Freedom of the Press

12 Key excerpts on "Freedom of the Press"

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  Global Journalism in Comparative Perspective

  Case Studies

  • Dhiman Chattopadhyay(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  media freedom in hopes of unifying scholars in shared terminology and conceptualization:

  • Media freedom refers to the openness of television, newspapers, news magazines, radio, and the internet. Media freedom exists along three dimensions, political, legal, and economic, and is defined both in terms of negative and positive rights. Media is considered free when there is a relative absence of government and economic restraints that inhibit free flows of information—both of individuals and collective entities—and the presence of conditions necessary to ensure the dissemination of a diversity of ideas. The conditions necessary include affordable access to media for citizens, low barriers of entry for contributors, and constitutional provisions and laws to protect citizens, journalists, and media entities, as well as a reliable enforcement mechanism.

  This definition should be characterized as relative or qualified, acknowledging that no society has ever had—nor will ever have—a media system that operates completely unfettered, and some regulations are necessary for the operation of a well-functioning society (Ojo, 2003 ; Chafee, 1941 ).

  How does a free press emerge?

  Armed with this definition, we can identify the factors that give rise to a free media environment. The freedoms of the press have always been contentious, and scholars have long wrestled with how to establish parameters of media independence from external interferences, particularly government censorship, while maintaining public order (Milton, 1644 ). The most minimalist interpretations sought to prohibit prior restraint, but without safeguards to protect journalists post-publication, other threats to press freedom emerged, like government retaliation, including harassment, violence, and undue imprisonment (Chafee, 1941 ). Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm (1956) classified presses that suffer from these threats as “authoritarian,” wherein the government attempts to restrict media that may derail its agenda. This type of political control is apparent today in heavily censored countries like Cuba, Eritrea, Myanmar, and Saudi Arabia. Other government threats seek to co-opt the media to achieve the state’s political goals, serving as a propaganda arm of government, as is the case in China and Russia (Freedom House, 2022

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  Journalistic Ethics

  Moral Responsibility in the Media

  • Dale Jacquette(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Similarly, if we want to discover whether a certain politician is taking a bribe, or the facts of trade, or the industrial output of a neighboring state, we require information that can only be obtained by free and open inquiry. There needs to be public disclosure of all potentially useful socially relevant information that is uninhibited by political or religious institutions to whatever degree possible. What is thought to be learned in journalistic investigation must then be further checked by the sort of back-and-forth dialogue that occurs between the presentation, criticism, and refinement of ideas that we find alike in modern science and investigative news reporting. That these concepts still seem to hold good after several hundred years testifies to the extent to which Enlightenment concepts continue to exert their positive influence on our thinking to the present time. The great figures of the Enlightenment understood these principles, and part of their legacy is the fact that even today we appreciate the importance of free scientific inquiry. It follows logically that maximal Freedom of the Press is presupposed by the fundamental principle of journalistic ethics according to which journalists have both the moral right and obligation to provide relevant truth telling in the public interest.

  All this is just another way of saying that a free society requires and depends essentially on a free press. The two ideals go together inextricably. The relationship between a free society and a free press is organic and deeply interconnected, a mutual reliance in which one supports and draws strength from the other. The freedom of a free press can only be sustained by a society that is in other respects free, and a society can remain truly free only to the extent that it upholds the institutions of a free press. We have yet to learn exactly what it means to speak of a free press, but we can already see in rough outline that there is a symbiotic connection, an essential interdependence, between a free society and a free press. If the free society is going to function, it needs truth—true, correct, accurate information—about unlimitedly and unpredeterminedly many different kinds of things, whose relevance cannot be known in advance or controlled in its direction or outcome if truth is the goal. The only way in turn for a free society to obtain the information it needs for informed self-government is by means of a free press.4

  FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AS THE FOURTH ESTATE OF A LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

  In a rational series of steps, we can project a plausible reason why the authors of the American Constitution next added in the third item of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing the right of peaceable assembly and petitioning the government for redress of grievances. For it is only if Freedom of the Press is protected that the citizens of a free society can be relevantly informed about the condition of local and global events, including the state of the union. It is only if citizens have free access to such vital information in turn that they can make informed decisions to meet for purposes of airing objections and organizing themselves for political action.

