What We Can Learn From American Freedom of Press

Nowadays, especially in recent 10 years, there always are some reports from western media that criticize human rights especially the right to deliver the speech cannot be guaranteed in China. In my opinion, although most of the reports including some data are not the truth and are just distorted for political purposes. But we have to admit that there really exist some problems toward the freedom of press in our society.

First of all ，I have to acknowledge that there is a big gap between China's press freedom and freedom of the Western media. Compared with the western Freedom of the press, China has too many restrictions. In past time, I thought the Western media's criticisms of China are defamation, or malicious description. I feel angry each time and want to fight back to argue with them. But now, I can be very objective look at this question, I know that the Western media, even in their own country，often expose ugly, but this does not mean they are defamation . However, I think this kind of freedom of the press also has shortcomings. Just because of the high level of freedom of press in western countries, all kinds of news can be published, even some news about violence and sex, I don't think they are good for our society. and there is an tendency that, lots of media focus more and more on personal privacy rather than public issues.

Freedom of the press is a right that is gauranteed in the United States Constitution. The primary benefit of a free press (a press that is allowed to publish any true information it discovers) is as a check on the power of the US government. Their government is less able to abuse its power because it may be reported in the news. And because their officials have to stand for re-election often, negative information reported in the press could cost them their position. In fact, press reporting even caused a president (Richard Nixon) to resign after some reporters uncovered some wrongdoing by himself.

This does not mean the press is free to say anything they want in the United States. They have a lot of defamation and libel laws that are supposed to prevent the press from publishing anything untruthful. Also there are times where some information is deemed vital to the defense of the country and can be banned from reporting. But their court system oversees this rule.So freedom of the press, along with an independent judiciary, are vital to them to ensure that their government does not abuse its power. In China we have neither of these things. The Party and the government are left to regulate themselves. That can easily lead to abuse from the government especially since the rights of the individual are less absolute there.

The system of government in the US was primarily established to prevent any one person or group from becoming too powerful. Certainly China does not have that concern --by design power is centralized in a single group. Without a free press and an independent judiciary it really has to work hard to protect against corruption and abuse. In my point of view, it is not impossible to achieve it but we have to pay much more effort, and it is a good idea to take example by this kind of system.

But I do not mean it would be possible to simply export the US system to China. The history and the culture of their countries are simply too different from ours. I don't know how the government and the party can do this without some sort of external monitoring. I do think our China has certainly taken giant strides in the past 40 years toward a more open and just society. Our government and the Party should be commended for this progress, and I certainly hope our country continues to open up and be more tolerant of criticism and dissent. I think that can only make our country stronger and stonger.

I also believe in that everything is not absolute, absolute freedom of the press certainly does not exist. As far as I know, in the United States, when the bourgeoisie came to power, the absolute freedom of information led to the \" the dark period of journalism \freedom is not desirable. China's press freedom does not good, but we should not completely negative, it can be said that China's press system may be considered more in social responsibility. Of course, the situation‘s existence has many reasons. The concept of freedom of the press came to China very late, how can a country with 5,000 years of history can digest the introduction of such a foreign concept in a short time? At least, China need a long time.

Over the years, we have seen progress in press freedom in China, I think we should expect more, I believe the future will be better. Even if significant opposition, the public would not have tolerated such a freedom of the press.

So, we must treat objectively on the issue that the western media report bad news on Chinese human right especially the freedom of press, if it is the truth, as citizens we will accept, and do our best to suggest our government to improve it even to correct it. But if it is distorted for political purposes, then we will not hesitate to fight back.