Newspapers have their educative value also. Readers of a good newspaper are more intelligent active and better informed than scholars. Newspapers help us in disseminating good ideas. In newspapers we find reviews on newly published books We read accounts of discoveries and scientific and scientific research there are useful articles on every topic.
The e press is not always an easy object to love. It is not; of course, hard to see why authoritarian rulers have reasons 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.
Why, in particular, is the freedom of the press crucial for development? This is so for several distinct and basically reparable 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 important for development for at least four distinct reasons.
Firstly, the intrinsic importance of freedom of speech and public communication which are inseparably landed with the freedom of the press.
The assessment of development cannot be divorced from the lives that people can lead and the real freedom that they actually enjoy Development cannot be judged merely by the accumulation of inanimate objects of use, such as a rise of the gross national of inanimate objects of use, such as a rise of the gross national products or technological progress.
For reasonable 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 its indirect effects, but can 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 can impose this suppression happens to have a high GNP per head or have accumulated a large mass of physical wealth.
Secondly, the informational role of a free press is disseminating knowledge and allowing critical scrutiny.
This function relates not only to specialized reporting, 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. Thirdly the protective function of press freedom is giving voice to the neglected and the disadvantaged, and thus providing greater human security.
The protective function of press freedom is giving people a hearing and a voice. Rapid dissemination of information can also make a contribution to protection and security, consider, for example, the Chinese famine of 1958_61, in which between 23 to 30 million people died.
Despite the fact, the Chinese government was quite committed to eliminating hunger in the country; it did not substantially revise its disastrous policies 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 on the extent to which the Great Leap Forward has failed.
It is, thus, not astonishing at all that no substantial famine has been occurred in any in depended country with a democratic form of been occurred in any independent country with a democratic form of government and a relatively free press. The Chinese famine of 1958-61 could decimate people. Tens of millions over three years without leading to a raped policy revision not just because the government had wrong information but also because people were kept in the dark about the crises and the morality, since no newspaper was allowed to criticize the government.
A similar story can be seen in other major famines, whether we consider the soviet famines of the 1930s. The Cambodian famines of the 1970 or the famines under African military dictatorship in the last three decades, or in Sudan or North Korean in the very recent past, not to mention the famines under colonial rule.
Indeed the Bengal famine of 1934 was made viable not only a lack of democracy, but also be severe restrictions on the local press on reporting and criticism. The disaster received attention only alter Jana Stephen, the courageous editor of the statesman of Calcutta decided to break ranks by publishing graphic accounts stinging editorial on October 14 and 16, 1943.
This was immediately, followed on October 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 confessions of “culpa’ in the subsequent days, followed by heated parliamentary discussions 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.
The protective role of the press need recognition and emphasis when things are routinely good and smooth, the sheltering role of a free pass and the related democratic freedom are typically not desperately missed. But they come into their own when things get folded up, for one reason or another. They recent problem of East and south East Asia bring out among many other things, the penalty of limitations on democratic freedom of which press freedom is a part. Indeed, when the financial crises in this region led to a general economic recession, the protective power of democratic freedom not unlade that which prefects famines was hardly in some countries in the region.
Those who were newly dispossessed often did not have the voice they needed. The victims in, say, Indonesia or south Korea the unemployed or those newly made economically redundant may or may not have taken very great interest in democratic freedom when things had been going up and up together for all. But when things came tumbling down and divided they felt the lack of democratic intuitions, including a free press tended to keep their voices muffled and ineffective.
Fourthly, the constructive contribution of free public discussion in the formation of values and in the emergence of shared public standards that are central to social justice. Informed and unregimented formation of values requires openness of communication and arguments, and the freedom of the press cannot but be crucial to this process. Indeed, value formation is an interactive possible. As new standards emerge, it is public discussion as well as proximate emulation that spreads the new norms across a region and ultimately between regions.
Even the very concept of what is to count as a basic need tends to be dependent on public discussion on what is important and no less importantly, on what is feasible. Human beings suffer from miseries and deprivations of various kinds some more amenable to alleviation than others. Basis for practical discussion of our basic needs. Indeed, they are many things that we might have good reason to value kinds or even immorality. But we do not, indeed connote see them as needs precisely because we believe then to be infeasible. Our conception of needs relates not only to the comprehension of the nature and extent of deprivations, but also to ore appreciation of the nature and extent of deprivations, but also to our appreciation of what can or cannot be done about them. These evaluation and understandings can be strongly influenced by the freedom and vigor of public discussion. A free press can be great ally of the process of development through, among other connections, its constructive role in value formation.
A criticism that is often made in that the newspapers may be far from neutral in their representation. This need not itself is a fatal flaw, so long as different newspapers present desperate point of view, and between them, give voice to many perspectives that call for attention. The problem, whoever, arises from the fact that given a systematic bias in the press, this may not actually happen. In this context, the private ownership of newspapers has often been seen. With reason, to be source of concern, and there have also been suspicious which too can be reasonable, about the selective influence of advertisers.
Hanne staffer, the British journalist, said in frustration a quarter century ago: “Freedom of the press in British means freedom to print such of the proprietors prejudices as the advertisers don’t object to”
There is in fact, no easy way to escaping the power of newspapers ownership. Newspaper establishment involve property and it is hard to see that we can have arrangements through which newspaper owners only on that property and no other. In dealing with this issue, public ownership may not help either, since that would give the ruling government a special power that would, too a great extent, defeat the purpose of the freedom of the press.
It is useful in thesis context to involve the idea of what John Kenneth Galbriath has called “countervailing power “what is needed is not to so much to obliterate any particular power, but to confront one power with another. In the present context, this would be an argument not only for the multiplicity of private ownership from different parts of the business world, but also for supplementing them with cooperative ownership as well as with as with ownership by independent bodies and statutory boards. The presence of other media, other than newspapers, including radio, television, the internet, can also greatly enhance converge and diversity we have to rely to a great extent, on the countervailing power of competition and confrontation to overcome the problem of bias.
There is also the different issue of importance of journalistic ethics and commitment. This is not just a matter of honesty and objectivity of journalism, but also one of imitative imagination special motivation which would be needed to break less travelled grounds. For example, even though it is very easy to be forceful on very visible deprivations such as a famine or severe unemployment, the importance of bringing less obvious adversities can also very great.
To overcome this is needed is not only a fuller practice of journalistic initiative and enterprise, but also the development of dedicated pressure groups that focus forcefully on particular deprivations. This too, in a broad sense, involves the invoking of countervailing powers to broaden the overall search of the architecture of social institutions and activist alliances.
There are examples of some success in a number of fields. For example, woman’s organization and feminist group in India have been able to in recent years to give greater visibility and prominence to specific aspect of gender disparity, and have made a major contribution towards advancing public awareness and debate.
It is extremely important to see the critical importance of the freedom of the press in the process of development, but it is also necessary to seek ways and means of expanding its reach and securing its effective functioning. The press freedom has several distinct and independently significant roles including.
- 1st. Its intrinsic importance as a constitutive part of development.
- 2nd. Its informational function in broadening understanding across society.
- 3rd. its protective role in preventing serious deprivation.
- 4th. Its constitutive contribution in the interactive and informed formation of values.
However, none of these functions is mechanical or automatic. There is need for commitment, but also for an adequately broad institutional structure with ample countervailing power to secure range of impartiality.
The press freedom deserves our strongest support, but the press has the obligations as well as entitlements. Indeed, the freedom of the press defines both a right and a duty, and we have good reason to stand up for both.