Government, too, can be victim of censorship
But let me, first begin, with a word of caution. The press is not always an easy object to love. It is not, of course, hard to to see why authoritarian rulers have reason - mostly terrible reasons - to hate the free press, and that is perhaps a part of the glory of the press.
But frustration with the press is by no means confined only to dictators and potentates. There is the issue of invasion of privacy which can ruin some lives, but no less importantly there is also the more common problem of being misreported.
Indeed, when we are wrongly reported in a newspaper, as happens from time to time, it can be extremely upsetting, since the false attributions typically communicate a lot faster and much more prominently than any subsequent corrections can.
I have had the experience, for example, of saying that the world civilisations are not in tremendous conflict, and being reported in a prominent newspaper that I believed that the world civilisations are in tremendous conflict.
It was not, I have to confess, much of a consolation to be told that the diligent reporter had only missed one word - the word "not". If we tear our hair in frustration, it is mainly because we cannot find accessible journalists to tear their hair in comforting abandon.
There is also a more serious reason - indeed a different type of reason - for us to be upset with the media. Given the power of the press, it is easy for us to see how they can do a good deal of good to the society. When the task is neglected (or worse), it can indeed be very disconcerting. We have occasion enough to be disappointed at the unfulfilled promise of the free media and the corresponding loss of potential benefit.
But I do believe it is important to take a critical attitude towards the press even as we defend and fight for the freedom of the press. It may not be quite a quid pro quo (it must not be), but it is a necessary connection to which journalists in particular have reason to pay attention. Having got this skeptical, somewhat negative concerns right into the arena, let me turn now to the positive merits - indeed the critical significance - of the press.
Power to suppress
Why, in particular, is the freedom of the press crucial for the development? I think this is so for several distinct and basically separable reasons, and it is important to distinguish them clearly, so that we can adequately assess what is at stake.
Indeed, we have to know what may be lost when censorship is imposed and press freedom is suppressed. Lord Northeliffe may have been right to grumble nearly 100 years ago, "The power of the press is very great, but not so great as the power to suppress", but we have to understand what the world loses as a result of authoritarian exercise of the power to suppress.
I have argued elsewhere, particularly in my book, "Development as Freedom", that the assessment of development cannot be divorced from the lives that people can lead and the real freedoms that they actually enjoy.
Development cannot be judged merely by accumulation of inanimate object of use, such as a rise of the gross national product (GNP) of technological progress. For responsible human beings, the focus must ultimately be on whether they have the freedom to do what they have reason to value.
This makes freedom the crucial end of development, and given that basic recognition, it is easy to see that freedom of speech and communication must be among the constitutive components of development.
Freedom of speech, in this perspective, does not have to be justified by the indirect effects, but can be seen to be part and parcel of what we value and have reason to value. It must, therefore, figure directly in any accounting of development.
The absence of a free press and the suppression of people's ability to speak to and communicate with each other directly impoverishes human freedom and impairs development, even if the authoritarian country that imposes this suppression happens to have a high GNP per head or have accumulated a large mass of physical wealth.
Starved of information
I turn now to the informational function of the press a part of its instrumental role. This function relates not only to specialised reporting (for example on scientific advance or on cultural innovations), but also to keeping people generally informed on what is going on where. Furthermore investigative journalism can also unearth information that would have otherwise gone unnoticed or even unknown. All this is so obvious that I hardly need elaborate on them.
I shall presently discuss the protective function of press freedom in giving people a hearing and a voice. But in the context of the present discussion of the informational role of a press, let me comment that rapid dissemination of information can also make contribution to protection and security.
Consider, for example, the Chinese famine of 1958-61, in which between 23 million to 30 million people died. Despite the fact that the Chinese government was quite committed to eliminating hunger in the country, it did not substantially revise its disastrous policies (associated with the ill advised "Great Leap Forward") during the three famine years.
This was possible because of the lack of a political opposition and absence of an independent critique from the media, but the Chinese government itself did not see the need to change its policies partly because it did not have enough information itself on the extent to the which "Great Leap Forward" had failed.
Because of the absence of an uncensored press and other modes of public communication, the officials across China were under the impression that while they themselves had failed, the other regions had done well. This gave incentive to each local unit collectives or communes in various formations to concoct their agricultural data pretending that they too were doing well enough.
