Today marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day as proclaimed by the UN General Assembly after UNESCO’s General Conference in December 1993. This day is supposed to remind governments around the world about their commitment to freedom of the press. It also serves as a day for media professionals to reflect on issues they face regarding professional ethics and freedom of the press while celebrating the fundamental principles of freedom of the press and paying tribute to journalists who have died while exercising their right to freedom of the press.
While Americans are often criticized for believing that we invented certain things or that the world revolves around us, the origins of freedom of the press did actually start with the United States. Long before the American colonies declared their independence from the United Kingdom, the British government tried to censor the American media by banning newspapers from publishing anything that was deemed unfavorable. In 1734, British governor William Cosby sued John Peter Zenger, publisher of The New York Weekly Journal, for libel based on a column that criticized his government. Cosby subsequently lost the case.
In 1776, the state of Virginia established the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights which avowed, “The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” This statement was referenced 10 years later when Virginia Representative and future president James Madison drafted the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Nearly 200 years later Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst for the US, gave The New York Times access to classified documents that indicated a top-secret study by the Department of Defense of US military and political involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967. The documents maintained the administrations of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, and Johnson all lied to the American public about our involvement in Vietnam, including the fact that the Vietnam War would cost more lives than the government publicly indicated. These became known as the Pentagon Papers.
The federal government got a court order to keep The New York Times from publicizing anything else from the documents citing national security. They tried again several weeks later with the Washington Post but were denied. What followed was the court case New York Times Co. v United States, where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the newspapers, allowing both The New York Times and the Washington Post to continue publishing information from the Pentagon Papers without government intervention.
In 2017, an American non-profit organization called Freedom House indicated only 13% of the world’s population had access to uncensored political news coverage provided by fully protected journalists. The worst offenders included Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Syria, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Eritrea, Crimea, Cuba, and Azerbaijan. As of 2022, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Eritrea, and Cuba are still on this list and are joined by Palestine, Vietnam, China, and Myanmar. In 2017, the US ranked 37 of 199 countries and territories (the lower the number the better). As of 2022, the US ranks 42 of 180 countries.
This is undoubtedly based on the insane circus that American media has become in recent years. It seems lately media outlets publish and broadcast whatever they think will gain ratings regardless of whether or not it has any basis in fact. Opinions are peddled as fact despite being poorly researched, if researched at all, and wrong. The American public, who are too busy trying to eke out a living to research themselves and fearful of the future, grasps this information as truth and either passes it on to others or uses it to form biased, ignorant opinions themselves and vote.
Apparently, this was a problem back in 1919 when journalist Walter Lippmann lambasted the sensationalist headlines printed in newspapers around the country during World War I as well as censorship and propaganda peddled by the US government. Lippmann insisted that the right to “free opinion and expression” should take a backseat to protect the “stream of news” on which these opinions etc. were based. “Protection of the sources of its opinion is the basic problem of democracy. Everything else depends on it.” Seems to me Walter Lippmann was on to something.
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Several years later, he also stated when it came to politics that the “public must be put in its place…so that each of us may live free of the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd.” Again, this sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Other critics argued for the expansion of the First Amendment to cover what they called “freedom of the news.”
During the early 20th century, as the newspaper industry fluctuated with the economic times, newspapers began to swallow each other up so while there were 689 cities with competing papers in 1910, 50 years later that number dwindled to only 60. The owners were stupidly wealthy newspaper barons who liked to dabble in politics, pulling the strings and informing the public with what they wanted us to know. William Randolph Hearst was the worst of them all. Orson Welles’ movie Citizen Kane tried to warn moviegoers of the dangers of this kind of trend but 82 years later it appears those warnings went unheeded.
According to a 2019 report by Freedom House, media freedom has been on a sharp decline since 2009, with elected democratic leaders ushering in ways to repress and obliterate journalistic independence. These methods include regulatory and financial pressure, public denunciations of honest journalists, lucrative state contracts with media outlets the government does favor, and government-backed ownership changes.
Not surprising is how the rise of these incidences concur with the rise of right-wing populism around the world. The dynamic is always the same- right-wing leaders declare themselves a champion of the people against the evils of liberals and foreigners while pushing to control the press, open debate, and the concept of transparency. As a result, countries are experiencing a reduction in civil liberties, political rights, and press freedom.
For example, the governments of Hungary and Serbia have successfully stamped out negative press with the exception of their opponents while their cronies and allies own 80% of the media. In Israel, Netanyahu’s corrupt government denounced many investigative reporters and has been charged with trading regulatory favors for positive coverage from two major media outlets. Despite this, the Israeli people voted Netanyahu and his allies into power in recent elections. In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party in power looks the other way while government agents raid the homes and offices of journalists who criticize them, calling their speech “anti-national.” And right here in the good ole US of A, Donald Trump and his lackeys spew their fictional rhetorical across media outlets. While he was banning most media from the White House, he also threatened to destroy the business interests of certain media owners and revoke the license of specific broadcasters. Of course, since money talks and Rupert Murdoch just had to shell out almost $800 million to settle a libel suit, just ask Fox News and Tucker Carlson how that’s working out for them.
So what am I getting at with all these facts and figures? I’m glad you asked. My point is people need to look at the bigger picture. Take the information you receive with a grain of salt. We’re all busy and we’re all worried about the current state of affairs but Google is your friend. Any time you hear something, whether or not you question its validity, take a few minutes to research it. If you’re riding the bus, having lunch, on a smoke break, whenever. If you have time to play a game on your phone then you have the time to Google that information you weren’t sure about. The level of education has dropped in this country and right-wingers want to keep it that way. It’s a known fact that ignorant people believe and vote for right-wing agendas. And if you disagree with what I just said, you know what to do.
Hasta la pasta!
Sources: The United Nations
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