It’s not surprising that my friend would say that. Christopher smoked incessantly. I don’t smoke. Never did. He drank with famous frequency—beginning with scotch, ending with cognac. I drink very little, almost never scotch or cognac. He was an impressively prolific writer. I’m an editor, have been since 1983. He wrote books, including a best-selling memoir. I haven’t . . . and I am my least favorite subject.

He was a regular presence on television and on debating platforms. I preferred to stay in the background—until a certain movie blew that idea to smithereens.

He once subjected himself to waterboarding. He also got a Brazilian bikini wax. I wouldn’t do either.

Christopher Hitchens photographed in the July 2004 issue of Vanity Fair. Photograph by Christian Witkin.

And as Graydon Carter wrote in his eloquent essay on the day Christopher died, he “will be remembered for the millions of words he left behind.” I may be remembered for how few I spoke—if the movie Spotlight is an indication.

Poor Liev Schreiber. He could not have been assigned a more challenging role. He had to portray someone both stingy with words and restrained in his emotions. No wonder that, when we first met, Liev kept probing to see if I’d done or said something more, well, dramatic.

So Christopher and I were different people. But in truth we shared a lot.

In Hitch-22, Christopher recounts how he was called by The Washington Post on Valentine’s Day 1989 for his opinion about the fatwah Ayatollah Khomeini had issued against [novelist] Salman Rushdie.

It was, he wrote, “a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship.”

When it comes to values, with the exception of religion—which I do not hate—Christopher and I are cut from the same cloth.

Values are what matter most. And this is a good time to talk about them. A good time to reaffirm what we as journalists stand for.

This is a time we are compelled to fight for free expression and a free press—rights granted us under the Constitution, yes, but also the very qualities that have long set us apart from other nations.

We will have a new president soon. He was elected after waging an outright assault on the press. Animosity toward the media was a centerpiece of his campaign. He described the press as “disgusting,” “scum,” “lowlifes.” He called journalists the “lowest form of humanity.” That apparently wasn’t enough. So he called us “the lowest form of life.” In the final weeks of the campaign he labeled us “the enemies.”

It is no wonder that some members of our staff at The Washington Post and at other news organizations received vile insults and threats of personal harm so worrisome that extra security was required. It is no wonder that one Internet venue known for hate and misogyny and white nationalism posted the home addresses of media executives, clearly inviting vandalism or worse. Thankfully, nothing that I know of happened to anyone. Then there was the yearlong anti-Semitic targeting of journalists on Twitter.

Donald Trump said he wanted to “open up” libel laws. And he proposed to harass unfriendly media outlets by suing them, driving up their legal expenses with a goal of weakening them financially.

With respect to The Washington Post, he ordered our press credentials revoked during the campaign, barring us from routine press access to him and his events, because our coverage didn’t meet with his approval. Even before we were subjected to his months-long blacklist, Donald Trump falsely alleged that our owner, Jeff Bezos, was orchestrating that coverage. And he openly hinted that, if he became president, he would retaliate.