Journalism and Censorship: A Full Circle
The ideal of a Free Press, of a system of journalism reporting current events, politics, business, culture and social matters, is an ideal enshrined in modern society. It goes back over several hundred years to the smaller local news agencies, to hastily printed pamphlets, to the idea that the press, the newspapers they produced, the journalists working for them, should be able to report the facts without bias or fear for their lives. An ideal only, of course, as reporting the facts has always been a matter of interpretation, has always been subject to who we hear from and how the message is brought across. The press, regardless of its form, has always been divided along party political or religious lines, and has always been subject to pressure from above, to censorship and closure. The readers of one newspaper, viewers of certain television or internet shows know exactly what they are getting, where their information provider stands, and often choose just those who match their own way of thinking. But what happens when there is no choice? What happens when the information sources available to the general public are controlled by one central power, or by a group of the rich and mighty with their own personal agenda?
The suppression of journalism is not new. Many dictatorial countries throughout the world, throughout time, have attempted to control the passage of information, and to dictate what should be made available and what should be suppressed. There have been specialised censorship bureaus set up and run in what we might term some of the most liberal, free-thinking or democratic countries in the world, and that within living memory. There has always been pressure exerted from one position or another to spike a news story, to change the information given, to turn a damning report into something milder, or distract away from it completely. And there have always been attempts to control the mass media through ownership, but probably never on the same level as we are seeing in this century. Many formerly independent mass media publications and companies in the United States today can sing a song of such control, of forced takeovers, of the replacement of the good and the adept with inefficiency and lack of knowledge at all levels of management. One description of such a person boosted into a position of journalistic power reads:
A journalist who can neither write well nor distinguish himself through any particular talent for reporting or flashes of insight. A hanger-on in the corridors of power—a self-important little man who always manages to station himself wherever two ministers happen to be conversing. A compliant mouthpiece for the […]. Devoid of knowledge, opinions, or convictions. A man of connections, sustained entirely by the favour of ministers, state secretaries, and those who pull the strings of the press.
We have seen many reports of such people, especially coming out of the United States in the last few years. A political appointee set at the top of a publisher who, through their own bias and the will of a political party, without any journalistic talent or knowledge, misinform the public or set their own personal and political agenda through targeted misinformation and distortion of the facts. Objections from the staff, from the public, even resignations by those with the most talent and crowd-drawing power are to no avail. The media is driven down, changed out of all recognition, and possibly even destroyed in the process of suppression.
As I wrote above: the idea is not a new one. We have seen it across the entire world, from so-called democratic countries to those we all known are built on suppression and personal power in the last few years, and we have heard of it in the past. My quotation is not something taken from the press, or a biography, memoir or interview from recent years. It was published nearly a century ago as another well-known and highly esteemed publisher was replaced at the will of a dictatorial ruler. Today both the company which succumbed to pressure, and the news publication which was forced to bow down and acquiesce still exist, have managed to find their way back to almost the level of respectability they had at the time, almost to the level which resulted in them being forced to accept censorship and suppression. The original quotation reads:
Ein Journalist, der weder schreiben kann noch durch Reporterbegabung oder Einfälle glänzt. Eine Couloirexistenz, ein Pimperl Wichtig, das immer dort Posto faßt, wo sich zwei Minister unterhalten. Eine gefällige Schallplatte der Wilhelm-Straße. Ohne Kenntnisse, Meinungen, Überzeugung. Ein Mann der Beziehungen, von der Gunst von Ministern, Staatssekretären und Pressedirigenten getragen.
Written by Carl von Ossietzky, it was published in the German periodical Die Weltbühne on 5 January 1932.
