either has a startling contempt for Constitutional rights or a basic lack of understanding about what such rights entail. Perhaps both.

The First Amendment, of course, protects freedom of expression. The right to speak freely, the right to protest, the right to burn flags, if you will.

The First Amendment also protects, among other things, the right to a free press.

Trump’s clear mockery and reckless disregard for journalists, however, make that right feel tenuous at best.

But it’s journalists and reputable news outlets that will hold Trump accountable. It’s journalists and reputable news outlets that will dig beneath the surface and shed light on subjects that might otherwise get overshadowed by blustery distractions and, yes, inflammatory tweets.

That’s why this week’s feature story is so important. For 40 years the folks behind Project Censored have found and highlighted important topics that the corporate mainstream media has missed.

And this year’s list is a must-read (See “All the news not fit to print,” page 14): the massive expansion of U.S. military forces across the globe; Big Pharma’s ever-creeping corporate greed; the possible impact of search engine algorithms on the recent presidential election.

Freedom of the press is still a constitutional right; the more we exercise it, the less danger there is of losing it.