Columnist: Press keeps an eye on Democracy

Gene Policinski, vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C., goes to bat for the struggling newspaper industry, arguing in a new column that newspapers play a vital watchdog role in our Democratic society.

Some examples Policinski cites where newspapers uncovered government waste or fraud:

The Dominion Post, in Morgantown, W.Va., continued to investigate and question the operations of a board that governs the city's publicly funded senior center.

The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tenn., reported on contributions to the mayor's annual Christmas party that wound up in the mayor's pocket.

In Los Angeles, the Daily News reported on sizable tax bills being sent to home-based businesses as a result of a faulty assumption.

The Spokesman-Review, in Washington state, found in a public-records search that prosecutors declined to charge a former sheriff's deputy, in spite of having evidence of a crime, simply because the man was a veteran officer.

"And then there are the hundreds, if not thousands, of government meetings, decrees, bills, plans and pronouncements held up to scrutiny each week in the nation's dailies and weeklies, and on local and network TV news programs," Policinski writes.

Read the full column, "The press keeps an eye on Democracy," here.