Provide state support to protect journalism

The essential work of the print media is no less important than decades ago. But for that work to continue, newspapers must be given a chance to survive, writes TP O’Mahony.

IN 1997, Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, recalled how concerned she was in June 1971 about the survival of the paper as she and her staff awaited a US Supreme Court adjudication on the Post’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers — a secret study of the Vietnam War.

“I fully recognised that the soul of the newspaper was at stake,” she said at the time to editor Ben Bradlee.