The totality of these reported numbers vastly inflated the Chinese government's own estimates of the total amount of food grains that the country had. Indeed, it led the Chinese authorities, at the peak of famine, to the mistaken belief that they had 100 million more metric tons of grains than they actually had.
The information that is lost as a result of censorship of the press by an authoritarian government can devastatingly mislead the government itself. I did not wish to make the press more swollen headed than it already is, by invoking William Cowper and saying that the press, like God, "moves in mysterious way his wonder to perform", but whether or not the press is swollen headed, it is certainly true that censorship of the press can not only keep the citizen in the dark, it can also starve the government itself vitally important information.
Political incentive
I turn now to the confrontational role of the press in giving the government the political incentive to respond to the need of the people. The rulers have incentive to listen to what people want if they have to face their criticism and seek their support in election.
It is, thus, not astonishing at all that no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent country with a democratic form of government and relatively free press. The Chinese famine of 1958-61 could decimate people tens of millions over three years without leading to a rapid policy revision not just because the government and wrong information (itself connected, as I have just argued, with press censorship), but also because people were kept in the dark about the crises and morality, and since no newspaper was allowed to criticise the government.
A similar story can be seen in other major famines, whether we consider the Soviet famines of the 1930s, or the Cambodian famines of the 1970s, or the famines under African military dictatorships in the last three decades, or in Sudan or North Korea in the very recent past, not to mention the famines under colonial rule.
Indeed, the Bengal famine of 1943, which I witnessed as a child, was made viable not only by lack of democracy, but also severe restrictions on the local press on reporting and criticism. The disaster received attention only after Ian Stephen, the courageous editor of The Statesman of Calcutta (then British owned) decided to break ranks by publishing graphic accounts and stinging editorials on Oct 14 and 16, 1943.
This was immediately followed on Oct 18 by a mea culpa letter on the size of the death toll by the governor of Bengal to the secretary of state for India in London, followed by further confession of "culpas" in the subsequent days, followed by heated Parliamentary discussion in Westminster, and followed ultimately by the beginning at last of public relief arrangements the following month, when the famine, which had already killed millions, ended.
Tuesday, Part 2: [#2]The power of newspaper ownership[/#]
But let me, first begin, with a word of caution. The press is not always an easy object to love. It is not, of course, hard to to see why authoritarian rulers have reason - mostly terrible reasons - to hate the free press, and that is perhaps a part of the glory of the press.
But frustration with the press is by no means confined only to dictators and potentates. There is the issue of invasion of privacy which can ruin some lives, but no less importantly there is also the more common problem of being misreported.
Indeed, when we are wrongly reported in a newspaper, as happens from time to time, it can be extremely upsetting, since the false attributions typically communicate a lot faster and much more prominently than any subsequent corrections can.
I have had the experience, for example, of saying that the world civilisations are not in tremendous conflict, and being reported in a prominent newspaper that I believed that the world civilisations are in tremendous conflict.
It was not, I have to confess, much of a consolation to be told that the diligent reporter had only missed one word - the word "not". If we tear our hair in frustration, it is mainly because we cannot find accessible journalists to tear their hair in comforting abandon.
There is also a more serious reason - indeed a different type of reason - for us to be upset with the media. Given the power of the press, it is easy for us to see how they can do a good deal of good to the society. When the task is neglected (or worse), it can indeed be very disconcerting. We have occasion enough to be disappointed at the unfulfilled promise of the free media and the corresponding loss of potential benefit.
But I do believe it is important to take a critical attitude towards the press even as we defend and fight for the freedom of the press. It may not be quite a quid pro quo (it must not be), but it is a necessary connection to which journalists in particular have reason to pay attention. Having got this skeptical, somewhat negative concerns right into the arena, let me turn now to the positive merits - indeed the critical significance - of the press.
Power to suppress
Why, in particular, is the freedom of the press crucial for the development? I think this is so for several distinct and basically separable reasons, and it is important to distinguish them clearly, so that we can adequately assess what is at stake.
Indeed, we have to know what may be lost when censorship is imposed and press freedom is suppressed. Lord Northeliffe may have been right to grumble nearly 100 years ago, "The power of the press is very great, but not so great as the power to suppress", but we have to understand what the world loses as a result of authoritarian exercise of the power to suppress.
I have argued elsewhere, particularly in my book, "Development as Freedom", that the assessment of development cannot be divorced from the lives that people can lead and the real freedoms that they actually enjoy.
