The following was originally a Facebook post by my long-time friend, Sharon Joebgen Steffen. Unlike most of the people who guest post here, she works in corporate finance, not journalism or communication. She is also married to my undergraduate and graduate school friend, Brian Steffen, who is a former journalist and a communication professor at Simpson College in Iowa. Thanks, Sharon, for letting me reprint it here:
Brian and Sharon Steffen
This is a longer post than I usually write, but I would appreciate it if very much if you would take the time to read it through.
First off, I am biased. I am biased in what I write here, because I am in love with a journalist. He is my sons’ father and my best friend of over 36 years. I am sad. I am sad that some of my friends and many strangers believe that the media is the enemy. And today, that thinking ended in bloodshed.
Since I assume those that believe this have never actually known a journalist, let me tell you about mine and many like him.
Brian Steffen has worked for a small community newspaper, a daily newspaper, and the Associated Press wire service. He has gotten up in the middle of the night to assist the police by taking pictures they request at a murder/suicide and a plane crash in order to aid in their investigations. He has come home to a new wife at 2:00 AM because the city council decided it had a lot to discuss and citizens needed to know what they had planned for their community. He has drove a broken down car to a 747 plane crash in a corn field and stayed for an indeterminate number of days until the cause was sorted out. And he has interviewed more politicians than a person should have to know in a lifetime – Republicans and Democrats – so people know where the candidates stand.
And then, when he was done with that, he went back to school to earn a doctorate so he could teach others. He has taught those that have gone on to win Pulitzers and he has spent weekends sitting in a coffee shop to help veterans learn how to write better.
Why? Because he believes that a free press is as essential to freedom as the very air we breathe is to life. And I have the honor to know many past and present colleagues of his that conduct themselves exactly the same.
Please. You know me. Can you please just think bigger than the slogans and political quips to trust me on this? The media is NOT the enemy. A silenced press crushes a democracy. It is easy when you don’t know a journalist, someone like my husband, to demonize and draw your line based on what you know not of. But you know me. And I know journalists. The media is NOT the enemy.
My husband doesn’t know I am writing this. And he may be unhappy with me or embarrassed. But I know this for sure – he will not be mad. Because he believes in my freedom to write it.