The role of the press in a developing country

With the current debate on media freedom, we reproduce an article written by H.A.J. Hulugalle, who edited the Ceylon Daily News from 1931 to 1948 to provide our readers with a historical perspective on the issue.

newspaper INDUSTRY: On a conservative estimate at least a million persons of the Island’s population read a daily newspaper; considerably more on Sundays. Only the radio is more pervasive as a means of mass communications.

The impact of the Press is more enduring. Litera Scripta manet, verbum imbelle perit. The written letter remains, the weak word perishes. It also enjoys the advantage of stimulating discussion and involving itself in controversial politics even when it is muted by censorship.

The Press meets you every morning and in the evening on six days of the week. This is something which the Government, with all its expansionist tendencies, can never hope to do.

Income tax charges, electricity and telephone bills and forms that have to be filled and returned are some of the

 ways in which the Government communicates.

This places a tremendous responsibility on the Press for in general most people take their opinions from their newspapers; or from them on the facts as presented in the newspapers.

These facts add views can be influenced not only by selection, omission and change in emphasis - for newspaper space is limited - but also by carelessness and failure to check and verify.

On rare occasions the fallibility of the Press is shown up as when someone’s death is chronicled before the event takes place. When Mark Twain read about his own death, he said the news was exaggerated.

This happens in the best regulated organisations. When Pope Pius XII was dying I happened to be standing in the courtyard outside the Papal Palace in Castel Gandolfo. It had been arranged with the reporters that a window in the Papal apartment would be opened when the Pontiff breathed his last.

A doctor who was unaware of the arrangement, entering the room and finding it stuffy, had the window opened.

The news hawks rushed to the telephone, and the death of the Pope was announced twenty four hours before it actually took place. Having been a reporter I kept copies of the evening papers with the wrong information. At least on that occasion the Press was proved to be less infallible than the Pope.

The Press of Ceylon has a great tradition. The first Ceylon newspaper was a Government newspaper. I am very confident that the last newspaper will not also be a government newspaper.

We Ceylonese have learned to cherish the freedom of the Press even if in times of crisis someone has to look over the shoulder of editorial writers.

The torch has been handed down to present day journalists by a distinguished line beginning with Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, the Governor and including Dr. Christopher Elliott, A. M. and John Ferguson, Armand de Souza, D. R. Wijewardene and S. J. K. Crowther.

The Press in a developing country has not the same resources as the Press in the developed countries. But it has prestige as the Press in the developed countries. It has also a special responsibility.

In a developed country, where the traditions of democracy are understood and well established, and the patterns of Government have taken shape over hundreds of years of trial and error, it is easy to build on foundations that are solid.

In a developing nation, the battle has to be fought on many fronts: the safeguarding of democratic institutions, the economic struggle, racial, religious, linguistic and class consciousness.

The years after independence have shown that the developing countries are never far from the edge of a precipice or the brink of a volcano.

The role of the Press is that of upholding the rule of law, promoting national unity and political stability, and working for social justice.

The survival of democracy in a developing country will depend on achieving a correct balance between economic growth and social justice. To abandon democracy in the sacred name of growth would be a counsel of despair.

But it is a mockery of democracy to think always of the next election when bold and constructive measures are immediately required in the national interest.

Where a Government has a substantial majority and provided itself ample time to exercise power it should not be necessary to try to tune-in to the wave length of every popular mood.

It is important that the Press should just now identify the main issues.

Politicians and bureaucrats have various motives for starting hares and confusing the public. Killing incentives and liquidating the class that has made economic growth possible in the past can in no way help in the solution of present and urgent problems.

Production, jobs for the unemployed and those entering the labour market, holding down living costs, decent education and housing must always have a high priority in Ceylon as in most other countries.

People are not working as hard as they should because of various frustrations, uncertainly of the future, fear of their undertakings being taken over, insufficient returns for enterprise and endeavour and other reasons. A breakdown of morale of the entrepreneurial class is damaging to the economy.

Those who will be crushed are the larger number who, by their own efforts have reached some degree of affluence. Only in a completely totalitarian country is such a class superfluous. The Press has a duty to offer criticism, just as much as does a Parliamentary Opposition.

This right must be safeguarded regardless of the political views of those who own or conduct the newspapers. The greatest disservice that a Press can do to any Government is not that of opposing its policies.

It is that of destroying the antennae which are sensitive to public feeling and which relay it to those in power and authority.

Despite their professions to the contrary, politicians are not the best judges of the workings of the public mind. They are surrounded by those who agree with them or pretend to do so.

They are victims of their own propaganda.

The Press can and must help them to learn the facts of life by opening its columns widely to dialogue and discussion of important topics, by not closing the door to dissent and by encouraging those who have something useful to say to come out with it. Too many people are deterred by fear of ridicule.

Walter Lippmann, for long the doyen of American journalism, once said: “Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting the Government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.

The most elaborate government intelligent service is an insufficient provider.... of ... the knowledge which the Government must have in order to legislate well and to administer public affairs.

‘Where there is a turbulent, pluralistic electorate, the rulers, the official bureaucracy and the legislature will be in the dark. They will not know where they are going if they are deprived of the competitive reporting, the competing editorial commentaries and also the forum in which the spokesmen of the various shades of opinion can say their say.

That is what a free Press is supposed to provide.

“In a great society, controversial laws cannot be enforced successfully, innovating policy cannot be administered, unless and until the Government can find among the people of the country a reasonably high degree of consent.

No Government is able for long, except under the extreme, abnormal pressures of war, to impose its rule and its opinions and its policies without public assent.”

If there is insufficient variety in newspaper ownership and content, the enormous costs involved in producing newspapers are the reason. On the whole Ceylon is well served with newspapers in three languages.

The writing is generally of a satisfactory standard although limitation of space has restricted the scope and thus affected the quality of the papers.

As an old journalist, I admire the work of some of the younger writers. The cartoonists, especially Wijesoma and S. C. Opatha, should be able to earn a good living anywhere in Asia.

The Press has its faults. Some writers, and even some newspapers, do not attach much importance to a sense of fairness. Beaverbrook tried to hound people like Baldwin from public life. That newspaper tycoon did not come to a sticky end but a few years after his death his rating has sunk very low.

To quote Lippmann again: “As the free Press develops, as the great society evolves, the paramount point is - whether, like a scientist or a scholar, the journalist puts truth in the first place or in the second. If he puts it in the second place, he is a worshipper of the bitch goddess success. Or is he a conceited man trying to win an argument. In so far as he puts truth in the first place, he rises toward - I will not say ‘into’ - but ‘towards’ the company of those who taste and enjoy the best things of life.”

From personal experience of more than 30 years in a newspaper office when I was young, I can say that newspapers are run by human (very human) beings, suffering from the weaknesses, ailments, failings and frustrations of other people.

A newspaper man and his money are soon parted. That is the general experience although there are exceptions. A few burn the candle at both ends. The great many believe with Kafka that “the only reality is the concretely real human being, our neighbour whom God has put in our path.”