Freedom of speech is indivisible, inalienable, and imprescriptible: it cannot be separated into parts, or transferred to another, or surrendered by virtue of not being used. These are high standards, but unless they are met, freedom - and not just of expression - starts to fade, writes John Waters.
One fallacy arising from the hijacking of society's discourse about freedom of expression is that the essence of free speech can be delivered through "choice" of media, that the best achievable conditions will be those arising from media pampered with every "freedom" they demand. The public "votes" for the media product of choice, and any interference with this process is "censorship".
But a modern media market is subject to manifold distorting forces that prevent it approaching the condition of unencumbered platform for free speech. These include, among a raft of others: the commercial interests and political allegiances of media controllers, journalistic timidity, and the fact that if you can't afford the ticket you're not allowed into the match.
Having insinuated their self-serving fallacy into the public consciousness, media interests proceed to appropriate the philosophical underpinnings of free speech. The typical editorial on encroachment on press freedom is driven by a passionate fulmination about the virtues of free expression, usually borrowed, consciously or not, from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Media special-pleaders find useful Mill's emphasis on the idea that freedom of expression is essential for democracy, and that negative aspects are minor compared with what is gained.
Modern media are good at staging heroic battles with government on behalf of the people - it sells newspapers and keeps the phone-in lines jammed. But Mill set the bar higher, arguing not just for the right of the public to have its beliefs and dissents upheld, but for what can amount to the opposite: the right of the dissenter to pick holes in such beliefs, regardless of truth or wisdom:
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
He went further: "But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation - those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity for exchanging error for truth; if it is wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error."
Mill's view of free speech needs to be contextualised in his broader outlook on utilitarianism and the individual. Although he elevated liberty and individuality to the highest values of social life, he did so with the goals of social "well-being", moral truth, and a progressive society in mind. Freedom of expression, while existing in a certain abstract context, was a means to an end, and, without that end, had no meaning. Moreover, it wasn't truth per se that concerned him, for he placed at least as much value on untruth, and sometimes seemed to be arguing that those who speak in error have a higher value in the protection of liberty than those who speak truly.
It should be obvious that the circumstances in which we now find ourselves bear little resemblance to the ideal posited by Mill. His vision of a free society is one in which the voices of conformity and dissent engage on more or less equal terms, at least where volume and elevation of platform are concerned.
In this utopia, each citizen has a voice, to speak as he or she pleases, and out of the hubbub emerges a version of truth, and out of that a version of liberty, each more trustworthy for having been tested in free conditions.
But our mass media society is not like that. Rather, it is as though the citizens were divided into two groups - a minority, who have secured ownership or use of loudhailers, and the majority whose contribution is drowned out by the din. Then there is the problem that those who operate the loudhailers are not, in any precise sense, free citizens, or even representatives of free citizens, but paid employees of media organisations, which demand loyalty and obedience in return for payment. Hence, by the manipulation of the fear and insecurity of employees, selectivity of subject-matter and the systematic elimination of eccentricity, the modern media controller extinguishes the journalist in his rightful capacity as co-celebrant of the people's right-of-voice.
And thus, the fourth estate, allegedly a bulwark of democracy, lacks a credible claim to even the limited representational pretensions of the most rudimentary parliamentary democracy, which journalism would claim the right and duty to stand in watch and judgment over.