Connect: Wednesday was World Press Freedom Day. The opening sentence of an editorial in this newspaper marking the occasion observed: "Journalists are not the most important people in the world." This is true. Journalists are not the most important people in the world because everyone is - ignore tiresome realpolitik - equally important if you want them to be.
It's a matter of proportion, not of mere obeisance. That, at least, was the perspective of George Orwell, sometimes described as the "patron saint of journalists". Orwell hated the idea of anybody having power over another. For him, Joe and Josephine Soap were intrinsically as important as say, George Bush, the Pope or Queen Elizabeth. They just were - no more and no less.
In terms of power, of course, Bush, the Pope and the queen hold ranks to which few can aspire. They will feature more often in the media and will probably leave marks on history - hugely bigger marks than Joe or Josephine Soap are likely to manage.
But ultimately they are all, like humanity itself, ephemeral. That, it seemed to Orwell, ought to be a guiding principle of journalism.
Anyway, the editorial continued: "Where a free press does not exist (which, sadly, is most parts of the world) those who hold power and those who seek to usurp it, understand this [ press power] very well. This is why such effort is put into suppressing free media in almost the entire Middle East, most of Africa, much of South America and a fair swathe of Asia."
Again this is true but it conspicuously avoids mention of the erosion of press freedom since George Bush became president of the US. Journalism in that country facilitated the neocons' desire to attack Iraq and the results have been disastrous. The White House press corps, for instance, has, in its cravenness, become a dreadful and contemptuous smear on journalism.
Last Saturday, the White House Correspondents' Association held its annual dinner. About 2,600 members of the press and their guests attended. So did Bush. A comedian, Stephen Colbert, delivered a routine which reportedly left Bush seething. The press corps responded with stone-cold silence and many reports of the event completely omitted mention of Colbert.
"Over the past five years you people were so good - over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effects of global warming," mocked Colbert. "We Americans didn't want to know and you had the courtesy not to try to find out . . . Here's how it works: the president makes decisions, the press secretary announces those decisions and you people type those decisions down.
"Make, announce, type; make, announce, type; make, announce, type . . . just put them through a spell check and go home . . . Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know - fiction!"
Colbert was right: the current US administration has cowed journalists and acknowledging the fact is the least that's required. Last Sunday, the New York Times carried a page one story on the latest phase of the administration's war against the press.
Bush is now considering "the criminal prosecution of reporters under the espionage laws". "Has the New York Times violated the Espionage Act?" asks Gabriel Schoenfeld in a polemic in the neocon journal Commentary. It's clear that the neocons enjoyed initial success in Iraq, partly because of their military's overwhelmingly superior firepower but also because of a media tamed by "embedded" reporters, a ban on pictures of returning body bags and a torrent of propaganda.
Eventually the Washington Post exposed secret CIA prisons in other countries and the New York Times disclosed Bush's order to the National Security Agency to pursue domestic surveillance without court warrants. Both papers won Pulitzers for their reports but William Bennett, a former Republican cabinet secretary, now a commentator on CNN, said: "What they did is worthy of jail."
That's the prevailing attitude among neocons. Oh, they may leak disinformation to sympathetic reporters to pretend Saddam Hussein possessed WMD but any corrective to these lies requires people to be jailed. Wow, that's a wonderfully free press! The problem is that, despite Stephen Colbert's pointed remarks, it's no laughing matter.
Last year, 63 journalists were killed in the course of their work and 176 remain imprisoned for incurring the wrath of those in power. The US is unique in having a First Amendment which ensures that government there shall make no laws interfering with "free speech or a free press". Clearly, that amendment is now in jeopardy from Bush and his cabal.
In the week that marked World Press Freedom Day, US journalism faces great perils. It's not alone in that, of course. Irish and British journalism and no doubt, the journalism of other countries, cannot afford to be smug about contemporary threats.
Journalists are certainly not the most important people in the world; nobody is. Orwell could at least see through the emptiness of power.