I edited the opinion page at a daily newspaper for ten years. Under one publisher I was free to tell the truth; that publisher was not afraid of standing up to, for instance, General Electric, which was (and still is) trying to get away from its responsibility to clean up the horrible pollutants it dumped for decades into the Hudson River. When legal marriage for gays and lesbians became a local issue, that publisher, even though something of a conservative, deeply impressed me by approving an editorial supporting marriage rights for homosexuals.
But then he retired, and under his successor the pressure was always there, at least implicitly, to write editorials saying what the newspaper's advertisers and the powerful politicians wanted to hear. What led to my demise at that newspaper was my refusal to issue a blindly glowing rave, disguised as an editorial series, of the bone-headed notion that casinos built in the fragile ecology of the Catskill Mountains would be an economic boon, rather than a vacuum cleaner sucking up the local merchant economy and local jobs, a huge drain on local budgets throughout the region for roads, schools, and infrastructure for all the new residents needed to staff the casinos, and a sickening magnet for crime, drugs, and prostitution.
For those who don't speak up, the Bible is clear. "Would that you were either hot or cold. But because you are lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth!"
