5 - 11 July 2001
Issue No.541
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 5 - 11 July 2001 Issue No.541 |
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Plain talk
No one can deny the unsavoury impacts of censorship. When President Anwar El-Sadat put an end to censorship in Egypt everyone heaved a sigh of relief. But the question remained: with the removal of official censorship, how about self- censorship? I remember saying at the time that after so many years of public censorship a small censor had developed inside every writer and journalist.
But it seems I was not the only one to worry about this. Recently a report was prepared and published by the "Pew Centre for the People and the Press" about self- censorship. The Centre polled a total of 287 journalists, including 81 senior editors and executives.
The survey highlighted the nature and extent of self- censorship in American journalism today. One of the things discovered is that it is widespread, as common in newsrooms as deadline pressures. It was described as "a virus that eats away at the journalistic mission."
A number of reasons for self-censorship are identified in the report. One is market pressures. This is manifested when newsworthy stories are ignored because they are too boring or complicated. Many good stories are not pursued because of this.
Another reason is the financial interest of the paper or television channel. Many journalists who were interviewed acknowledged that they had softened the tone of a news story on behalf of the interests of their news organisation. Some of them admitted that they were told to avoid a story because it was dull or very complicated, but knew that the real reason for the decision was that the story could harm their company's financial interests.
Many good stories were being avoided to protect corporate interests. An example is given about a story written about how to buy a car. It told readers the ins and outs of negotiation, how such realities as dealer incentives and money holdbacks work, and gave other shopping tips. Members of the Motor Car Dealers Association did not like the story. They "yanked some $1 million worth of advertisement."
In an article commenting on the report, Trudy Lieberman says that self-censorship is as old as journalism itself. "Almost all of us," he writes, "have held back at one time or another choosing not to pursue a legitimate story or not to include a difficult fact, or to severely soften a story's angle." The reasons range "from simple laziness and resistance to complexity to fears of conflicts of interest, our own or our media company's, to fears that pushing too hard will hurt our careers."
The Pew poll further showed that journalists consider self-censorship a serious, touchy but nonetheless pervasive subject. Many of the journalists interviewed cited the impact of corporate pressure as a cause of self- censorship.
In the wake of growing media concentration, "journalistic angst has tended to focus on overt censorship -- media company managers directly telling editors and writers just what they can and cannot report, "especially concerning the company's own far-flung interests."
"Self-censorship," a reporter from a Florida newspaper writes, "often reflects the subtle and not-so-subtle signals that define the boundaries of news. After a while you get to the point where you know the things that are really sticky issues... Nobody says directly 'this is an issue we don't want to cover,' but you can read between the lines. There are just things you know that are never put into words."
"There is a consensus that every news organisation has a set of priorities peculiar to it. They are usually unstated," writes Dr Ben Bagdikian, former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism of California, Berkeley, "but are evident by what stories are greeted with enthusiasm and are given big play, and what stories are put down or cut down."
The Pew report is long and important. I find in it important pointers that can be useful in our media world. The report should be translated into Arabic.
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