A free and independent press is essential for democracy. The press has a responsibility to inform citizens about both the policies and the actions of the government and about credible challenges to those policies and actions, to report on conditions that may require new or different government initiatives, and to raise timely questions itself about debatable policies and the rationales presented for them.

With the recent controversies over the failure of the press to fully live up to its responsibilities in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the role of the media in the outing of a covert CIA agent, the rise of the blogosphere and so-called citizen journalism, and the impact of increasing financial pressures on newspapers and magazines, public confidence in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. What are the implications of this for our democracy? How might our faith in the press be restored?