As a summer resident of Maine for almost a half-century now, I have come to greatly appreciate the quality of reporting in the Sun Journal. I have never been more impressed with that quality than in the almost full page editorial on Aug. 16. The Sun Journal joined publications across this country, each speaking in its own words, in expressing in stark and brilliant terms the concern and revulsion at attacks on journalists and our press.

In careful research extending back to Boston in 1690, the editorial recounted the history of suppression of American journalists that led to the strong protections on free speech and press embodied in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, that is the first of those bulwarks of personal freedom expressed in what has ever since their adoption been called the Bill of Rights.

Attacks on journalists and journalism are certainly not new on the political scene, but their vehemence and departure from any semblance of truth now are new in the modern age and very dangerous when emanating from the highest levels of government and when combined with punitive measures to try to silence those who speak out.

That the press has collectively, but each in its own individual way, spoken out so effectively is a great reflection of those most-prized liberties that everyone should cherish.

Steve Hudspeth, Andover