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  Rethinking Media Research for Changing Societies

  • Matthew Powers, Adrienne Russell(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  part ii JOURNALISM IN TIMES OF CHANGE 4 Press Freedom and Its Context Daniel C. Hallin 4.1 History and Measurement of the Concept of Press Freedom 54 4.2 Press Freedom, Democracy, and Latin American Populism 57 4.3 Conclusion 62 References 63 “Press freedom” is one of the central concepts of media studies. It is also, in ways that might have seemed surprising fifteen years ago, an increas- ingly fraught issue in contemporary politics. Here in the United States, for the first time in our history, we have a president who openly rejects the principle of press freedom. His views of the press are closely parallel to those of many other – unfortunately – more skilled and effective leaders in various forms of “electoral authoritarian” systems, like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, or Vladimir Putin in Russia. In China, political control of the media has been consolidated in recent years, and the Chinese model seems likely to grow in influence as the United States and other Western countries decline in global prestige. At the same time, the spread of propaganda on social networks and the new centrality of platforms and tech companies as gatekeepers have provoked new kinds of debates about what media freedom means in practice. The rise of social media was accompanied originally by a utopian vision according to which technology and engineering could accomplish what the social institutions of the media never quite could, extending press freedom to everyone (Volokh, 1996). Now this libertarian vision looks 53 deeply problematic, with new forms of mass manipulation and new kinds of power structures appearing, and we are back to a debate reminiscent of the one the Hutchins Commission (Leigh, 1947) famously addressed in the 1940s, about what we need to do to make media freedom compatible with democracy and a culture of truth and reason.

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  The Impact of European Institutions on the Rule of Law and Democracy

  Slovenia and Beyond

  • Matej Avbelj, Jernej Letnar Cernic(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  1 George Orwell, ‘The Freedom of the Press’, unused preface to Animal Farm published in The Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972). 2 See eg Jan Oster, Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015). 3 Associated Press v United States 326 US 1, 28 (1945) (concurrence of Frankfurter). 4 See also James Weinstein, ‘An Overview of American Free Speech Doctrine and its Applica-tion to Extreme Speech’ in Ivan Hare and James Weinstein (eds), Extreme Speech and Democracy (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009) 81–91. 5 See eg Richard Cullen, ‘Freedom of the Press and the Rule of Law’ in Steve Tsang (ed), Judicial independence and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong (New York, Palgrave, 2001) 157–79. 6 C Edwin Baker, Media, Markets and Democracy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002) 158. 8 Freedom of Press under Stress in Slovenia Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. 1 I. INTRODUCTION F reedom of the press has been described as the backbone of constitu-tional democracy. 2 Justice Frankfurter has observed that a ‘free press is indispensable to the workings of our democratic society’. 3 The media has often also been labelled as a ‘public watchdog’ or as a fourth branch (the ‘fourth estate’) of government, whose role is to supervise the other three branches. 4 The media will be particularly able to perform its role as the fourth estate if the environment is conducive to investigative journalism. As a result, the media has obligations to promote and protect the values and objectives of constitu-tional democracy and the rule of law. 5 Baker has argued that ‘democracy needs competing media to develop and promote alternatives’ and ‘both pluralist and complex democracy also require a segmented, partisan, mobilizing press’.

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  Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency

