Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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First amendment
Public likes theory of free press, not practice
Poll indicates that although ‘free speech’ and ‘free
press’ are concepts Americans believe in, they reject those rights in specific
examples and favor licensing in some form
By Richard Harwood
It is fortunate for the press in the United States that the voice of
the people is not the voice of God or the Supreme Court.
That is because Americans, in the mass, believe in "free speech" and
a "free press" only in theory. In practice they reject those concepts.
That was the troubling conclusion drawn, ironically, from a major study
of public opinion commissioned in 1990 by the ASNE as part of the observance
of the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, wherein freedoms of expression
are constitutionally guaranteed. "Americans rate free speech as their second
(after freedom of religion) most precious First Amendment right and regard
a free press highly — in the abstract. ... No matter what noble conceptions
most Americans endorse when they are cloaked in the bright rhetoric and
flowing phrases of the founding fathers, many do not finally support those
precepts when they enter their lives and challenge their deepest personal
commitments."
That continues to be the case, as corroborated last fall in a large
study conducted by the Louis Harris organization for the Center for Media
and Public Affairs. The findings are depressing.
If they had their way, "the people" — meaning a majority of adults —
would not allow journalists to practice their trade without first obtaining,
as lawyers and doctors must, a license. Whether the preferred licensing
authority would be the government or some other credentialing agency is
not clear.
They would confer on judges the power to impose fines on publishers
and broadcasters for "inaccurate and biased reporting" and would liberalize
libel laws to make it easier for plaintiffs to win judgments against the
press.
They would empower government entities to monitor the work of journalists
for fairness and compel us to "give equal coverage to all sides of a controversial
issue." They also favor the creation of local and national news councils
to investigate complaints against the press and issue "corrections" of
erroneous news reports.
The earlier ASNE study dealt with public attitudes on a whole range
of specific First Amendment issues. Huge majorities, ranging from 70 percent
to 90 percent, favored complete or partial restrictions on the press in
reporting on the sexual habits of public figures, in reporting material
classified by the government, in publishing photographs of violent events
or the names of rape victims, in publishing partisan editorials or stories
critical of political leaders. They favored restrictions on television
programming that involves nudity, sex or violence and restrictions on musical
recordings dealing with those themes.
As for the free-speech rights of individuals, similar prohibitions enjoyed
widespread support. Most Americans would limit or ban coarse speech dealing
with sex, speech of any kind advocating homosexuality, promoting religious
cults, undemocratic forms of government and other subjects that "merely
represent things members of the public disagree with or dislike."
At the same time, roughly four out of five Americans consciously censored
their own speech out of various fears and inhibitions. They were afraid
their words would subject them to physical assault, retaliation from employers,
social ostracism or actual arrest by the authorities for saying the wrong
thing.
Those fears are not irrational. Throughout our history, people have
paid a price for the exercise of free speech. Religious dissenters, social
and artistic mavericks, abolitionists, union organizers, communists, socialists
and homosexuals were often beaten and sometimes killed or imprisoned as
punishment for the words they spoke and the causes they represented.
Some of that is happening today as penalties, including the loss of
jobs, increasingly are imposed on those accused of "racist," "sexist" and
other forms of "politically incorrect" speech, jokes included. Actual or
implicit speech codes that reach not only students but also teachers in
their classrooms have been adopted at many colleges and universities; two-thirds
of the freshmen entering college in 1996 answered "yes" when asked if "colleges
should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus." Similar prohibitions are
in effect in workplaces all over the country. The FBI in its background
checks on potential federal employees now seeks out evidence of deviant
speech as a factor in character evaluation.
Journalists are always asking in response to these polls, "Why do they
hate us so much?" The answer may be that they don’t, that we misread the
findings and use them to feed our paranoia. There is some evidence to that
effect in the recent Harris report. The public, in the main, looks on journalists
as people a lot like themselves, not grossly more biased, cynical, dishonest
or unethical than the average man or woman in the street. A majority even
reject the frequent charge that news people are excessively arrogant. Instead,
the public’s hostility is directed toward the "media," a code word for
the big corporate institutions that employ these journalists and control
the supply of news in the United States. The majority opinion is that "the
media" abuse their First Amendment privileges, that they are biased and
unfair in their coverage of political and social issues, that there is
too much preaching and interpretation in the news columns, that they exert
too much influence on public affairs and are beholden to "powerful people
and organizations," thus compromising their independence.
The public has no faith that any significant reforms in the press will
occur. The "media," concerned with the negative images they inspire and
worried about the erosion of their audiences, flounder over the question
of what if anything can or should be done to inspire trust and confidence
in their social utility. There are stirrings in the journalistic ranks,
an awakening interest in reformation from within. But it is too early to
tell if it will amount to anything. So press freedoms remain, as in the
past, dependent not on the goodwill of the masses but on the goodwill and
philosophical disposition of the nine men and women of the Supreme Court
of the United States.
© 1997 The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission
Harwood is a columnist for The Washington Post, where this article
originally appeared.
