Press

PRESS. - From the moral and juridical standpoint, which is of particular interest here, and in its most general meaning, the term denotes everything that is published in any form by means of the typographic art, in order to express and propagate human thought through the written word or through images. In a narrower sense it is usually applied to journalism (v.), that is, to all that complex activity of public communication which has also been given the name of the fourth estate. The freedom of the press concerns this activity predominantly, but the question arises for all publications. The special importance given to journalism in this discussion depends on its greater influence in the formation of public opinion (v. PUBBLICA OPINIONE) and on its consequent political importance, particularly under a democratic regime.

I. FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND ECCLESIASTICAL CENSORSHIP

Freedom of the press is but one aspect of freedom of thought and speech, or rather of freedom without qualifications, considered in one of its particular manifestations, in the faculty inherent in it of communicating one's ideas, opinions and conceptions through the use of speech, in this case written speech.

Although in antiquity the problem did not present itself in the same terms in which it came to be configured after the invention of the press, there is nevertheless no lack, particularly in Roman legislation, of examples that can still be instructive today.

In the Church, the introduction of the censura praevia is owed to Sixtus IV, so well deserving of the art of printing, and it was reconfirmed and put into effect by Alexander VI in 1492 (v. INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS). Here it is above all important to see what the juridical foundations of the question are, which must be viewed both under the general aspect of freedom and under that of the Revolution.

The Church has received the divine mandate to teach what Christ taught, and consequently the duty to keep pure from every contamination of error the deposit of revealed truth, whose integral acceptance is a necessary condition for eternal salvation, and the right to watch over it lest it be corrupted. This duty and this right stand at the foundation of the preventive measures adopted by her, with which she furthermore tends to ensure the attainment of her institutional end, the salus animarum, and her social unity, which rests on the bond of common faith. Freedom is neither impaired nor compressed by them. Individually it remains in the power of each believer to follow or not to follow her indications; socially her action resolves itself into a clarification of the obligations that weigh upon the believer by the very fact of his voluntary belonging to the supernatural society founded by Christ. If in every social body freedom remains limited by the specific end toward which it tends and by its internal laws, all the more must this be admitted with respect to the Church, within whose bosom freedom of the press must be subject to the requirement of the unity of the faith, its constitutional principle, and to the necessities of salvation, its essential end.

II. FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP

The question presents itself as somewhat more complex with regard to civil society.

Freedom of the press was first affirmed in England in 1695, when the Commons refused to approve the restrictive measures in force, aggravated in particular by the Licensing Act of 1662. The concept passed with the colonists to North America, where it obtained its first legislative formulation. The Bill of Rights accepted an amendment to the federal Constitution, presented by Virginia and other States, and this was included in the Constitution. By it any law that could restrict freedom of speech and of the press was forbidden. The principle was affirmed in Europe in the Declaration of the Rights of 1789 (art. 11); it received juridical formulation in the Constitution of 1791 and in that of 1793. It has penetrated into almost all modern constitutions. The Statute of Charles Albert of 4 March 1848, in art. 4, declared that "the press is free, but a law shall repress its abuses." The Statute promulgated by Pius IX on 14 March 1848 followed the movement begun by the French Revolution, inasmuch as by art. 11 it abolished preventive or political censorship for the press, replacing it with repressive measures to be established by law. Contemporary juridical thought has continued to move along the same lines, of which the most recent expression is the international declaration of the rights of man approved by the United Nations Organization (v. DIRITTI DELL'UOMO).

An examination of even the most recent constitutional texts reveals how they invariably carry conjoined both the affirmation of freedom of the press and the determination of certain restrictions, to prevent its abuses, either fixed with reference to morality and the common good or to be specified in a particular law. This greatly facilitates the solution of the speculative question concerning the right of freedom of the press and its limits.

