We live in a society which believes in freedom of speech and the accessibility of knowledge and understanding of our social situation. We westerners pride ourselves on our freedom, on our democracy, on our rights, on our knowledge. Our leaders emanate such conviction and validity when communicating the freedom of our societies, many of us do not question it, we are free, free to say whatever we want and free to know the truth about any issues materializing in our civilization, there is a general understanding and belief that we have not been blinded by authoritarianism like other countries. However, as true as it is that we more often than not publicly campaign such beliefs, it is hardly as simple as it is made out on the surface by our leaders and their advocates; in fact it’s not simple at all. On the contrary to our public endorsement of freedom and knowledge, the greater majority of the population think the government lies, lies all the time in fact. Thought so much it is simply a mundane truth we have come to accept, one would probably be laughed at if he expressed a sincere belief in our political leaders telling us everything we need to know openly and accurately. Moreover most of the things we do know about the world’s on goings come from the research and output of our working journalists. Nevertheless a poll for MORI in 1996 showed that more than 76 percent of the British population did not trust journalists to tell the truth, although over a decade old even today the result seems more concerning than surprising. I apprehend, the opening to my discussion seems somewhat perplex, and it is, and it is because our liberty of knowledge lay in the hands of those we do not seem to trust, true because of information we have and have not been given in the past and present and the consequences of such.
One of the greatest and most controversial issues in journalism is the issue of freedom of the press. In 1996 Tony Blair described the freedom of information act as “not some isolated constitutional reform, but a change that is absolutely fundamental to how we see politics developing in this country.” Put simply freedom of the press is assurance that the government will not punish journalists for reporting the news, so long as it is true and not exposing classified government information. Put simply, it sounds like such a system makes perfect sense, however an arrangement in the political world is hardly ever simple and never perfect. There are different issues which should be looked upon when discussing the administration of this Act. Let us consider the fact that journalists have been threatened, even with prison sentences to expose their sources and defend the validity of their publication. Journalists must consider the costs they may have to pay in order to defend themselves before a jury. Editors, who do not work for extremely well resourced owners are unable to take such risks, thus will be unable to publish the work. The media should expose and scrutinise our own Governments freely, the more the media exposes the less the Government will be able to lie. However journalists working specifically on attaining such information live in fear of the Government’s power and retaliation. Fear is persuasive and Political leaders have been accused not only of using the power of fear on our journalists, however also on the general public through our journalists and the media. Let us go back almost a hundred years, when a terrorist shot in Sarajevo was a pretext for prevalent German aggression and the mitigation for the First World War. Now let’s go back less than ten years, a time when it is considered by many that the Bush administration used the terrorist attack of 9/11 to launch the Iraq war. “In both cases, trigger happy leaders exploited the incidents for their own political purposes.” (Jeffrey Sachs, BBC: 1997). It has recently come to our attention that newspapers were perhaps not doing their job properly when informing the public of this ‘war on terror’, as it had been labelled. The media seemed to do little questioning on the information officials have been feeding them, publishing information which today has been publicly demoralised as propagandist and brainwashing material. Incorrect numbers of deaths were being fed to us, any Iraq killings had been made out as ‘terrorist killings’. Furthermore it was not what we consider to be the established media which exposed the lies of this war; rather it was the more contemporary media, the internet. Wikileaks is without a doubt one of the most hated organisations by the Government as it seeks to expose political corruption and truth through whistleblowers and affirms its stealth to informants. For instance last year Wikileaks released 400,000 battlefield reports from the Iraq war. Harvard’s Yochai Benker gives his rundown on the incident by saying;
The core facts established by the reports were agreed. Iraqi civilian casualties were higher than previously reported; the US military was well aware that Iraq’s military and police were systematically torturing prisoners and while discrete units intervened to stop these on the ground there was no systematic effort to stop the practise.
The information exposed by the internet’s media is the kind of information the Government keeps classified and the recent release lead to further and more aggressive reprisal towards the organisation once the information lead to a very public and embarrassing scandal for the Bush administration. Political leaders have always restricted its public on how much it gets to know. Such information as mention above is not exposing military plans or weaponry design, rather it exposed death counts and criminal activity. The civilian’s fight with the Government to know what they are up to continues.
Essentially, we have two types of newspapers which we read; there are the newspapers which cover politics, social policies, business, economics, culture and the arts. Then there are the newspapers which are produced more for entertainment, saturated with gossip, scandal and fabrications, essentially shadowing the actual serious news and which readers do not take entirely seriously however accept as having a basic truth. Furthermore one of the main issues of concern with freedom of the press is the matter of accuracy and several scholars and free thinkers have addressed the issue, some, such as Alan Rusbridger and Onara O’Neill concluding that the Act will only work with certain restrictions and regulations taking place, while others argue proceedings causing any form of restriction defeat the purpose of the act entirely. Rusbridger questions how much we should really be allowed to expose. Throughout his writing he gives example to celebrities having affairs being great news topics and the lengths journalists go through to scrape any information together to write a story, a story about one man/woman’s adultery.
Hospital wards have been involved, widows have been traduced, phones have been tapped, confidence betrayed, interviews invented and lives have been ruined in the name of precisely what public good? (A, Rusbridger, 1997: p. 24)
Rusbridger’s words written over ten years ago mirror the Murdoch scandal which took place just this year. People’s lives have been exploited to sell newspapers, for stories which generally have no great use. It is difficult to draw lines on topical matters, how much should we be allowed to know of someone’s life, even if the information is legally attained? It is a question quite difficult to answer, because any form of restrictions does have a strong possibility of leading to future limitations in reporting which may effectively damage a journalist’s work and efforts. O’Neill asserts that freedom of the press is not as simple as freedom of speech, because freedom of the press she be used to report information accurately. She believes that if journalists are forced to follow certain regulation journalists will be left intimidated by any organisation which will essentially allow them to expose more truths, compelling the corrupt to live in fear. O’Neill believes journalists should always aim to be truthful, even if they cannot guarantee what they publish to be true. They should inform readers of the uncertainty of their publication and later correct any errors made as quickly as possible. If such practise were to be taken up seriously and religiously, readers would be able to trust their media to deliver information which is aiming to be authentic rather than appealing and this will fundamentally distinguish reporting from tabloid.
References
Newspaper Articles
Astor, J.J. (1945). Importance of Press Freedom . The Manchester Guardian (1901-1959_. Feb 14, p. 3 .
Boulton, D. (1985). The dangers in data protection: David Boulton on journalism at risk , from the citizen's right to.... The Guardian . May 13th, p 13
Herbert, A . (1957). Ensuring Freedom of the Press: Sir Alan Herbert . The Manchester Guardian (1901-1959). January 25 , p. 2.
Rusbridger, A. (1997 ). The Freedom of the Press: And Other Platitudes. The Guardian . May 24, p.25.
Scotts, J.R. (1933 ). Freedom of the Press: Lesson for British People of its Destruction in Other Countries. The Manchester Guardian (1901- 1959). Aug 4, p. 5.
Websites
Kilman, L . (2003). Press freedom pays. Available: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,,948268,00.html. Last accessed 23rd Oct 2011.
Sachs, J, Soyinka, W, O'Nara, O. (1997). Viewpoints: Freedom of speech . Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7127423.stm. Last accessed 25th Oct 2011.
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