Today is World Press Freedom Day :
http://www.un.org/en/events/pressfreedomday/
There is no reason to make a long drawn out Post on the freedom of the Press. It simply represents the extension of the right to knowledge that is a tenant of liberty for all humans on Earth. The more you know, the better you can choose what is essential for you. In that respect, freedom of the Press is but a corollary of education for instance. Some people think that limiting the freedom of the press is only a habit in dictatorships but that is almost non-sensical. Of course an autocrat will want to keep the people from learning the truth about other lands where life is better for the citizens. But at the same time, the need for secrecy is actually much higher in places where the voters can change the government. Let us give an example of this form the news.
In Egypt, Al-Jazeera journalists deemed too close through their Qatari ownership to the Muslim Brotherhood were imprisoned. Egypt is under a junta following the post-Morsi military coup.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/05/locked-up-world-press-freedom-day-201451113346719991.html
In Turkey, a legally elected government that has autocratic overtones is trying to restrain the freedom of the press through laws and has recently gone as far as trying to shut down the poeple’s press that are the electronic social media ( that should hence be classified as press outlets in my honest opinion ).
Meanwhile in America, journalists from CNN and other outlets easily get access to movie stars and sports locker rooms but cannot get a return call from the Department of Veterans head on a problem that might have cost lives!
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/02/politics/veterans-dying-shinseki-not-talking/
Of course, the 211 reporters imprisoned world wide at the end of last year are to be protected. From the exceptional adventure of Stanley and Livingstone to the disclosure of Watergate by Woodward and Bernstein ( http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/woodstein/ ), from Robert Capa’s founding of Magnum Photos and the iconic and heartbreaking image of Vietnam captured by Nick Ut for AP
to the Al-Jazeera 4 and all of those risking their lives in Syria and everywhere else to inform us, journalist when left free to inform and report are helping you and I to understand what’s at stake in our world. They are heros of the truth!
But even when left roaming as in the case of the CNN investigation above, there are ways to keep the press useless that do not necessitate locking journalists up. Don’t answer their questions! Bury your secrets deeper! Or simply drown out their warnings. In the World’s best democracies, aside from concentration of the press ( Murdoch Empire ) which easily restrains the freedom of journalism through the orders of their editors, administrators and owners, a subtle mechanism gets almost the same results. By encouraging the publication of superficial offerings catering to the stupid complacency of the lowest urges of the majority here, by subsidizing the high volume press or not doing so for the high quality one, by making the most informative periodical costlier than the UFO/squashed dogs-lost cats/neighbourhood disaster newspapers and magazines, a democracy can ensure that the important stuff has less chances than the trivial one to reach us.
In other words, while The dictators say : You can’t say that; the democratic leaders go : Say anything you want, we don’t care / it won’t matter.
Admittedly, this view is cynical but on this day, it finds a purpose. Dear autocrats and dictators, do release the press actors : you don’t need to stop them from telling the truth. Just drown it in a sea of useless jibber jabber, prattle and elephant talk instead? And do count on the stupidity of the average citizen not to distinguish between the two anyway? 😉
Just sayin’ Tay.
Definitive Lapse of Reason 