On our doorstep: Banned

There currently is considerable debate and anxiety with regard to the African National Congress’ proposed Media Appeals Tribunal and the Protection of Information Bill.

Naturally the media have been vociferously opposed to this legislation, as have freedom of expression, human rights and pro-democracy organisations both at home and abroad. Even South Africa’s most powerful voice of labour, Cosatu, has voiced its strong opposition.
The perception has been created worldwide that this is all about muzzling the press.

Of course, our news media are hardly blameless. They do get things wrong more often than they should, quite frankly.
But freedom of the press is like pregnancy. Either you are pregnant or you are not.

There are no degrees of pregnancy. Similarly, from the point of view of pure perception (which after all is far more powerful than reality), there are no degrees of press freedom—either it is free or it is not.
History has shown that it is far better to have a fallible free press than no free press at all.

However much the ANC might argue that the Media Appeals Tribunal is not intended to muzzle the media, the problem is that once the thin edge of the wedge is in the door, it becomes very tempting to push it in a bit further. And then a bit more.

For anybody in authority, censorship is an extremely easy trap to fall into, almost without realising that it is happening.

For example, in our own Catholic community in South Africa, we have among the vast majority of priests who support this newspaper, a tiny minority who have taken it upon themselves to censor The Southern Cross.

Believe it or not, there are parish priests who actively prevent their congregations from getting hold of The Southern Cross in the very much mistaken belief that they have the right to do so.

Imagine if one of them told his congregation from the pulpit not to buy and read the Sunday Times or The Argus because he disapproved of their editorial policies? His parishioners would be incensed. Yet, he is happy to ban our paper, even without the support of his parish council, by simply not putting it out as usual or cancelling the regular weekly order. And his parishioners wonder why they have no access to their Catholic newspaper—or even blame us for ignoring them!
The response to this censorship is contained in a copy of a letter that was recently sent on by the circulations coordinator of The Southern Cross to one such parish priest:

“Although you feel that The Southern Cross manifestly contains much that is of great spiritual value, it is giving space to opinions which you, Father, feel are harmful to readers, is a consideration which outweighs any good matter provided. It is our view that, especially in times such as the present, when so many troubles beset the Church, it is imperative that the faithful have an opportunity to have their say.

Their opinions are important and they need to be expressed and brought out into the open. Yes, sometimes extreme or objectionable views will surface, but we must be mature enough to take these in our stride and deal with them charitably.
“It is good that we should know that these views exist, otherwise our knowledge of the community to which we belong would be incomplete. We often feel that had there been a Catholic press—and, of course, a literate population—in the 15th and 16th centuries willing and able, complete with strident letter pages, to expose the heated debates and the grave abuses then rampant in the Church, we might well have been spared the Reformation and the resultant situation of a fractured Christianity, plus all the horrors which it brought about.

“In support of this view may we quote two eminent persons? Thomas Merton in Life and Holiness writes: ‘Though there are real abuses always present in any institution, even in the Church, they must be faced with honesty, humility and love…[Christians] must face the truth of these imperfections in order to see that the Church does not merely exist to do everything for them, to sanctify them passively.

On the contrary, it is now time for them to give to their community from their own heart’s blood and to participate actively and generously in all its struggles.’
“Cardinal John Foley, the recently retired President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, speaking to a gathering of Catholic journalists: ‘Your first responsibility is not to offer our own opinions, not to filter events through the prism of our own preconceptions or even our own convictions, but to provide an objective, dispassionate and complete account of the news’.”

The Southern Cross’ editorial independence has the backing of the bishops, and its editorial policy to provide a forum for widely divergent opinion follows Vatican social communication guidelines.
Banning it is not a priestly right. It is censorship.