Machan's Musings - Liberty & Journalism
by Tibor R. Machan
What journalists should and should not do as professionals can vary, depending on where they do their work, what topic they are dealing with, how often they publish, etc. and so forth. But there are objective standards of journalism—what students are supposed to learn about in journalistic ethics courses. It is not at all subjective or relative how they should pursue their craft. Journalists ought to be thorough within the space and time restrictions they face, objective, relevant and so forth.
Most know this implicitly but at times it is good to reflect on it explicitly. My point here isn’t to spell out the details, just to make note of the fact that writing for and editing papers, either in the news or editorial department, isn’t a matter of “anything goes.”
When it comes, however, to what rights journalists have, that’s a different issue. It is a political or public policy question and the answer is, “To do whatever they believe they ought to do, even if they are wrong.” In other words, even if journalists produce something awful, disgusting, insulting, offensive, they have the right to do so. Which means no one may stop them form doing as they choose—any opposition must be confined to peaceful means. That is the crux of the freedom of the press. It applies, of course, also to publishing books, making movies, drawing cartoons, and so forth.
Take the example of the Danish cartoonists and their editors, or the writings of Holocaust denier David Irving. Arguably, both produced vile stuff, though that again isn’t something I will either defend or oppose here. But no one is authorized, morally, and no one ought to be empowered legally, to ban and restrict their drawing or writing what they choose to draw or write. They are free agents, and whether they do what is right or wrong, if they aren’t violating the rights of others—and drawing or writing something just cannot do this—they must have the freedom to proceed.
Some apparent exceptions do apply. Thus writing threats that promise to violate another’s rights can constitute conspiracy to commit a crime and that may be resisted, thwarted, in law. That’s akin to someone who seriously threatens another with violence, which then justifies a defensive response—one need not wait until the promise to do violence has actually been carried out (even if some legal dramas make it appear so). Incitement to violence is similar. For a leader of a church or some other organization to order the believers or members to go out to hurt someone fits this bill and the law in a free country may step in.
Of course, matters can get complicated and I am here only dealing with the basic principles, with just some hints as to where the gray areas lie. (In all human affairs there are gray areas—just think of who qualifies as an adolescent, who as an adult, who as a senior citizen.)
Concerning the recent upheaval about the cartoons published in some Danish newspapers for Danish readers, ones then taken to some Arab countries to incite the violence against the Danes, the first thing to note is that it is not only the Arabs involved who have gone overboard, past the limits of a civilized response, in such cases. Recently David Irving was convicted in England of claiming that the Holocaust didn’t happen. He was forced by law to retract his claim.This, though not fully comparable to the barbarism of burning down a Danish embassy and causing the death of several innocent people, still amounts to unjustified conduct in response to what Irving did. He wrote, something no one has to read, and even those who read it need not have believed what they read. Just as with the Danish papers’ cartoons, which no one needed to sympathize with or approve of, so it is with Mr. Irving. Yet the man was convicted in a court of all. Sure, it wasn’t so drastic but in the final analysis he was convicted with the threat of violence should he have resisted. And no justification exists for this, none at all.
When during the Civil War President Lincoln jailed some newspaper editors for their opposition to his policies, he too acted without justification, even if the courts sanctioned what he did. When in some American courts people who are convicted of a violent crime are sentenced more severely than usual because they hate their victims, because they have racists or bigoted attitudes toward them, that too is unjustified, however much their hatred is contemptible.
So it is important that in America and elsewhere in the non-Arab world people do not get all that righteous about how they would not act as the angry mobs in the Arab countries did. Many people who live in the West approve of measures that are not all that different from the conduct of the Arab mobs. We are a long way from living up fully to the principles of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution even in the country where that document was ratified, let alone elsewhere in the non-Arab world.
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