Lost in the critical race theory debate: the enduring value of a free press | Opinion

Overlooked in the onslaught against critical race theory is the danger this campaign holds for a constitutional right fundamental to democracy’s functioning in America: freedom of the press.

The intentions of critical race theory opponents clash with the constitutional intent behind the First Amendment’s protection of the free press.

The campaign against critical race theory, at its core, seeks exclusion of information, especially instruction about racism and racism’s historical damages across American society.

Journalism in America, however, has a constitutional responsibility to present information to the public. That responsibility includes information about the realities of racism that critical race theory opponents dismiss. The founders of the United States believed the “informed electorate” essential for democracy is undermined without information from a free press.

Benjamin Franklin, that famous Philadelphian and Founding Father, frequently utilized his colonial-era newspaper — the Pennsylvania Gazette — to advocate for freedoms of press and speech. Franklin felt censorship created conditions for tyranny because constraints on information cripple free government.

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Franklin’s observation that “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest” holds as much value for newsrooms as it does classrooms.

Journalists need an array of information to develop understandings requisite for accurate reportage. Without understandings, journalists cannot, for example, fulfill the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Code provision to “[b]oldly tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience.”

Detractors of critical race theory contend classroom instruction about racism is racist. An anti-critical race theory measure pending in the Pennsylvania state legislature would bar “any learning material that promotes any racist or sexist concepts” from classroom use — kindergarten through college.

Will journalism students in Pennsylvania and the two dozen states that have approved or are considering anti-critical race theory measures be forbidden from learning similarities between retaliations against journalists Alexander Manly and Nikole Hannah-Jones related to racism?

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In 1898, Manly escaped death when he fled to Philadelphia hours before insurrectionists destroyed his newspaper in Wilmington, N.C. In the “White Declaration of Independence,” those insurrectionists bashed Manly for an editorial that castigated racist lynching of Black people.

In 2021, some trustees at the University of North Carolina assailed Hannah-Jones because of her award-winning project for the New York Times examining systemic racism.

Under vaguely worded anti-critical race theory constraints, a column The Inquirer published in August 1960 could face exclusion from classroom examinations. That column about the accomplishments of the first African American U.S. senator noted how civil rights issues in the 1870s that Sen. Hiram Revels “stood for are still unresolved” — an assessment with contemporary resonance.

That Inquirer commentary prompted an editorial days later in the African American-owned Philadelphia Tribune. This editorial applauded that column for presenting historical facts then excluded from public school textbooks.

The Tribune editorial also expressed insight relevant to the current ruckus around critical race theory.

The editorial stated that when Black people complain about exclusions of information, “they are not asking that school children be indoctrinated with social theories, they are only requesting that truth be presented.”

Critical race theory is not an existential threat to America.

The greater threat remains continued denial of truths about racism.

Linn Washington Jr. is a journalism professor at Temple University.