The only way anything has ever survived this world was because it was cared for and nurtured. That goes for babies and the Honda sitting in your driveway. It also goes for the sauce you made last Sunday and the flowers you planted in your window box last summer.

And so, too, does it apply to our democracy. Democracy requires active citizens who help maintain the checks and balances of democratic life. And it also requires a steadfast media. The role of a free and independent press is to closely monitor the government and constantly keep the people informed.

I have worked on and off in the press since 1983 and I can tell you without reservation that we are not being properly informed.

And I also know that the media today has little similarity to the press I joined in the early 1980s. So my only guidepost when reading and researching is to find a bearing for the truth.

Not an easy task in an era of fake news.

Last week’s censoring of the New York Post by social media felt like a last straw to many who were already weary of the press. The Post, which has the fourth largest circulation of readers in the United States, had in its possession a hard drive allegedly from a computer of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. Hunter had allegedly left it at a repair shop in Delaware when it was damaged by liquid, but he never picked it up. By law, it became the property of the shop after 90 days.

The computer repairman man who had transferred the information to an external drive for the person alleged to be Hunter Biden tried to contact him several times to no avail. But he had noticed in the transferring of information there were many pictures showing illegal activities and many documents relating to the young Biden’s financial dealings with other countries.

So, he handed the hard drive over to the FBI. And there it sat for several years.

A copy of the hard drive ended up in the hands of former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who contacted the New York Post. And that’s when things went awry.

The Post was doing its job as a newspaper by informing the public about information it had received about a presidential candidate and his family. This was once expected of the press — it is their job.

But not so much anymore. None of the mainstream press picked up the story, save for a few news outlets, and Twitter blocked the Post from sharing it completely on their platform saying the information had been “hacked.” Twitter suspended the Post’s account, as well as many others, including the President’s press secretary. Big tech was in overdrive to bury the story on all social media.

The truth is that the computer had not been hacked. It was the property of the repair shop after 90 days. The story was being censored because the mainstream media, which unequivocally leans left, didn’t like the story and didn’t want you hearing about it.

Several of the media platforms are being summoned to the Senate to explain themselves.

The contents on the hard drive are highly suspicious and seem to show a pattern of Hunter selling access to his Vice President father for many hundreds of millions of dollars to China, Ukraine, and other countries. At the very least, the Post raised questions about what Hunter’s father knew at the time and whether he was involved.

It was the job of the press to research this story and report back to the public what they had discovered in the thousands of emails and documents.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the story was buried and when it refused to die, the “Russia did it,” explanation came to the fore, with people like Representative Adam Schiff claiming the Kremlin planted the plethora of content on the hard drive.

I don’t know if the Kremlin is responsible or not, or if Joe Biden was receiving 50 percent of Hunter’s earnings, as one email from Hunter to his children reportedly claimed.

What I do know is that the public is entitled to the information, as well as an honest and forthright vetting of the material. Then it will be up to us to decide, just as it has always been.

That’s how this is all supposed to work, remember? Our politicians and the press serve us. And we are entitled to go into the voting booth as astute and informed citizens before pressing that lever.

The fact that we aren’t well-informed is certainly not the fault of the Russians.

Demand better.