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Australian
Censorship
regimes
Print
revolutions
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journalism
This page considers censorship of journalism.
It covers -
Questions of legal privilege
regarding journalism (in particular protection of journalist
sources) are explored in the Secrecy guide elsewhere on
this site.
introduction
Alexander Bickel, in The Morality of Consent
(New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1975), commented that
Not
everything is fit to print. There is to be regard for
at least probable factual accuracy, for danger to innocent
lives, for human decencies, and even, if cautiously,
for nonpartisan considerations of the national interest.
In
practice there is disagreement about fitness, risk and
dangers in print and broadcast journalism. We can identify
a range of mechanisms for restricting the collection and
dissemination of fact and commentary by journalists and
publishers -
- licensing
of the publication, publisher or journalist (often with
severe penalties for unauthorised publications or statements)
-
scrutiny and authorisation of content on a publication
or item basis, with inhouse censors active in newspapers
in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and contemporary China
-
defamation, discussed in detail elsewhere
on this site, with litigation punishing or deterring
publishers and authors
-
denial of access to particular locations (eg natural
disaster areas or battlefields) and to people or venues
(for example rationing of access to media conferences
and restriction to accredited journalists at conferences)
-
prohibition on the publication of particular statements
or news, including 'D
Notice' schemes in some democracies and more comprehensive
bans in totalitarian states such as China and Cuba on
anything from public discussion of the autocrat's health
to coverage of industrial disasters or the prevalence
of Avian influenza
- 'spontaneous'
popular action, including beating or threatening of
journalists, mob violence damaging broadcasting equipment
and printing presses, and occupation of the editorial
areas of newspaper and book publishing organisations
Censorship
of journalism for many people conjures up images of political
apparatchiks blue-pencilling items scheduled to appear
on newspaper pages or in radio broadcasts, or blithely
ordering that a particular book or magazine issue be pulped.
The above points indicate that it can be more pervasive
and more subtle, found in advanced economies (including
those with a strong civil society and democratic system)
rather than merely in one party states.
In considering Australia's neighbours, for example, we
can readily identify seizure of mainstream newsmagazines
(such as the Far Eastern Economic Review, Time,
Economist and Newsweek) in Singapore,
Malaysia and Thailand over coverage that displeased the
government.
Defamation action has been used
in Singapore to deter criticism by local politicians and
major journals (including offshore journals); it also
impoverishes independent critics. A perspective is provided
in 'Singapore's jurisprudence of political defamation
and its triple-whammy impact on political speech' by Tsun
Hang Tey in Public Law (2008) 452-462
China arrests journalists and editors (both as punishment
and to encourage 'right thinking' among their peers) and
withdraws licences from publications and their publishers.
Papua New Guinea expels foreign journalists whose criticism
of endemic corruption has become too pointed.
All regimes differentiate to some degree between professional
journalists (in particular those who are members of an
officially-recognised journalists association, have some
affiliation with a major media organization or news agency,
or have some form of formal accreditation) and writers/reporters
who lack that institutional badge. Notions in the US of
bloggers as 'citizen journalists'
(apparently to receive the same protection under that
nation's media privilege
regime as their professional peers but without the same
expectations regarding objectivity and research) have
not founded favour in Australia or elsewhere.
In practice much news censorship in Australia, the US,
Canada and UK is intangible. It is a question of journalists
(or their editors, legal advisers and company directors)
internalising expectations about the way that the media
game is played. Those who break the unwritten rules may
be denied contact with politicians and other figures (or
opportunities to be 'managed' as an embedded journalist
in a combat zone) or merely produce reporting that is
deemed to be uncommercial.
One of our more dyspeptic contacts thus argues that the
'real censor' is the interaction of community indifference
and the rating system that drives public and private broadcasting
(and their print tail), rather than overt intervention
by media magnates and government officials or libel writs
from corporate law firms.
newspaper censorship in wars
Censorship during times of war or civil unrest has a range
of objectives -
- suppression
of 'information that would be useful to the enemy' -
what most people think of as wartime censorship - including
information that facilitates identification of military
targets (or their status after attack)
- suppression
of information that would discourage the domestic population
or armed forces (and thereby 'give comfort to the enemy'),
for example information about military losses, incompetence
or corruption
- suppression
of information that would erode relations with allies,
neutral countries/organisations and with 'international
opinion'
It
has taken diferent forms, including -
- jamming
of enemy or neutral broadcasts and prohibition on import/dissemination
of overseas publications
- use
of the 'censor's 'blue pencil' to delete content from
personal correspondence, news service reports, broadcast
scripts and newspaper/journals prior to publication
- seizure
of individual issues of newspapers or journals that
'escaped' the blue pencil (with punishment or suppression
of the publication for repeated breaches)
- prohibitions
on the broadcast of interviews with (or even publication
of statements by) terrorist leaders
- restrictions
on who gets to report news and where they are allowed
to go, with for example 'official correspondents', embedded
journalists and journalism pools that can only process
official communiques by military minders rather than
independently collect information from civilians and
troops
- self
censorship, whether by individual journalists and editors
(out of perceptions of national interest, 'responsible
reporting', personal interest or merely to preempt tighter
regulation) or by organisations and their spokespeople
(notably the obscene failure of the Roman Catholic Church
and International Red Cross to speak out during the
Holocaust)
Questions
of free expression and media censorship were highlighted
in a preceding page
of this guide, which points to works such as The First
Amendment & the Media in the Court of Public Opinion
(New York: Cambridge Uni Press 2002) by David Yalof &
Kenneth Dautrich, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent
as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Vietnam (London:
Cape 1975) by Phillip Knightley, The Media At War
(Basingstoke: Macmillan 2000) by Susan Carruthers and
War & the Media (Manchester: Manchester Uni
Press 1998) by Philip Taylor and War Stories: Reporting
in the Time of Conflict From Crimea to Iraq (Boston:
Bunker Hill 2003) by Harold Evans.
