Defend Truth

Opinionista

Press freedom’s value is in our capacity to take part

Rousseau is a voluntary exile from professional philosophy, where having to talk metaphysics eventually became unbearably irritating. He now spends his time trying to arrest the rapid decline in common sense exhibited by his species, both through teaching critical thinking and business ethics at the University of Cape Town, and through activities aimed at eliminating the influence of religious ideology in public policy. When not being absurdly serious, he’s one of those left-wing sorts who enjoys red wine, and he is alleged to be able to cook a mean Bistecca Fiorentine.

Freedom of the media is a noble prerequisite to true democracy, but if South Africans lack the freedom to acquire knowledge and the wherewithal to participate in the debate, freedom of expression is an empty liberty.

As Opinionista Sipho Hlongwane reminded us on World Press Freedom Day, not only is the extent of freedom of the press a matter for debate, but much also still needs to be done to bring the benefits of a free press (or to be accurately inclusive, free media) to most South Africans. This is not simply a matter of what goes unreported, or even of stifling a free press via intimidation or other forms of political interference. These are important concerns, but ones which presume an interest – as well as the ability – on the part of South Africans to equally engage with the issues discussed.

Our concerns should go deeper. For a developing country such as ours, the focus should perhaps more appropriately be on whether most South Africans have anything to say at all. In other words, we could instead consider whether a free press is the sort of freedom that provides significant value to many South Africans, and whether their inability to enjoy the benefits of a free press derives from far more significant impingements on their freedoms in a more general sense.

The focus on a free press – or on free speech – typically approaches the issue from a politically liberal point of view, in that the identified threats are those which relate to negative liberties (or freedoms) – the liberties to be unencumbered by various constraints.

Isaiah Berlin is most often credited with bringing the distinction between positive and negative liberties to our attention, even though the distinction goes back at least to Kant. Berlin’s 1958 essay, “Two conceptions of liberty”, makes the distinction between the sort of liberty which consists of the absence of limitations or obstacles to freedom (negative liberties), and the sort of liberty which requires the presence of something. The freedom to self-determination could be such a positive liberty.

According to Berlin, positive liberties help us understand questions such as: “What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?”. Negative liberties, on the other hand, ask us to consider which areas of our lives are those in which we should be left to do whatever it is we choose to do or be, without outside interference.

Rights to free speech or a free press assume that we all potentially have something to say, and that our desires to say those things should not be curtailed by censorship, or by the domination of available platforms of expression by any particular point of view (such as the conservative bias evident in much of the media controlled by Rupert Murdoch). If all the available avenues of expression are intolerant or dismissive of your points of view, your freedom to express those views is constrained. Meaning that your views may frequently be sidelined or marginalised.

This concern could still be accommodated under a negative liberty perspective, however, as it could be argued that we are all equally free to blog, or otherwise express our points of view in similarly inexpensive and (potentially) broad-ranging and far-reaching ways. It is unclear to what extent this argument would succeed, in that even these more democratic platforms can give rise to significant dominance of one ideology over another, leaving us a merely technical – rather than substantive – right to free expression.

For the sake of argument, however, let us assume we are equally free to express our points of view – that the negative liberty to freedom of expression is secure. In this fantasy world, it would still not be the case that we are equally able to do so, if we imagine the free individual to be one that determines her own desires autonomously, in an environment that allows for self-realisation. The mere absence of intrusions on our negative liberties says nothing about optimal conditions for enjoying positive liberties – such as the access to basic materials that allow us to develop independent points of view.

As I’ve argued previously, an effective education system is a prerequisite for a well-functioning state. But it is also a prerequisite for self-determination and essential to freedom of expression. It is a vital component of our conception of press freedom in that many South Africans may quite literally have nothing to say. Not because they lack the potential to do so, but because they may struggle to conceive of the world as being different to what it currently is, due to a lack of exposure to other or even conflicting points of view.

Furthermore, many South Africans may have little to say because their concerns are more immediate. They may be struggling to find a job, a meal for their families or sufficient warmth to have thoughts more complicated than the struggle to survive the night. In this context, concerns around negative freedoms of non-interference in the expression of our points of view come across as rather trivial, and far from the more pressing issues to be dwelling on in such a socio-economically divided country.

A focus on positive liberties does not come without its own dangers. If we expect the state to promote the positive liberties of its citizens, we run the risk of embracing more paternalism than might be desirable. Increases in positive liberties also frequently involve proportional decreases in negative liberties, such as those that result from increased taxation. But while we lament the fact that the media is perhaps not as free as we would prefer, we should not forget that for many of our citizens, merely being able to have this concern is a privilege of which they can only dream.

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