Everyone wants the right to express him or herself. It is a basic fundamental right of human nature. People wish to express their views, how they feel, their opinions on topics around the world. Some people, reporters, take this to the extreme. Not only do they want to express themselves, they go out of their way to get the facts from head figures so that they can even more thoroughly express themselves and their opinions.

Yet, around the world, this wish to express is at risk. In some countries, it has been like this for decades, such as the oppressive Chinese government, Afghanistan, North Korea and several African countries.

While many believe this threat to be contained, it is actually only beginning to spread, even in our own homeland, the United States of America. Everyone knows our first amendment. Our first amendment is what gives people the right to express themselves. It’s what gives reporters the right to express, expose and do their jobs without oppression or punishment from the government. Yet this amendment is challenged, pushed and strained every day.

Around the globe, journalists are hurt, tortured, imprisoned or even killed for simply trying to gather the facts. Take, for example, the Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In short, Khashoggi was a journalist who use to work for the Crown of Saudi Arabia, but went into exile, exposing and criticizing the policies and politics of the Saudi Arabia royalty. A few months ago, while on a visit in Turkey, he was killed.

This is, obviously, no coincidence. Key journalists like this are not just targeted and murdered for little to no reason. Most likely, he was killed by someone who didn’t want the facts getting out, didn’t want bad news pouring out of this man like a faucet. Tying up loose ends, as they say. This suppression of the facts is not okay. People need to know what is going on, why it’s going on, and how it is going to affect them. Knowledge like this should be a basic right. Yet governments, crime gangs, and other parties love to suppress this knowledge, for they know that such knowledge curbs their power as they could face the wrath of the public masses if such news were to be published.

But such actions are not just limited to foreign nations, the suppression of knowledge happens within our own political borders, though not nearly to such an extent that journalists are literally tortured and killed. Instead, journalists in the United States are suppressed in more subtle (or not so subtle) ways. For example, in the last month, at the White House, CNN reporter Jim Acosta had his press passed revoked, and not any reasonable purpose either. Acosta had his pass revoked after asking President Trump some rather controversial questions, and has a known bad history with the president due to his strong urge to viciously purse the truth of facts. Never before in the history in the White House has a reporter been kicked out for this. The only times reporters have been kicked out of the White House is when they have made threats on the presidents life- something in an entirely different league than for asking for the truth from the president.

Such acts should not be tolerated by the press, nor by the masses. As a nation, we have the right to the truth. We have a right to know what the President’s actions are, how he’s spending money, what legislation he plans on passing. Such things need to be made public. While sometimes such facts need to be hidden for a period of time, such facts also need to be brought to the light eventually.

Imagine, for a moment, a future America where the President and other government bodies could ban and bar certain reporters from attending certain events or entering certain places. Would we, as a population, ever get the facts that we desperately need in order to decide what path our country should be treading? Or should we be limited to government-approved reports, containing hidden or missing figures, relying on the word of our governing bodies to give us the truth, similar to countries like China and the Koreas?

I am asking you as a reader now to consider the examples above that I have given for you. The fate of the modern press is at stake, even if we do not truly realize it yet. If actions like these are allowed to pass, what’s next? If we allow the President to just throw out a journalist he doesn’t like, what’s to stop him from starting to just throw out journalists all together? What is to keep him from barring all kinds of facts from exiting the White House without the permission of himself or his committee?

The fate of journalists is in the hands of the people of the world now. All around the globe, it will be up to the people to decide if they would like the facts to keep flowing, or if they will allow them to be suppressed through violence and subtle acts of aggression. If you value the facts, the information, then please, I am asking you to side with journalists against the elimination of knowledge. Journalists will not be silenced without a fight, and the facts will continue to flow. Yet journalists cannot due this without your support.