Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

I don’t know who said that but, when you think about it, he or she was absolutely right. If you’re not in the news business, you may still technically enjoy the constitutionally protected freedom of the press but in practical terms you can’t really exercise it in the way traditional print and electronic media do — although the Internet is changing the rules somewhat and press expression is becoming more universal. Still, the recognized news organizations are mostly able to slant the news any way they want and broadcast editorial opinions on any topic they fancy, but you and I usually can’t.

That leads to the question: What can we do to correct the record when those stories or editorial comments are biased, unfair or just ill informed?

The media will tell you that you can write a letter to the editor, which might or might not be published. You can submit a guest op-ed article, which might or might not get published. And sometimes that’s fine. The PBA has written many letters to the editors and has had published many op-ed pieces.

But does that really balance the scale of impact on the public consciousness, particularly when a newspaper has an anti-union agenda that it constantly pushes? Not really.

And what do you do when a newspaper consistently supports the city’s negotiating positions — often using the Office of Labor Relation’s very language — over the union’s arguments. The case in point is the contract coverage by the alleged civil service weekly, The Chief-Leader, which does precisely that. In this case, how does the PBA exercise its freedom of the press? What we decided to do is write our own column and place it in ad space every month.

The PBA reserved a full page of space in that newspaper one week each month to tell our side of the story, offer our own editorial comments and opinions. Pat Lynch is writing a column that will provide a consistent forum from which the PBA can correct the slanted stories that appear in the paper and also promote its point of view in a more proactive way.

Lynch will write about contract issues, including the need for fair pay for New York City police officers, and rebut any Chief news article or editorial that sides with management, as they often do. The column will guarantee us the opportunity to tell our side of the story without the often biased or warped interpretation of reporters or editorial writers.

When, for example, The Chief-Leader or other anti-union media write about how the city needs “productivity improvements” to pay us more, we explain that, in the city’s eyes, “productivity” is not about doing more with less but about givebacks, working more tours and having less time off. When, for another example, they claim that challenges to the PERB process are motivated by union politics, we will be able to tell the public in print that the city constantly crooned that same refrain, even when union elections were years away. And when they criticize the union for fighting for our members’ rights — then, well, we will have the guaranteed freedom (of the press) to point out the error of their ways.