76-10-B8

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Free Press and Property Rights

Transcript Does freedom of the press stand above and beyond the ordinary freedom of citizens to own and use their private property? Funny, but some American newspaper editors seem to think so. As one editorial put it not long ago, -- QUOTE -- "freedom of the press is not a property right. It is an intangible individual right which the Federal Constitution places at the top of the list of individual rights, without which all other rights are cheapened if not directly threatened..." -- UNQUOTE. The editorial writer either forgot or didn't know about the many attempts during history to control the freedom of the press by attacking the property rights of the publishers. Queen Elizabeth I of England, for example, was certainly no novice about employing the power of the state to stifle effective dissent. In 1568 she secured passage of a law that limited the number of printing presses that could exist in England. The law also zoned all of England (outside of London, Cambridge, and Oxford) as a "no printing zone". A man in Leeds or Manchester could own a slaughterhouse, but not publish a newspaper. That enabled the Queen to keep a close eye on what was published in her realm. Other rulers have learned the same technique. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, before Lenin and the Bolsheviks had completely consolidated their power, the government's control of electricity was used to stop the publication of the anti-Bolsheviks anarchist newspaper. How? Lenin's henchmen simply turned off the power needed to run the anarchist press. In the 1930's Governor Huey Long of Louisiana tried another version of controlling freedom of the press by striking at private property. He imposed a tax which fell only on the leading newspaper chain in Louisiana, a chain which was hostile to his programs. Fortunately, that law was struck down by the United States Supreme Court. In the brief Marxist regime of Salvador Allende in Chile, yet another attack on the property of the press was invented. Allende nationalized the banks. In this way he was able to refuse vital commercial credit to the newspapers unless they provided him with political support. History is a good teacher, if we'll pay attention to its lessons. In this case, it's that freedom of the press, like every other human right, is based squarely upon the human right to acquire and possess private property. If that human right to property is undermined or destroyed, none of our rights and freedoms will be worth much for long. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 76-10-B8 Production Date 03/02/1977 Book/Page [rrpl:public/2024-07/40-656-7386263-014-003-2024.pdf#page=49|Online PDF]] Audio Youtube? No
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