Only a robust, healthy press can keep democracy on solid ground

As the Dale Washam saga enters its next sorry stage, perhaps it is time to devote a little ink to how it could have been prevented in the first place and how our community scrutinizes and watches incom-petent or corrupt elected officials and the govern-ments they intend to lead.

The concept of the “fourth estate” – a free press serving as a watchdog of the government – was so valued by our Founding Fathers that it is the only profession mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The experiment we call “democracy” is dependent upon an independent, free press that keeps tabs on the abuses of government, vets candidates and facilitates public discussion.

Unfortunately, many newspapers are on life support. Rising production costs, lower circulation and more readers turning to the Internet have decimated the industry.

In the past few years, we’ve seen the printed versions of the Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer disappear, and most of the survivors have cut staff numbers significantly. My local daily has become a skeleton of itself in terms of actual printed pages and the content of local reporting.

In the mid-1990s, I was a college journalist with ambitions to make a career in this important field. Classroom discussions centered on the role of the press, impartiality and integrity as much as interviewing techniques and how to construct a story.

Years later, now serving as an elected parks commissioner and former candidate for Pierce County Council and watching the “press coverage” or lack thereof, I am alarmed at the status of our printed media and fear our democracy is at stake.

When the local press fails to point out candidates’ flaws, they sometimes get elected. Example: the election of Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer Dale Washam in 2008.

Perhaps the down-ticket race was forgotten in a presidential year that also featured a highly contested governor’s race. Perhaps no one foresaw that the now-discontinued instant runoff voting system would lead to Washam’s election.

The News Tribune has since spent considerable ink detailing his pre- and post-election exploits and now his possible recall. But had it devoted even a fraction of this attention to Washam’s inability to lead – not just his gadfly status – prior to his election, voters would not have placed him into office. Pierce County would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawsuits and a recall election.

We saw a similar situation with Judge Michael Hecht, who was convicted of a crime and subsequently resigned from his elected seat on the bench. Who will slip through the cracks in this year’s election, and how much will taxpayers have to pay because a candidate was not properly vetted by the press?

But covering elections is only half the job, as our democracy needs something to track and report the accomplishments and failures of our elected leaders and the institutions they represent.

In 1993, 34 paid journalists covered the session in Olympia; by last year, that number had shrunk to eight. (In contrast, 804 registered lobbyists are pushing their agendas in our state capital). Who’s watching and letting the public know about the 5,000 bills that are introduced in each session? Add in county and city governments; school boards; port, park and fire districts, and there is a lot of government that needs to be accounted for locally.

Our community needs to have a discussion about the role of the media. Do we let the printed newspapers go extinct and trust the Internet to fill the void?

Do we let the corporate-owned papers go bankrupt and replace them with free, independent weeklies? Do we value the community need of a printed press and give tax breaks or even subsidies to keep them afloat? Or do we even value an impartial, independent press in this era of 24-7 Fox News, Huffington Post and Facebook?

All these questions lead to a final question: If there is no newspaper, who then reports and moderates this discussion?

Todd Iverson of Gig Harbor is a longshoreman and a Peninsula Metropolitan Park District commissioner. He co-founded America In Solidarity, a workers’ rights group based in Tacoma.