  • B. Finel, K. Lord, B. Finel, K. Lord(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 5 PRESS FREEDOM AND PEACE Theory and Findings Douglas A. Van Belle PRESS FREEDOM IS A CRITICAL ELEMENT OF transparency. In regimes with press freedom, the vast majority of political and social activi- ties, including those related to foreign policies, are open to scrutiny from both within and outside of the state. What are the implications for international security? A small but growing body of research using quantitative research methods has explored the effect of press freedom and demonstrated that shared press freedom is associated not only with fewer international conflicts, but also with a reduced likelihood that conflicts will escalate to war. Put more simply, press freedom seems to be a powerful force for peace. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the research on the relationship between press freedom and international conflict. Re- search on the subject was first published in the Journal of Peace Re- search, 1 which reported that during the 45 years from 1948–1992 free press countries did not wage any wars 2 against other free press countries. These countries did engage in wars during this period, but those wars always involved countries without press freedom. A B.I. Finel et al. (eds.), Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency © Bernard I. Finel and Kristin M. Lord 2000 116 somewhat similar relationship can be seen in international conflicts short of war: free press countries also used force against other free press countries less than restricted press countries did. Between 1948–1992, free press countries directed 19 percent of their uses of force short of war, such as blockades and threatening troop move- ments, toward other free press countries. Compare this to restricted press countries, which directed 38 percent of their uses of force to- ward free press countries. The primary emphasis of this initial study was on the process through which press freedom keeps countries from fighting wars with each other.

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  Ethics and the Media

  An Introduction

  • Stephen J. A. Ward(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  88 In late 2010, the web site WikiLeaks provided online access to hundreds of confidential cables sent by American diplomats abroad to the US govern- ment, obtained from an unnamed source. They contained candid observa- tions about world leaders and an analysis of the political motivations of countries from North Korea to Iran. Major news organizations used the cables as the basis of news stories. The web site’s actions caused a worldwide debate on whether journal- ists, news media, and web sites should publish secret documents. Julian Assange, the director of the web site, argued that the release of the embar- rassing and sensitive documents was the proper work of a free press. Journalists, he noted, have long exercised their freedom to publish con- fidential documents so that they can fulfil their obligation to inform the public about what their governments are doing in secret. We will examine the WikiLeaks case in greater detail in Chapter 5. I introduce the controversy over the web site to make the following point: many journalists hold the freedom to publish as the primary value in jour- nalism. Yesterday and today, journalists and citizens defend the freedom to publish without undue restraint or legal restrictions. Media freedom falls under freedom of expression, which is regarded as a condition of democracy. Since democratic societies evolve, the link between a free press and democracy requires constant scrutiny, clarification, and reformulation. This is a task for media ethics. Since the press is a central channel for public information and debate, issues of press freedom appear in many guises in numerous areas of soci- ety. Questions about the value and limits of a free press arise when citi- zens use web sites to deny the Holocaust or spread pornography; when the public considers the regulation of advertising or violent video games. 3 Free press and deliberative democracy

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  Media Freedom

  • Damian Tambini(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  Article 19 of the UDHR 1948 states that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ But this was not interpreted in the same way in every member state of the UN, or even every Western democracy. In order to understand press freedom in the post-war period, it is necessary to understand how this new structure of international law and institutional encouragement operates, and how this separates the US from the rest of the world.

  In northern Europe, press freedom was relative and conditional. Moreover, complex systems of tax breaks and subsidy evolved.70 There was widespread monopolization because of economies of scale during the inter-war period, and reflections on the role of concentrated press power in the rise of dictatorship led to profound soul-searching and the beginning of a new global movement for qualified press freedom.

  Alongside these deep changes in media ethics and journalism, Freedom of the Press was taken up, redefined and transformed in the international discourse of human rights. This marked a major breakthrough for the press, as it enabled press and speech rights to be asserted against governments, in an international forum, according to international standards. The global human rights system emerged in the decades following the war and was built around a series of international treaties: the UDHR, the ICCPR.71 The Universal Declaration on Human Rights set the framework for an evolving set of international standards under Article 19 UDHR (which gave rise to Article 19 of the ICCPR, which is the UN’s general free speech agreement). Regional treaties such as the European Declaration on Human Rights developed their own case law and doctrines of media freedom.

  In a cold war context dominated by the USA, a confident, liberal democratic hegemon, press and speech freedoms were asserted as a means to counter authoritarianism. The US approach to the positive protective standards applicable to the rest of the world, with scope for interventions to promote equality of voice and a developed theory of the role of the free media in democracy, contrasted with its own domestic law approach to media freedom. Indeed, the US tended to enter reservations to international provisions like Article 19 ICCRP, claiming that its own standards were higher.