The existence of such a right has never been called into doubt by Catholic doctrine, respectful as it is of the human person, to whom it could not fail to recognize the faculty of communicating one's ideas through the use of the spoken or written word. Indeed, one of the principal arguments for demonstrating man's natural sociability has been based on language and its specific function. The right, therefore, to communicate thoughts and opinions by the means of expression suited thereto sinks its roots into the rational nature of man and his original destination to social life: it is therefore incontestable. Catholic doctrine has only combated a particular interpretation of it, deduced from the false concept of liberty, defined as the total autonomy of the will. From the practical standpoint all legislations have proved it right, since none of them has codified unlimited freedom; from the theoretical standpoint, however, not a few have accepted it, resorting to the external limit of law.

Here lurks an error that must be corrected. Liberty, not in its physical aspect of self-mastery of the act but in its moral aspect, is the faculty of determining oneself independently according to the immanent laws of rationality, and since the human being has an innate tendency to society, necessary for his full development, a double series of laws is intrinsic to him: that which imperatively regulates private conduct and that which guides him in the same way in public life. Liberty consequently is a faculty intrinsically limited both by morality and by justice, in which are included the imperious demands of the political community. Law is nothing other than the positive determination of these limits, already existing before its formulation, and in them it finds its reason for being — not, as has been affirmed, in a supposititious general will, a simple expression of the greater number without moral value and juridical content, unless it borrows them from another source. Freedom of the press, therefore, is indeed a fundamental right of the person, but a right intrinsically limited, which leaves room for the regulatory intervention of political authority.

The individual criterion for concretely establishing this limit is derived from the natural destination of the spoken and written word, which is intrinsically ordered to the manifestation and propagation of truth; the social criterion from the common good, in which must be understood as included not only the rights of others but also those of society as such: the preservation of public order and the positive protection of human, moral, civil and religious values, part of its highest spiritual patrimony. The object of discussion regarding freedom of the press therefore remains only whether political authority may resort to preventive measures — censorship, police seizure, authorization — or must confine itself to the adoption of repressive ones: punishing abuses.

On the theoretical plane it is not possible to deny its right to prevent evil, if it can, and that prevention is better than punishment. This right is not opposed by the false reason alleged to contest it, according to which the State would not be in a position to know the truth in order to protect it from error, since certain moral, juridical and religious principles are so evident and so rooted in the common conscience that public power cannot ignore them. The objection presupposes a morally and religiously agnostic State; which is a speculative and practical absurdity. Greater weight against preventive measures is carried by the reasons deduced from the impossibility of applying them effectively, from the lack of impartiality and from the danger of tyranny implicit in them. On the concrete plane, in which it is always lawful to have recourse to the prudential rule of the lesser evil, the following conclusions may therefore be accepted.

Preventive censorship is to be excluded because of the too easy abuses to which it lends itself and because of the danger of the establishment of a tyrannically oppressive regime. Seizure is opportune and lawful, particularly if it concerns immoral and obscene publications, which offend modesty and good morals, whose possible abuses can be avoided if it is followed by regular denunciation to the judicial power and trial. Preventive authorization partakes, although to a lesser degree, of the dangers of censorship. Exceptional conditions, such as war and a particular grave internal disturbance, may suggest derogations from these norms and legitimize a broader precautionary intervention by the State.

The duties of the press can be summed up in the word truth. Only by serving it can the press attain the immediate purpose to which the use of the written word and the means of expression is essentially subordinated, and cooperate beneficially in the education of the public and the formation of opinion. The service of truth does not, however, forbid it objective and constructive criticism of political authority. It does forbid, however, press campaigns directed at subverting order and at fomenting and spreading hatred through lies. "Unbridled propaganda that does not shrink from manifest alterations of the truth" was pointed out by Pius XII, in the Christmas allocution of 1940, as a source of international discord. It must be condemned as a political malpractice contrary to the social good, to the duty of honesty in criticism and opposition, and to the tasks of a press conscious of its high purposes.

Antonio Messineo