A free press and public access to information and a broad range of ideas and opinions were considered so essential for a healthy democratic republic that the Founders included protection for freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution. **Alex Jones**, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, and **Charles Sennott**, founder of Global Post and The GroundTruth Project, assess how today’s press–print and electronic–is carrying out its mission. Where do current threats to a free press come from? How can citizens inform themselves in today’s media environment?
Alex Jones is Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Laurence M. Lombard Lecturer in the Press and Public Policy. He covered the press for TheNew York Times from 1983 to 1992 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. In 1992, he left the Times to work on The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times (also coauthored with Tifft), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in biography. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, a host of National Public Radio's On the Media, and host and Executive Editor of PBS's Media Matters. He is on the boards of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, International Center for Journalists, Foundation of the Society of Professional Journalists, Harvard Magazine, Nieman Foundation, Black Mountain Institute, the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, and other professional organizations.
Charles Sennott is the founder and Editor of The GroundTruth Project. He is an award-winning correspondent, best-selling author, and editor with 30 years of experience in international, national and local journalism. A leading social entrepreneur in new media, Sennott started GroundTruth in 2014 and in 2017, launched the non-profit organization's new, local reporting initiative, Report for America.