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  Freedom of Speech and Information in Global Perspective

  • Pekka Hallberg, Janne Virkkunen(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The most prominent are the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU), the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC). The purpose of these organisations is to protect Freedom of the Press wherever it is under threat and to defend citizens’ right to information. This is a task that will never be completed. There will always be dictators and other political leaders who want to do away with freedom, because for them, governing is easier if the rights of the citizens are restricted. Which way is development heading? In recent years there has been little progress, as more and more dark clouds have gathered over freedom of expression. Alison Bethel McKenzie, who stepped down from her post as Director of IPI at the end of 2014, wrote: P. HALLBERG AND J. VIRKKUNEN 17 But at no other time than the past two years have we seen such a disturb- ing decline in the principles of press freedom worldwide – from developing countries and new democracies, to the United States, where the right to freedom of speech and the press are enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment. For the moment, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Journalists continue to systematically lose their lives to conflict, militants, paid thugs, governments, drug dealers, corrupt politicians, unscrupulous security officers and others. Or they are viciously assaulted, tortured, terro- rised, locked up after arbitraryarrests and unfair trials, monitored, harassed, intimidated and proverbially suffocated. 3 . McKenzie’s bleak assessment is confirmed by the fact that close to 100 journalists were killed and more than 150 imprisoned in the line of duty in 2014. A world map of the state of freedom of speech has been compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) (Fig. 3.1).

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  Freedom of Expression

  A critical and comparative analysis

  • Vincenzo Zeno-Zencovich(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Routledge-Cavendish

    (Publisher)

  36 If they do not fulfil the function, there is no reason to apply the regime. The situation is especially clear in the television sector, where the distinction is made among the various formats between information and entertainment programmes. It is part of the Freedom of the Press to be able to choose between them, but there is no logical justification in arguing that variety shows or game shows offering prizes should benefit from a regime that owes its privileges to considerations of freedom of expression. This does not exclude the eventuality that within these formats there might be issues of protection of individual expression. Thus it is the aim of the activity that is important, a consideration that does not apply in the case of individual expression, which requires no teleological justification for protection.

  Freedom of the Press thus appears to be predicated on its contribution to the expression of ideas and its role in informational activity. From this various demands arise: that barriers to access be removed, both for businesses and for individuals; right of access to the sources of information; provisions for professional secrecy; immunity for informational activity carried out with due diligence; facilitation of, rather than obstacles to, distribution.

  At the same time, and just as with any other business, freedoms are accompanied by responsibilities, expressed as the common norms of professional diligence, a counterweight to the unrestrained pursuit of profit.37

  Moreover, it should not be overlooked that a fault-based system of liability (that is to say, one based on a failure of professional diligence) represents preferential treatment vis-à-vis the rest of the commercial world, which is subject to a strict liability regime.

  1.6. The press as power

  Since the first decades of the nineteenth century the press, understood as the communications media generally, has been viewed as a ‘power’.38

  This observation is clearly accurate, insofar as one socio-economic group is in a position to influence not only decisions but indeed who is to take them.

  There is nothing intrinsically odd about this, especially in a democratic system where various groups, political parties, trade unions, business associations, religious groups, consumers, voluntary associations and popular pressure groups, all compete in the process of choosing representatives to sit in parliament and form a government and directing their choices.

  What is anomalous, however, is that the exercise by the press of this power is – either in theory or according to claims to such effect – based on freedom of expression.39

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  European Convention on Human Rights

  Commentary

  • Christoph Grabenwarter(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Beck/Hart

    (Publisher)

