Superheroes and Freedom of the Press

{This cartoon is in the public domain. Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. The rights to the character are currently owned by Warner Brothers.}

What do Superman, the Green hornet, and Spider-Man have in common? A, they’re superheroes. B, They’re all journalists in their mundane alter egos.

It’s hard to be a superhero if you’re tied down to a nine to five job. A teacher can’t leave his classroom to dash out and stop a bank robbery. A factory worker who routinely disappears from his assembly line will be fired in he keeps going out to catch falling airplanes. A reporter, however, is supposed to be out and about asking questions, looking for bad guys, often not directly supervised by his editor. Also, superheroes are created by writers, who respect (and sometimes were) journalists. Therefore Clark Kent wrote for the Daily Planet, Britt Reid was the publisher of the Daily Sentinel, the newspaper his father owned, and young Peter Parker was a freelance photojournalist who worked for the Daily Bugle.

“Truth, justice, and the American way” included upholding the First Amendment. Superheroes like Superman, the Green Hornet, and Spider-Man looked up to John Peter Zenger, Ernie Pyle, and Ida B. Wells as their own heroes.

Now we have a duly elected president who fails in his oath to uphold the Constitution. (Based on his behavior, I strongly doubt the man has ever read the Constitution.) He has a habit of attacking and insulting journalists, and doesn’t seem to regard upholding the Freedom of the Press as one of the most important parts of his job. He is also threatening to prorogue Congress, as Charles I did with Parliament in 1626. I don’t wish to attract unfortunate attention from the Secret Service, but perhaps DJT should remember what happened to Charles I on January, 30 1649.