‘Watchman for truth:’ Why this Supreme Court Justice’s warning from 1945 is still relevant today

WaPo editor Marty Baron dropped some knowledge on Sunday’s “Reliable Sources” broadcast. And I think everyone should hear it. He cited a quote from FDR-era Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who wrote this in 1945:

“Watchman for truth” is a concept that has kept coming up through the years, sometimes attributed to others, though it originated with Jackson. Applying the quote to the present day, President Trump uses his free speech to promote one religion (“everybody is saying Merry Christmas again!”) and disparage the press. His administration certainly cannot be trusted to separate true from false.

So, as Baron told me, “every person needs to use their own judgment, their independent judgment, and evaluate the facts in front of them. But actually look at the facts.”

News outlets can play a part in helping people find the facts, or, conversely, in spreading a fog that makes it hard to tell what’s true and what’s false…

More from Marty Baron:

One on one with David Remnick

With impeachment moving from the House to, at some point, the Senate, David Remnick says “the stakes here are immense.”

Remnick also said, “I think the press has done, in total, a terrific job of putting together the sum of particulars against Trump, whether it has to do with character, business behavior, political behavior, and on the story of Ukraine. We know what’s what.”

All of the “fakery” stands in the way of what Justice Jackson described as the individual responsibility to ferret out what’s true. The poisoned information ecosystem makes the job of the “watchman for truth” much more difficult…