Development cannot be judged merely by accumulation of inanimate object of use, such as a rise of the gross national product (GNP) of technological progress. For responsible human beings, the focus must ultimately be on whether they have the freedom to do what they have reason to value.
This makes freedom the crucial end of development, and given that basic recognition, it is easy to see that freedom of speech and communication must be among the constitutive components of development.
Freedom of speech, in this perspective, does not have to be justified by the indirect effects, but can be seen to be part and parcel of what we value and have reason to value. It must, therefore, figure directly in any accounting of development.
The absence of a free press and the suppression of people's ability to speak to and communicate with each other directly impoverishes human freedom and impairs development, even if the authoritarian country that imposes this suppression happens to have a high GNP per head or have accumulated a large mass of physical wealth.
Starved of information
I turn now to the informational function of the press a part of its instrumental role. This function relates not only to specialised reporting (for example on scientific advance or on cultural innovations), but also to keeping people generally informed on what is going on where. Furthermore investigative journalism can also unearth information that would have otherwise gone unnoticed or even unknown. All this is so obvious that I hardly need elaborate on them.
I shall presently discuss the protective function of press freedom in giving people a hearing and a voice. But in the context of the present discussion of the informational role of a press, let me comment that rapid dissemination of information can also make contribution to protection and security.
Consider, for example, the Chinese famine of 1958-61, in which between 23 million to 30 million people died. Despite the fact that the Chinese government was quite committed to eliminating hunger in the country, it did not substantially revise its disastrous policies (associated with the ill advised "Great Leap Forward") during the three famine years.
This was possible because of the lack of a political opposition and absence of an independent critique from the media, but the Chinese government itself did not see the need to change its policies partly because it did not have enough information itself on the extent to the which "Great Leap Forward" had failed.
Because of the absence of an uncensored press and other modes of public communication, the officials across China were under the impression that while they themselves had failed, the other regions had done well. This gave incentive to each local unit collectives or communes in various formations to concoct their agricultural data pretending that they too were doing well enough.
The totality of these reported numbers vastly inflated the Chinese government's own estimates of the total amount of food grains that the country had. Indeed, it led the Chinese authorities, at the peak of famine, to the mistaken belief that they had 100 million more metric tons of grains than they actually had.
The information that is lost as a result of censorship of the press by an authoritarian government can devastatingly mislead the government itself. I did not wish to make the press more swollen headed than it already is, by invoking William Cowper and saying that the press, like God, "moves in mysterious way his wonder to perform", but whether or not the press is swollen headed, it is certainly true that censorship of the press can not only keep the citizen in the dark, it can also starve the government itself vitally important information.
Political incentive
I turn now to the confrontational role of the press in giving the government the political incentive to respond to the need of the people. The rulers have incentive to listen to what people want if they have to face their criticism and seek their support in election.
It is, thus, not astonishing at all that no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent country with a democratic form of government and relatively free press. The Chinese famine of 1958-61 could decimate people tens of millions over three years without leading to a rapid policy revision not just because the government and wrong information (itself connected, as I have just argued, with press censorship), but also because people were kept in the dark about the crises and morality, and since no newspaper was allowed to criticise the government.
A similar story can be seen in other major famines, whether we consider the Soviet famines of the 1930s, or the Cambodian famines of the 1970s, or the famines under African military dictatorships in the last three decades, or in Sudan or North Korea in the very recent past, not to mention the famines under colonial rule.
Indeed, the Bengal famine of 1943, which I witnessed as a child, was made viable not only by lack of democracy, but also severe restrictions on the local press on reporting and criticism. The disaster received attention only after Ian Stephen, the courageous editor of The Statesman of Calcutta (then British owned) decided to break ranks by publishing graphic accounts and stinging editorials on Oct 14 and 16, 1943.
This was immediately followed on Oct 18 by a mea culpa letter on the size of the death toll by the governor of Bengal to the secretary of state for India in London, followed by further confession of "culpas" in the subsequent days, followed by heated Parliamentary discussion in Westminster, and followed ultimately by the beginning at last of public relief arrangements the following month, when the famine, which had already killed millions, ended.
Tuesday, Part 2: [#2]The power of newspaper ownership[/#]
AMARTYA SEN is 1998 Nobel laureate for economics, and he delivered the above keynote address at the recent World Congress of the International Press Institute in New Delhi.
Are you sure you want to delete this comment?
This action cannot be undone.