For the poet and the journalist, and many others, they are unbearable. The indifference or tolerance of the erosion of democratic institutions including the press is predicated on a belief that times will always be good. However, when the economic going gets rough, as it will again, people begin to doubt the constitution of liberty and embrace illiberal political projects. In such a crisis it might prove impossible to reinvent and repair institutions we have so carelessly damaged. The ultimate justification for journalism and the First Amendment is that together they constitute us as a civil society and set us in conversation with one another.
Journalism is our public diary, our day book, and as such it forms our collective memory.
These are not good images to carelessly implant in public memory.