Giving Compass' Take:

• Carroll Bogert highlights the importance of journalism for finding problems, which responsive governments can use as a starting point for making effective change. 

• How can funders help journalism thrive as it comes under attack from the president? 

• Learn how solutions journalism led to change in Seattle schools. 

As a correspondent in Moscow in the twilight years of Soviet power, I well remember the term “enemies of the people.” It had fallen out of favor by then but still evoked lingering threats to any free-thinking Soviet citizen. Many had been exiled or killed after being publicly labeled a “vrag naroda” in an earlier, more militant era. This ugly label, as much as any, signified the many ways Americans felt their democracy was superior to Russian communism.

Now that the American president has taken to using this very term against American journalists, I’m reminded why Mikhail Gorbachev would never have done so. The last Soviet leader desperately needed the media to shine a light on those parts of the system that were not working — which were, by the late 1980s, very many parts. Lazy bureaucrats and corrupt officials had previously been safe from the glare of publicity. The media proved useful to Gorbachev in rooting out inefficiency and renovating the system.

It’s important not to overstate the notion of a partnership between journalists and policymakers. Mostly, the media are a pain in the neck to people in public office. We don’t live to serve the goals of people in power, even reform-minded ones. We live to point out wrongdoing, and if someone in power has the good sense to act upon our revelations, so much the better. If they don’t, we need to keep doing our job anyway.

Read the full article about journalism by Carroll Bogert at The Marshall Project.