Press censorship

“ More important, the censorship might insist that all who write shall sign their names to their articles. Why should journalists alone be relieved of responsibility to their country? Is it possible that the Government is afraid of the press? There is no need for fear. 'Beware of Aristophanes', says Landor, 'he can cast your name as a byword to a thousand cities of Asia for a thousand years. But all that the press can do by its disfavour is to keep your name obscure in a hundred cities of England for a hundred days. ”

“ The press submitted itself to a voluntary censorship, passing the responsibility for what it printed over to society whose general end of maintaining unity for the real or imaginary necessities of self-defense it served. A lynch law of opinion was established by common consent.
What went on during the war goes on, though less openly and less formidably, all of the time. [Pg 90] Everyone realizes the immense power of public opinion. Many seek to direct its formation. The government conducts all of the time a vast propaganda, always with a certain favor of the press. ”

“ Nothing was more important than that there should be the least possible impairment of the people's confidence in the printed information presented to them. Suspicious enough by reason of natural anxieties, a censorship law would have turned every waiting heart over to the fear that news was being either strangled or minimized.
Aside from these considerations, there was the freedom of the press to bear in mind. No other right guaranteed by democracy has been more abused, but even these abuses are preferable to the deadening evil of autocratic control. ”

“ Taking into consideration that the liberty of the press, established and perpetuated as one of the rights of the nation, has been constantly subjected to the arbitrary censorship of his police, and that, at the same time, he has always made use of the press to fill France and Europe with fabricated facts, with false maxims, with doctrines favourable to despotism and with outrages against foreign governments ”

“ The freedom of the press is guaranteed and press censorship is forbidden. It is also forbidden to threaten, confiscate or cancel a newspaper through administrative measures, as stipulated in the Constitution and defined by the law. ”

“ The difference between law and censorship The answer is that a pamphlet, a newspaper article, or a resolution moved at a political meeting can do all the mischief that a play can, and often more; yet we do not set up a permanent censorship of the press or of political meetings. Any journalist may publish an article, any demagogue may deliver a speech without giving notice to the government or obtaining its licence. The risk of such freedom is great; but as it is the price of our political liberty, we think it worth paying. ”

“ But in the countries in which the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people ostensibly prevails, the censorship of the press is not only dangerous, but it is absurd. When the right of every citizen to co-operate in the government of society is acknowledged, every citizen must be presumed to possess the power of discriminating between the different opinions of his contemporaries, and of appreciating the different facts from which inferences may be drawn. ”

“ The modern state also, despite the great freedom granted to the press, cannot entirely forego its sense of responsibility. It restricts the freedom of the press by censorship, and by preventive measures often not less drastic than the censure itself, and it [pg 173] always regards the confiscation of particularly dangerous writings to be a matter of course. It puts under censure school-books, political posters, and theatrical plays, and does not tolerate any socialistic literature in the soldiers' barracks. ”

“ The answer to the first question is that a censorship of the press is impossible in England. The multitude of publications forbids it. The most imaginative person would find his imagination fail him if he tried to realize in his mind the idea of the British public waiting for its morning {98} newspaper several hours while the censor was crawling over its columns to find out whether they contained anything that could bring a blush to the cheek of a young person. It would be ridiculous to put in force a censorship for books which had no application to newspapers. ”

“ But I wish to suggest that the ideal censorship is that to which the daily press is subject, the elastic hand of public opinion, if the photoplay can be brought as near to newspaper conditions in this matter as it is in some others.
How does public opinion grip the journalist? The editor has a constant report from his constituency. A popular scoop sells an extra at once. An attack on the wrong idol cancels fifty subscriptions. People come to the office to do it, and say why. ”

“ There is nothing new in the fact that charges of reprehensible conduct may create resentment and the disposition to resort to violent means of redress, but this well understood tendency did not alter the determination to protect the press against censorship and restraint upon publication. ”

“ It amuses the popular fancy with a few glittering generalities in the fundamental law about the liberty of the press, and forthwith usurps authority, even in times of peace, to send out its edict to every postmaster, whether in the village or at the cross-roads, clothing him with a despotic and absolute censorship over one of the dearest rights of the citizen. It degrades labor by giving it the badge of servility, and it impedes enterprise by withholding its proper rewards. ”

“ Any attempt on the part of our Government to dictate the policy of any newspaper would be hotly resented, and would be doomed to certain failure. Americans do not believe in the German doctrine that the press must be "so far controlled as is requisite for the welfare of the community," and hold that absolute freedom of speech is essential to true liberty. There is no censorship of the American press. You have a censorship which all the outside world knows has been wonderfully effective in keeping some important facts from the knowledge of the German people. ”

“ Too much has still been done to recede, too little to attain your end; you must therefore proceed. If you establish a censorship of the press, the tongue of the public speaker will still make itself heard, and you have only increased the mischief. ”

“ But though a newspaper may publish without government censorship, it has never been entirely free from liability for what it chooses to print. See ibid. Among other things, the press has not been wholly at liberty to publish falsehoods damaging to individual reputation. At least until today, we have cherished the average citizen's [p262] reputation interest enough to afford him a fair chance to vindicate himself in an action for libel characteristically provided by state law. ”

