In the light of the Google/China stand-off, it was timely to hear a visionary and radical lecture at LSE on Monday night about how we might end censorship in the world and create, through the media, an open global forum to discuss public policy.
The lecturer was Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, leading expert on the First Amendment and famous, among other things, for inviting the Iranian president to speak at his university.
He began gently enough, by outlining the story of how what he called the "extraordinary protection" for free speech came about in the US. In the last century, as the US developed from a locally based society to a national one, it required a national forum.
The First Amendment was interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect this national forum, and local censorship was struck down for fear of its "chilling effect" on the national debate. From then on, freedom of speech in the media enjoyed protection because it provided this forum for national debate.
At the same time, public trust in newspapers and broadcasting in the US grew because newspapers' monopoly in their different regions and cities supported big profits which were used to invest in skilled journalists. The resulting high quality of journalism meant that citizens came to trust their media.
But, he warned, the media and free speech face new threats. Just when economic globalisation means we need more information about the rest of the world, and to transform the national forum into a global forum for free debate about policy and information, the opposite is happening - a contraction of debate.
And because of globalisation, censorship in one country now has a "chilling effect" not just on that nation but on the rest of the world as well. (He quoted Hillary Clinton's recent speech supporting this view.)
At the same time, new technology is destroying the media's economics. Newspapers and broadcasters are contracting their coverage of the rest of the world, and cutting journalism.
He declared the notion that free markets, citizen journalism and the internet would mitigate these threats to be a myth: only strong institutions with a professional code of journalism can create and sustain a global forum for debate.
Then he made some radical suggestions!
Citing the fact that National Public Radio depends heavily on the BBC World Service for its foreign news, and PBS depends on ITN, (and therefore it's the UK taxpayer who is subsidising the US audience!), he argued the US government should support public service journalism.
To safeguard the media's independence, the Supreme Court could deem government influence unconstitutional.
And, going further, he proposed that the Supreme Court support a "right to newsgathering", enshrined in the First Amendment, and starting with reporting from war zones.
Furthermore, the principles of access and transparency, emphasised by President Obama, should be added to the First Amendment.
Some of the US students in the audience were shocked by the idea of government funding for journalism, but to them he had this to say:
- The free market will not be able to support a US regional press which has lost its monopoly.
- The US has never relied exclusively on the private sector to provide information the society needs.
- Neither the universities nor the arts have suffered from government funding.
And finally he went on to argue a new role for the universities in supporting a global forum for debate, using their resources to provide expert opinion and analysis. Just as universities now run hospitals, he said, they could also run news institutions and journalism.
It sounded like a loud and urgent wake-up call.
And it was a reminder that we in the UK may not be taking the issue of threats to a free and independent media as seriously as we should.
There is a recording of the lecture from LSE here.
