After nearly two years of chaos, conflict and constitutional crises, American voters on Tuesday expressed their overwhelming dissatisfaction with the state of the union. Now, Democrats need to decide what that mandate means for the next two years, while Republicans need to figure out their identity as a party in a fast-approaching post-Trump world. But all Americans need to grapple with what kind of country we want for generations to come.

No issue is more fundamental to that question, or as illustrative of the fragilities in our democracy, than press freedom.

What does a free and responsible press owe a democratic society? In 1942, as total war tested the resilience of free institutions across the globe, University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins and Time publisher Henry Luce set out to tackle a question that is arguably even more relevant today, with public trust in news as low as ever.…