Ethics and Freedom

"DAMN" IS NO LONGER a bad word. At least not much of one. "Hell"? Nope, not a bad word either. "Ass"? Well, that's generally OK, too. But "asshole"? Now that's a little more touchy. The news media exhibited just how touchy in September after presidential candidate George W. Bush spoke the vulgarism to his running mate, Dick Cheney, in an aside that was accidentally picked up by microphones. The...

New Code Words for Censorship: Modern Labels for Curbs on the Press Edited by Marilyn J. Greene World Press Freedom Committee 138 pages; free (in reasonable quantities) Free speech is an elemental human need, and people are amazingly resourceful at finding ways to be heard. Sadly, though, the underside is also true. Would-be censors never give up either. The fall of communism and the swirl of...

"[W]ithout some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated." -- Justice Byron White, Branzburg v. Hayes, 1972 For nearly forty years, journalists in the United States have been living in a fool's paradise. The First Amendment's prohibition against laws abridging press freedom, vigorously enforced by an independent judiciary, has meant that the American reporter...

In a 6 June 2000 letter to Home Affairs Minister Lal Krishna Advani, RSF expressed concern about the adoption by the Lower House of Parliament of a law on Internet use, and the presentation of a bill concerning terrorist activities. According to Robert Ménard, the organisation's secretary-general, "these two laws contain some clauses which are in contradiction with India's international...

During the first half of the century just ended, criticism of journalism was relatively simple and well-defined. It meant taking on the newspapers, which in those days presented a fat, inviting target, burdened as many of them were with sensationalism and sacred cows. Will Irwin muckraked the newspaper press as early as 1911. Upton Sinclair used an artifact of prostitution, The Brass Check, as the...

CPJ is deeply concerned about the actions taken last week by a customs official in Calcutta to censor the 21 February 2000 edition of "Time", an international weekly newsmagazine. On 16 February, customs agents at the Calcutta airport blocked the distribution of 3,000 issues of "Time" magazine because they contained a one-page interview with Gopal Godse, the brother of Mohandas Gandhi's assassin...

FOR NEARLY TWO years, I have been editing the series in this magazine about the unsteady state of the American newspaper industry. A thread running through the series--it turns up again in William Prochnau's remarkable examination of Times Mirror, which begins on page 58--is the heavy obligation newspapers have to the citizenry in a democratic society, the life's blood of which, after all, is...

CPJ is deeply concerned by the latest efforts to suppress discussion of the social and environmental costs of Gujarat's Sardar Sarovar dam construction, part of a controversial irrigation and hydroelectric project along the Narmada River. India's Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing for 29 July 1999, to decide whether to initiate contempt of court proceedings against the writer Arundhati Roy for...

According to PPF, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), India's sole gateway to the Internet, has blocked the web site of Pakistan's leading English language daily newspaper, "Dawn". According to "The Times of India", Internet users in India have been unable to connect to the "Dawn" website for more than a week. A VSNL official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told "The Times of India" that the...

IFJ General Secretary Aidan White met Indian Minister of Information and Communication Pramod Mahajan on 9 June 1999. White raised the IFJ's concerns, similar to those raised by other organisations, about the ban on Pakistan television by the Indian authorities. The IFJ notes that on the issue of the ban on Pakistan's broadcasts, the Indian authorities have offered more information on the reasons...