Invisible Censorship.

Freedom of the Press and Its Responsibility

Two or three years ago, I spoke with a man from at an conference in He told me the story of how all "controversial" newspaper articles in must be submitted to a for censoring. After this process, the newspapers still printed their original articles; they simply did so with thick black lines obscuring what was not allowed to be said.

In the United States and Canada, freedom of the press is also limited, but North American readers may never know what is being left out. Here, the restrictions are based on what publishers are willing to print and what advertisers are willing to support. In this way, publishers are the invisible censors of the Western world. In the words of Hollinger International President David Radler: "If editors disagree with me, they should disagree with me when they are no longer in my employ. ... I will ultimately determine what the papers say and how they are going to be run."

Those who fought and suffered for the constitutionally protected freedom of the press would have been horrified. That hard-won right was granted to a certain delegation of the populace so that it might scrutinize and comment on the events that shape our society. This, in turn, enables all interested parties to be equally informed and thus aids the community decision-making processes of the democratic system. The press should be, in effect, the responsive nervous system of the body politic.

Unfortunately, journalism has become a business, its actions dictated by the demands of the market. As media expert Ronald Collins remarked:

   Allowing advertisers to review contents and photographs and the placement
   of news articles before publication is no stranger to the journalistic
   landscape.... Editors are fully aware of the pressure that comes from
   advertisers who will yank enormous amounts of advertising dollars in
   response to certain stories.

This has severely limited the substance and variety of stories circulated by newspapers and thus degrades the very function of journalism.

The political discourse for which freedom of the press was granted has become more of an endless gossip column. The tabloid-driven obsession with Hollywood celebrities and Britain's royal family is an extreme example of how the freedom can and has been misused.

Tales of sensationalized crime are a particularly destructive class of stories because they lend themselves so easily to the infotainment market: they are interesting enough to guarantee an audience, are rarely controversial enough to divert advertising dollars, and can be fitted easily into a formula. From the business aspect, they are perfect, and it is that easily printable quality in their nature that has led them to create one of the greatest imbalances in the contemporary media.

The main source of the difficulty is the selection process. In this technological age, the press--and the rest of us--are inundated with information. Every moment, vast numbers of facts and ideas are transferred throughout the world, devoid of their context in history and society. Only a select few of these are repackaged with accompanying images and sold as "news."

The buyers of this commodity are assumed to be without memory and essentially seeking sensation rather than insight. Everything must be made to seem new and exciting in order to sell, and thus the same stories are published day after day without appearing to have any relation to each other or to the lives of those who read them. Only on the specifically segregated editorial page are any parallels drawn between stories, and even then the stories are placed apart and classified under a single social issue.

Certainly the paper, ink, printing, and delivery must all be paid for, the darkrooms kept well equipped, the journalists fed, their offices lit, and the myriad other expenses covered. A sensible profit margin must be maintained, but journalism can never be allowed to be reduced to the level of a commercial enterprise.

It is its unique freedom that distinguishes newspapers from best-selling novels and glittery entertainment. When forced to compete for both audience and advertising dollar, newspapers lose the sense of responsibility that comes with that freedom.

The entertainment industry may briefly command the suspension of disbelief, but the news media commands belief itself--a responsibility that must not be taken lightly, for what people believe is what they act on. People want to act, and act positively, but what sort of action can be taken in response to stories that are merely meant as distractions? And many tragedies that should be headline stories are not reported until the brutality and hopelessness of their endings prove remarkable enough to be reproduced for nonfiction entertainment.

Such reporting simply inspires more of the apathy that so much of our society has already slipped into. The tragic death of a child in poverty becomes not an opportunity to discuss the faults of our economic and social structures but simply another reason for people to keep their children at home, to hide them from the world that they are told is so brutal they dare not find out for themselves. Furthermore, these reports take up space once allotted for developing stories with outcomes yet to be determined.

We should lament not how little is reported as much as how little balance there is in what is reported. Individual incidents are blown out of proportion while larger political and social issues, which cannot be so easily packaged for our visually oriented culture, are relegated to the back pages. There they exist, far from the arena of public discussion, where they could actually be considered, placed into context, and acted upon.

Mogul Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, the world's largest media empire, has said, "I love newspapers because they give me the power to shape the human mind." But as the body politic becomes bound by more and more invisible black lines, even a mind shaped by Murdoch's specifications may be unable to function for long.3