THE FALSE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS T HE National' Union of
Journalists, an association which exists to protect -the' interests of working journalists, is necessarily interested in all matters affecting the rights, including what is called the " freedom," of the Press. In view of what has happened in many foreign countries—and notoriously in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia—it is not surprising that Mr. Didymus, delivering a Presidential address to the conference of the Union at Portsmouth last week, should dwell upon the fact that the freedom of the Press is becoming more- and more a matter of vital concern. But what is surprising is the view that he, along with many other working journalists, takes of what constitutes the freedom of the Press. He affirmed that it was but a short step from recent measures, such as the Betting and Lotteries Act, to building up a Press law which would definitely hamper freedom of thought and expression.
This last sentence happens to be taken from the speech of a single journalist, Mr. Didymus. But since these or similar words occur again and again in the Press, and are actually uttered by those who profess to be speaking for professional journalists, it is worth while to point out the three-fold confusion of thought on which they rest. They, overlook the fact that the servitude of the Press is as impossible in a genuine democracy as it is inevitable under a dictatorship ; that freedom under a democracy does not imply the unrestricted right to do what you will in an anti-social spirit ; and, thirdly, that the interests of the controllers of the big newspaper trusts are in some respects not identical with those of professional journalists, and least of all when the financial prosperity of journals depends on elements which have nothing whatever to do with professional journalistic skill. It is amazing that those who speak. on behalf of working journalists should spring to the support of that kind of abuse of freedom which may be very profitable to newspaper proprietors but reduces to a minimum the value of joinnalistic talent.
To take these points in order. When Germany accepted the Nazi regime, it , accepted a dictatorship to do its political thinking for it. Dictatorship of. any, kind, whether it is that of one „man or of a few oligarchs, is incompatible with the free public expression of opinion. A country which is willing to endure .such a Government must be prepared to endure its corollary, censored and subservient Press. Those who are concerned about the preservation of the freedom of the Press in this or in any other democratic country will. therefore aim . the preservation of freedom in all its forms—the freedom of Parliament to express the will of the people on the political side, and the free access of the people to true information and the expresSion of genuine opinions. The Press cannot gain freedom by,attempting to reduce the powers of democracy, .even if democracy should elect to restrict abuses of the Press.
Secondly, such restrictions,_ within limits, there are and inevitably must be, in any organized community; Freedom can never be taken to mean freedom to abuse. the rights of others. A citizen has the right to walk freely about the streets of London, bait is not regarded as a deprivation of freedom that he is not allowed to be drunk and disorderly. Champions of the freedom of the Press will hardly claim complete release. from • all the laws of the land, though they rightly. insist on their. claims to advocate a change of the laws. Certain restrictions they readily accept,--:pbseenity,- blasphemy, seditious utterance are forbidden—and the general sense of the community has' declared against certain morbidities, such as may be conveyed by detailed reports of divorce proceedings ; and Parliament having decided that certain forms of organized exploitation of betting are illegal, the Press is required to refrain from aiding and promoting such illegal action in its news coluMns. The newspapers are at liberty to urge the repeal of the law, but so long as the community treats certain actions as offences, they cannot claim the freedom of the Press as a good reason for committing them. There is no sense in saying that the newspapers are not free because their power to commit offences is limited.
And that brings us to the third point. When certain journalists complain that the freedom of the Press is limited by vetoes on public lotteries, competitions, or news tending to promote illegal sweepstakes, exactly whose freedom are they thinking of ? The freedom of the editor, or leader-writers, or special correspondents, or reporters, or sub-editors, or general paragraph-writers Surely not. The freedom sought is that of the financial controllers of the paper, who seek to increase their circula- tion by means which have nothing whatever to do with journalism proper. In proportion as the success of a newspaper depends on the lure of its football competitions, to that extent it depends less on the journalistic talent of its staff; The right to hoodwink people into buying a paper by dangling before them the chance of winning a money prize has nothing whatever to do with the right of a journalist to rxpress his opinions or to tell or report the truth. On the contrary, the status of the profession of journalism is diminished in proportion as the profits derived from journals depend on external adventitious aids. Even their earning power is likely to fall in propor- tion as the financial success of their paper depends on elements which they, as journalists, do not contribute.
How extraordinary, then, that a union existing to protect the interests of journalists should harbour these dark superstitions about the so-called freedom of the Press, which, when thus interpreted, is not the freedom of journalism, but the freedom of finance to exploit journalism and to diminish the status of journalists ! How strange that its spokesmen should not realize that the real restrictions on the freedom of the popular Press consist not in those which are so modestly imposed by the State, but in those imposed by a few monopolists who, controlling the vast mechanism of allied papers and chains of papers, seek to force their own wills on the com- munity, using the journalists, in so many cases, as their instruments and chattels. Democracy and the freedom of the Press on which it depends are threatened, in Britain at least, not by a despotic Government or an interfering Parliament, but by a few men who have secured control of so large a proportion of-the national organs of opinion. It seems to be a bad look-out for journalism if, or in so far as, the journalists themselves confuse the freedom of Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook with the freedom of journalism. It is not to the interest of journalists that papers should depend on prizes and lotteries. It will not enhance their prestige as workers that the papers they serve should depend on extraneous sensations. Nor will they increase their own power to promote their own opinions if their function in the great organism is not the part which counts most, 'and they cease to be the key-Men. The Press in this country has gained freedom from the restraints imposed by Government. But it has a long way to go before it will-gain freedom from the restraints imposed by controllers of the trusts.
Previous page