  This is due to the fact that the special role of the press is to be taken account of in the justification of interferences. Furthermore the protection of democracy and specific positive obligations to protect have to be considered. In essence, only periodically published print media fall within the scope of protection. Publications, which were published only once fall within the scope of protection of the freedom of expression or the freedom of artistic expression, even if more than one edition was published. This is particularly true for flyers 31 , books 32 or banners. Magazines addressed to a specific group of people are not considered to be protected by the Freedom of the Press, but by the general freedom of expression and the freedom of information. 33 Where an advance copy of a book is published in a newspaper, however, it is protected by the Freedom of the Press. 34 There are few consequences of this distinction: When it comes to justifying an interference, the ECtHR tends to treat cases regarding the freedom of expression similar or identical to comparable cases regarding the Freedom of the Press. 12 Various activities in connection with spreading opinions via the press fall within the scope of protection of the Freedom of the Press. The general conditions, such as the distribution of a newspaper, are protected as well as the journalists ’ work itself. 35 The protection of journalistic sources , the acquisition of informa-tion, research, writing and even auxiliary activities all enjoy the protection of the Freedom of the Press. Furthermore, the publication of information which had been attained illegally or in breach of a obligation to confidentiality and before being given to a journalist is protected by the Freedom of the Press. The right of the journalist to freely choose the form of his publication is also protected.

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  Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right

  • Jan Oster(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  168 These rights are not articulations of freedom of expression, like the right to publish, but an implementation of a legal right of journalists as journalists and acting as journalists only. 169 By contrast, a private individual has a right to freedom of expression and therefore also a right to publish, for instance, via a social network account. However, he does not have a right to protect his sources of information. Hence, the right to protect one’s sources has to be a right that is independent from freedom of expression. This right is protected by freedom of the media, and applicable to the media, only. 167 ECtHR, Jersild v. Denmark [1994] App. no. 15890/89 [36]; Thoma v. Luxembourg [2001] App. no. 38432/97 [62]; Pedersen and Baadsgaard v. Denmark [2004] App. no. 49017/99 [77]; July and SARL Liberation v. France [2008] App. no. 20893/03 [70]; as opposed to Vejdeland and others v. Sweden [2012] App. no. 1813/07; mutatis mutandis, Sürek v. Turkey (No. 1) [1999] App. no. 26682/95 [63]; Éditions Plon v. France [2004] App. no. 58148/00 [22]. 168 See Chapter 4, Section 4.2 169 Therefore, freedom of expression is not a content-dependent justification for the protection of journalistic sources; see, however, Raz (1984) 7. Theory of media freedom 51 2.4 Freedom of the media as a fundamental right The questions that necessarily follow the rationales for media freedom are: (i) why is it necessary to protect media freedom as a fundamental right, (ii) where is ‘media freedom’ codified as a fundamental right, and (iii) what are the consequences of media freedom being a fundamental right? It is necessary to protect media freedom as a fundamental right (alter- natively, one could also name it a human right or a constitutional right 170 ) rather than as a statutory right. Media freedom should not be made subject to legislation, that is, to the will of temporary political majorities which may impose their values on society.

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  Comparative Defamation and Privacy Law

  • Andrew T. Kenyon(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  This is in line with the judicial view – and that adopted in the Leveson 19 report – that our reasons for valuing speech in the mass media are different from those applying to individual free speech, being less con- cerned with the rights of the ‘speaker’ and more to do with the benefits obtained by the audience. In McCartan Turkington Breen v. Times Newspapers 20 Lord Bingham said: The majority [of citizens] can participate only indirectly, by exercising their rights as citizens to vote, express their opinions, make representations to the authorities, form pressure groups and so on. But [they] cannot participate in the public life of their society in these ways if they are not alerted to and informed about matters which call or may call for consideration and action. It is very largely through the media, including of course the press, that they will be so alerted and informed. The proper functioning of a modern participatory democracy requires that the media be free, active, professional and inquiring. For this reason the courts, here and elsewhere, have recognised the cardinal importance of press freedom . . . Lord Justice Laws has recently made this distinction even clearer. In the Miranda case – which concerned the seizure from journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner of material obtained by Edward Snowden – he spoke of . . . an important difference between the general justification of free expression and the particular justification of its sub-class, journalistic expression. The former is a right which belongs to every individual for his own sake. But the latter is given to serve the public at large . . . The journalist enjoys no heightened protection for his own sake, but only for the sake of his readers or his audience. 21 Similarly, Ward LJ recently stressed the particular importance of press freedom, arguing that 18 The same does not of course apply to much online speech by individual bloggers and on social media.

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