masterwordsmith-unplugged

Newspaper editors, journalists or mass communication students need not be told about the importance of press freedom or their responsibility in observing the virtues of peace in their writing. Yet, in many parts of the world today, it seems that some are unaware of the articulate and strong connection between the two. From a theoretical standpoint, a free press promotes peace so creating a universally free press would promote universal peace. Obviously, the bridge between the two is democracy.

To political science or sociology students, democracy is indeed a complex term that requires elaborate definition. Many would prefer to define democracy by certain rights such as that of voting and the secret ballot, of being able to run for any political office, including the highest, and of freedom of speech. Of course, the latter means not only the freedom to publish criticism of the government, but other aspects of everyday living as well. With the exception of war times, censorship and democracy are totally incompatible.

A look at the present governments of many countries can tell us that the most democratic have the media that enjoys the most freedom while the least democratic have the least free media. Indeed, it is an inconceivable relationship because it could actually be otherwise. Plainly, a free press is essential to democracy,thus promoting freedom of the press also promotes democracy. If we follow that line of argument such as in any critical thinking class ;), a way to democracy is by working to create a free press. Don't you agree?

Did you realize that democracies do not make war on each other? There has been no war and virtually no threat of violence between any two countries that are democratic, at least not that I am aware of anyway. Normally, most wars occur between the least free countries. Of the about 167 sovereign nations in the world today, 60 of them democracies which have not had any war between them or even the threat of war; in fact, none of these democracies arm against each other. Not one. In its long, bloody history, for example, Western Europe is finally at peace. There is not even any expectation of war whatsoever among these countries. Note that Western Europe is also almost totally democratic.

Secondly, if one were to study the history of the different democracies, one can see that such countries tend to have the least internal violence (riots, revolutions, guerrilla warfare, civil war); in other words, those countries with the least freedom tend to have the most violence!!

Finally, democratic governments just do not kill their own citizens except for the most reprehensible civil crimes but the least free tend to kill their citizens by the millions for political, religious, or racial reasons. It is undeniable that genocide and totalitarianism are almost synonymous.

Let's take a look at some shocking statistics:

*Hitler may have slaughtered as many as 14,000,000 people, including nearly 5,000,000 Jews;
*Stalin surely outdid him by murdering well over 20,000,000;
*Mao Tse-Tung possibly liquidated even more;
*Pol Pot in Cambodia exterminated around 2,000,000 Cambodians;
*the Young Turks killed over 1,000,000 Armenians during World War I.
* Let us not forget the the massacres in Ethiopia, Vietnam, Syria, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Indonesia, East Pakistan, and elsewhere.

A twentieth century, global blood bath of over 100,000,000; over 140,000,000 people when battle-deaths in foreign and domestic wars are included. Let us bear in mind that not one of those millions were killed in a war or violence between democracies. Few, if any, citizens of a democracy have been killed by their own government for other than civil crimes like murder .

It should be clear that democratic governments have a very important role to promote nonviolence and world peace. If every country in the world practises democracy, based on the lessons learned from history and contemporary events, we would eliminate domestic violence and many other senseless killings.

The conclusion is evident. If any one country advances freedom of the press, one is developing and furthering democracy and spreading the freedom of the press actually promotes world peace. The reverse logic is also true so I rest my case. Just as without democracies, there will be war, without freedom of the press, democracies cannot exist. Those in the media industry and even citizens everywhere should realize this simple equation. So do we have a free press? In other words.....