Executive Editor: The Free Press embodies the free press

Michael Kilian | Burlington Free Press

I recommend before you read what I have to say, you take a few minutes and read first the insightful commentary offered today by my respected USA TODAY Network colleague Manny Garcia, the Network's standards editor.

What he says, and what I'll reaffirm, is that the existence of a free press is bedrock to what makes America great. Its existence transcends politics and the debates and disagreements of a particular moment in our nation's history. Without the free press, discourse and progress in our nation would be well nigh impossible.

We would be living in a desert devoid of facts and information. And that's not a place any of us want to be.

Twenty years ago, I was an editor in Utica, New York, where a mayor detested the local newspaper. If he read a story he didn't like, or even a sentence in a story, he would take steps such as forbidding every city employee to talk to reporters for some indefinite length of time. This meant the city police wouldn't even describe what had happened in a car accident or at a crime scene.

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These "media blackouts" meant the newspaper and local TV stations spent much time and sometimes money filing countless Freedom of Information Law requests, obtaining information about events or city actions many days, weeks or even months after the fact. Needless to say, the good people of Utica were not particularly well served by this.

In the end, the next mayor signed a federal court settlement promising the city wouldn't bar media from publicly available information. And in the ensuing 18 years, the natural tensions between elected officials and reporters have existed as they had for nearly two centuries before -- an imperfect but workable arrangement in which public officials understand they are accountable to, well, the public, through the efforts of a free press.

Here in Vermont, it makes me smile that the founders of this news organization included the words "Free Press" right there in our name. At the top of the print newspaper masthead since well before the Civil War — and on our website now — those two words have sat as a beacon of what our mission is all about.

When Vermonters are in need, Free Press journalists are there. Take our recent coverage of flaws in enforcement of domestic violence laws as an example.

When Vermonters want to know about the new marijuana law or gun law, Free Press journalists take the time to understand the nuance and share it with the public.

When history is made, such as Christine Hallquist's Democratic Party primary win this week, making her the first transgender major-party nominee for governor anywhere in the United States, Free Press journalists chronicle the event and provide context on the event.

And when Vermonters are facing the wrath of nature, whether it be Tropical Storm Irene or the high winds in early May of this year, it is Free Press journalists who share information that can help assure public safety and help residents cope in the aftermath.

Countless more examples exist, but you get the point. The Burlington Free Press is by no means perfect, and continuing changes in audience behavior and technology and the news business have proved challenging in recent years.

But we pledge to you we will always be here to do what the Free Press -- and the free press -- are meant to do thanks to the vision of the authors of the Bill of Rights: to serve the public.

Michael Kilian is executive editor of the Burlington Free Press. Email him at mkilian@freepressmedia.com or tweet at him: @kilian_btv