As veteran newsman Bill Kovach, former curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, has said:
"It is difficult to separate the concept of news and journalism from the notion of creating community and democracy. The world in which the well of accurate, reliable, factual information is not being constantly replenished is one that becomes more polluted with gossip, rumor, speculation and propaganda. This is a mixture that is toxic to civic health. This is a mixture that will produce a public less and less able to participate in civic life. This is a mixture that makes it more and more likely that a self-appointed elite will be free to exercise its will on society � Freedom and democracy depend upon individuals who refuse to give up the belief that the free flow of information has made freedom and human dignity possible. "
-- Quoted at the website of The Fund for Independence in Journalism: http://www.tfij.org