As I walked through the terminal at Raleigh-Durham International Airport a couple Fridays ago with some friends from Wakefield Central Baptist Church, I remarked on the lawsuit filed by our sister paper and some other news organizations against the airport authority.

As lawsuits go, this one isn’t very sexy.

The airport wants to control where copies of local newspapers are sold and the newspaper company wants the right to place newspaper boxes on airport property.

The case has been heard, decided, appealed and decided and if memory serves correctly, is being appealed yet again, this time by the airport authority.

Under existing rules, the newspaper can’t place boxes on the property. Copies of the paper can only be sold at approved vendor outlets in the airport.

The conversation seemed at the time to be a fairly innocuous comment — just something to say during our walk torward the gate.

But when we arrived at our destination in Budapest, Hungary, I began to learn just how important the battle is.

There are virtually no newspaper boxes in Budapest.

The only newspaper rack I found was at a Shell service station — yes, that’s right, a Shell — next door to our hotel.

That rack was placed outside the store and the only newspapers on the rack were tabloid-sized newspapers — some of which, judging by the picture were the Hungarian version of the National Enquirer.

I learned that the papers on that rack were the local community newspapers. The major dailies in the area weren’t on the rack.

When I asked our host Terry Adams, where I might find a copy of the major daily newspaper, she seemed a little perplexed. She thought about it a minute, then said she wasn’t sure if I could buy a newspaper off a rack.

She reads a copy of the major English-language paper at the school where she teaches, but she wasn’t sure where I could find one.

So I set off on a search for the remainder of the week, hoping to find a newspaper box somewhere in our travels through the city of 2.5 million people.

There wasn’t one.

Hungary, if you recall, came out from under the shadow of communism in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The first decade or so after that, the country spent its time getting its feet wet with democracy.

In the past 10 years, though, free enterprise has blosssomed. International companies dot the highways, from Ford and Shell to Harley Davidson.

But you won’t find newspaper racks.

As I see it, that’s a problem for a fledgling democracy. As the country applies democratic principles to its government, the leaders of that nation will have to learn that a free press also means an accessible press.

Serious newspapers, doing serious journalism, aid in the growth and development of a nation.

Hungary is a very westernized nation. It’s schools are much like ours. Students take standardized tests and learn in classrooms just like the ones you find in Wendell, Knightdale or Zebulon. Highways and public transportation are efficient and sufficient.

But it was more than just a little perplexing not to see newspapers in a greater supply in a country where more than 20 percent of the population lives in a single city and its suburbs.

Rewind to the local battle and it becomes particularly apparent to me that offering people reasonable access to the news and information of the day is a vitally important mission.

Anywhere people congregate — busy street corners, bus stations, train stations or even airports — there should be easy access to information.

And when newspapers are willing to make that information available, the powers that be should welcome the opportunity to partner in the disemination of that news.

It’s an important part of what makes this country unique. And that’s a powerful message to send — even to people just passing through.