“ No one knows who starts a rumor, but there is a responsible editor behind every printed word. But the greatest objection to censoring of the news against the home population is that it has always tended to create the abuse of shielding from public criticism the dishonesty or incompetency of high officials. While it certainly has never been the policy of any of the European press bureaus to accomplish this result, the internal censorship has generally worked out this way. ”

“ I was not in Germany very long until I was impressed by the remarkable control the Government had on public opinion by censorship of the press. People believe, without exception, everything they read in the newspapers. And I soon discovered that the censor was so accustomed to dealing with German editors that he applied the same standards to the foreign correspondents. A reporter could telegraph not what he observed and heard, but what the censors desired American readers to hear and know about Germany. ”

“ Owing to practically the united opposition of the press, Congress deprived the committee of its second function and limited it to the dissemination of information. The committee, however, did issue a pamphlet, based largely upon a similar publication put out by the Press Censor of Canada, which offered suggestions for voluntary censorship. The attitude of the press, The Tribune, of New York, expressed in the following editorial : —
Must every censor or would-be censor put on the clown's livery? ”

“ There is a peculiar connection between censorship and police. The evil effect of the censorship of their own Press by the German Government is to hypnotise the thousands of Government bureaucrats into the belief that that which they read in their own controlled Press is true.
No people are more ready to believe what they want to believe than the governing class in Germany. They wanted to believe that Great Britain would not come into the war. They had got into their heads, too, that Japan was going to be an ally of theirs. ”

“ There was not a word about Bonaparte in my book, and the most liberal sentiments were, I believe, forcibly expressed in it. But the press was then far from being enslaved as it is at present; the government exercised a censorship upon newspapers, but not upon books; a distinction which might be supported, if the censorship had been used with moderation: for newspapers exert a popular influence, while books, for the greater part, are only read by well informed people, and may enlighten, but not inflame opinion. ”

“ Legal mechanisms are also
increasingly being used to restrict the media, both through overt
censorship and through the use of laws that forbid "endangering
national security" or "inciting hatred" by commenting on sensitive
or anti-government topics. ”

“ We wish to put the ideal rules into practice, to offer liberty instead of chains, and see whether liberty will not disclose its proper checks; believing that a free press will prove safer than the censorship ”

“ In the case last cited the theory of experimentation in censorship was not permitted to interfere with the fundamental doctrine of the freedom of the press. The opportunity to apply one's labor and skill in an ordinary occupation with proper regard for all reasonable regulations is no less entitled to protection. ”

“ Vast communication combines have been built into profitable ventures. My interest is not in protecting the treasuries of communicators but in implementing the First Amendment by insuring that effective communication which is essential to the continued functioning of our free society. I am not aware that self-censorship has caused the press to tread too gingerly in reporting 'news' concerning private citizens and private affairs or that the reputation of private citizens has received inordinate protection from falsehood. ”

“ If the present inquiry were sanctioned the press would be subjected to harassment that in practical effect might be as serious as censorship. A publisher, compelled to register with the federal government, would be subjected to vexatious inquiries. A requirement that a publisher disclose the identity of those who buy his books, pamphlets, or papers is indeed the beginning of surveillance of the press. True, no legal sanction is involved here. Congress has imposed no tax, established no board of censors, instituted no licensing system. ”

“ If despite the Constitution . . . , this Nation is to embark on the dangerous road of censorship, . . . this Court is about the most inappropriate Supreme Board of Censors that could be found. My reason for reversing is that I think the conviction of appellant or anyone else for exhibiting a motion picture abridges freedom of the press as safeguarded by the First Amendment, which is made obligatory on the States by the Fourteenth. ”

“ Officials can be punished for unauthorized contact with journalists. Editors and journalists continued to practice self-censorship as the primary means for the party to limit freedom of the press on a day-to-day basis. Official guidance on permitted speech was often vague, subject to change at the whim of propaganda officials, and retroactively enforced. Propaganda authorities can force newspapers to fire editors and journalists who print articles that conflict with official views and can suspend or close publications. ”

“ No law or authority shall have the right to establish censorship, require bond from authors or printers, nor restrict the liberty of the press, which shall be limited only by the respect due to private life, morals and public peace. ”

“ Charles X., on Thursday, the 30th September, had to attend a review on the Champ-de-Mars. The morning of this day, the readers of all the journals found in them a decree abolishing the censorship and restoring liberty of the press. The enthusiasm was immense. The Journal de Paris wrote: "Today all is joy, confidence, hope. The enthusiasm excited by the new reign would be far too ill at ease under a censorship. ”

“ Censorship responsibilities demand knowledge and call for certain qualifications which the personnel of the Press in general does not possess. A few editors, no doubt, could be trusted to do the work efficiently; but that claim to omniscience which is unobtrusively, but none the less insistently, put forward by the Fourth Estate has no solid foundation. One of the lessons of the Great War has been that censorship is an extremely (p. 321) difficult operation to carry out even when in the hands of individuals well versed in the conditions that arise in times of national emergency. ”

“ The strict censorship, and tax upon the home press, and the suppression of liberal foreign journals—even those of patriotic Sardinia, across the frontier, are forbidden—and keep the people in ignorance. ”