Page says ‘vibrant, functioning democracy’ depends on ‘vibrant’ media

In receiving the Order of the Owl award at Friday’s National Press Club Silver Owls Hoot, Susan Page, for decades one of the leading journalists in Washington, said the news media has had to combat the public’s lack of trust as well as fight well-financed attacks to maintain its critical role in defending democracy.

Page, the USA Today Washington bureau chief, has covered the White House for seven administrations as well as serving as a political commentator and biographer. She has been a Club member for 45 years.

“The mission of journalists now and forever is to inform the public, to explain confusing times, to hold the powerful to account, to be an independent voice,” she said at the Hoot. “That is what we do. That is why we're here. Our nation's founders understood this. They knew we can't have a vibrant, functioning democracy without a vibrant, functioning press. That's what the National Press Club has stood for from the start, since it was founded in 1908. 

To build trust, the news media should have been more transparent in the past in explaining how it gathers the news, she said, but it now faces a president and his administration’s “fierce and false attacks” to undercut traditional media with frivolous lawsuits to intimidate and bleed news organizations.

Now, she said, the administration is insisting that Pentagon reporters have to sign pledges not to report unauthorized news.

“Reporting unauthorized news is the definition of what we do,” she said. “It will never change whether we file by teletype or TikTok.

In addition to press freedom threats, the other big challenge facing journalism is the demise of its traditional business model, Page said. 

In response, news providers are erecting pay walls, trying to convince billionaires to become owners, creating non-profit outlets, leveraging social media and becoming independent newsletter publishers.

“There's not going to be one answer, one silver bullet. We are in the middle of a new age of experimentation,” Page said.

The Silver Owls is an organization within the Club of members of more than 25 years. The owl has been a symbol of the Club since its founding. “Head Hoot” Rod Kuckro, and the Council of Wisest Owls organized the event. The Order of the Owl goes to noted journalists, Club supporters and champions of press freedom.

But the evening was not all seriousness. In introducing Page, George Condon, who has worked with her in covering the White House since the Reagan administration, got a lot of laughs reading the lede of a story she wrote while working as a young reporter on Long Island, N.Y. 

Said Condon: “I like to think that the trip to the White House beat began the day she went to Sag Beach and wrote this: ‘They draw oglers with binoculars, slow foot traffic to a standstill, get warnings from police officers and risk sunburn in the most delicate places. Still, more and more vacationers are untying bikini tops and dropping swim trunks to the sand on East End beaches.’ Susan never commented on the irony of a nude beach being named Sag Beach.”

Newly Inducted Owls 

Silver Owls (25 years of uninterrupted Club membership): Gary H. Baise, Edward J. Barks, Carol Bennett, Victor Block, Jim Campi, Bod DeFillippo, Sharon T. Freeman, Ed Hazelwood, Maria C. Higgins, William O. Hillburg, Mark Horner, Wayne Madsen, Thomas R. Mullen, Margaret Orchowski, Jim Ostroff, Jeff Plungis, Alexander Rose.

Gold Owls (50 years): Diana Gregg, Jeffrey A. Prussin

Platinum Owls (60 years): J. Robert Barlow, Charles Brian Kelly, Mark Melcher, Arthur P. Miller, Daniel B. Moskowitz, Robert A. White