Freedom Isn't Free

摘要

The framers of the constitutionrnprotected freedom of the press, but they didn't mean that the press ought to be free in the sense that no one ought to pay for it. In fact, they believed that the cost of not having a free flow of information in a democracy was too high to pay. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be," wrote Thomas Jefferson.rnThe central conversation in the media business these days is how to preserve and provide quality journalism and in-depth reporting at a time when consumers and readers expect to get them for free on the Internet. Information may want to be free, as the Web axiom suggests, but sending correspondents to Baghdad and Kabul and everywhere in between costs money. Information may want to be free, but knowledge and reporting and insight are expensive-and valuable.