Michael Sweeney's Secrets of Victory: The Office of
Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War
II (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 2001),
Oron Hale's The Captive Press in the Third Reich
(Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1964), Allan Winkler's
The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information
1942-1945 (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1978), Lucjan
Dobroszycki's Reptile Journalism: The Official Polish-Language
Press under the Nazis 1939-1945 (New Haven: Yale
Uni Press 1995), Donal Ó Drisceoil's Censorship
in Ireland, 1939-1945: Neutrality, Politics & Society
(Cork: Cork Uni Press 1996) and Robert Harris' Gotcha!
The Media, The Government & the Falklands Crisis
(London: Faber 1983) are of particular interest. Framing
Terrorism:The News Media, the Government & the Public
(London: Routledge 2003) edited by Pippa Norris, Montague
Kern & Marion Just offers another perspective.
For the early US see Robert Martin's The Free and
Open Press: The Founding of American Democratic Press
Liberty, 1640-1800 (Albany: New York Uni Press 2001)
and in peace
Nations have used a range of mechanisms for censorship
of journalism during peacetime. Zimbabwe's 2003 Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act for
example imposes heavy fines and jail terms for "abuse
of journalistic privilege" such as publication of
"falsehoods" (statements that the Government
deems to be untrue). It bars foreigners from working in
Zimbabwe as correspondents; journalists, magazines and
newspapers must be to be accredited by the government
Media & Information Commission.
Some nations engage in issue by issue approval and censorship
of publications. In 2005 Egyptian censors for example
blocked sale of Cairo magazine, apparently for
a cover photo showing plainclothes security forces preparing
to attack pro-democracy demonstrators. Editor Matthew
Carrington said
They
don't really give a reason for their decisions. They
might just say the person who can give permission [for
distribution] is away or something like that.
For
the UK D
Notice regime see Secrecy & the Media: The
Official History of the D-Notice System (London:
Routledge 2008) by Nicholas Wilkinson. The Australian
regime is discussed in the more detailed profile on censorship
in Australia and New Zealand.
polls, politics and democratic values
In discussing opinion polling and audience
research we have noted restrictions on the collection
and publication of polls.
Frits Spangenberg's 2003 The Freedom to Publish
Opinion Poll Results (PDF)
thus notes that some 30 of 78 countries surveyed (including
New Zealand, Canada, France, Italy and Spain) had restrictions
on the publication of polls during election campaigns.
The restriction has been justified on the basis that published
polls can inappropriately influence voters through
-
bandwagon or underdog effects, with readers of the poll
either rallying to the leading candidate or to the trailing
candidate
- demotivating
effects, with readers deciding not to vote because polls
indicate that their candidate is going to lose
- the
free-will effect, with readers casting their votes to
disprove the polls or the pundits.
Publication
in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Japan and Thailand of polls
about the ruling family is prohibited. Some nations restrict
publication of polls regarding ethnic groups, foreign
relations and defence policies. Examples include Turkey,
Venezuela, Syria, Palestine, Mexico and North Korea.
American
exceptionalism?
US founding father Thomas Jefferson, in one of his more
peevish moments, snorted that
Nothing
can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth
itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted
vehicle
Richard
Woodward, in noting that "Americans rank journalists
down there with used car salesmen and lawyers", more
acutely asked "so why do we keep making movies about
them?" before contrasting the absence of "outstanding
French, English, Italian, German, Japanese, or Russian
movies about the Fourth Estate" with works such as
The Front Page, His Girl Friday, Citizen Kane, Sweet
Smell of Success, Broadcast News, Network and The
Insider.
He commented that
One
reason for the discrepancy may be the First Amendment.
Journalists may rank with lawyers and politicians in
the index of odious professions, but nowhere else are
the rights of the press so central to a nation's vaunted
idea of itself. The freedom to publish damning news
about government and business is stitched into the Constitution,
on a par with freedom of religion. Citizens are supposed
to be outraged and the courts spring into action when
the press is abused. Innumerable Hollywood plots, from
Three Days of the Condor to The Pelican
Brief, have celebrated newspapers as the country's
last defense against tyranny.
After
viewing a Thomas Nast cartoon Boss Tweed is reported to
have said
Let's
stop those damned pictures! I don't care so much what
the papers say about me. My constituents can't read.
But, damn it, they can see the pictures!"
Studies
include The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American
Political Cartoons (New York: New York Uni Press
2007) by Donald Dewey, The Loaded Line: Australian
Political Caricature 1788-1901 (Carlton: Melbourne
Uni Press 1973) by Marguerite Mahood, Drawn to Extremes:
The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons (New York:
Columbia Uni Press 2006) by Chris Lamb, Those Damned
Pictures: Explorations in American Political Cartoon Art
(North Haven: Archon Books 1996) by Roger Fisher, Drawn
and Quartered: The History of American Political Cartoons
(Montgomery: Elliot & Clark 1996) by Stephen Hess
& Sand Northrop
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