Editing Freedom of the press (section)

====United Kingdom====
According to the ''[[New York Times]]'', "Britain has a long tradition of a free, inquisitive press", but "[u]nlike the United States, Britain has no constitutional guarantee of press freedom".<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/opinion/british-press-freedom-under-threat.html "British Press Freedom Under Threat"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170130103749/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/opinion/british-press-freedom-under-threat.html |date=2017-01-30 }}, Editorial, ''[[New York Times]]'', 14 November 2013. Retrieved 19 November 2013.</ref> Freedom of the press was established in Great Britain in 1695, with [[Alan Rusbridger]], former editor of ''[[The Guardian]]'', stating: "When people talk about licensing journalists or newspapers the instinct should be to refer them to history. Read about how licensing of the press in Britain was abolished in 1695. Remember how the freedoms won here became a model for much of the rest of the world, and be conscious of how the world still watches us to see how we protect those freedoms".<ref>{{cite news|title=Leveson Inquiry: British press freedom is a model for the world, editor tells inquiry|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/gordon-rayner/8812486/Leveson-Inquiry-British-press-freedom-is-a-model-for-the-world-editor-tells-inquiry.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111007183949/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/gordon-rayner/8812486/Leveson-Inquiry-British-press-freedom-is-a-model-for-the-world-editor-tells-inquiry.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=7 October 2011|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=14 October 2017}}</ref>

[[File:Areopagitica bridwell.jpg|thumb|upright|First page of [[John Milton]]'s 1644 edition of ''[[Areopagitica]]'']]
Until 1694, Great Britain had an elaborate system of [[licensing]]; the most recent was seen in the [[Licensing of the Press Act 1662|Licensing of the Press Act, 1662]]. No publication was allowed without the accompaniment of a government-granted license. Fifty years earlier, at a time of [[English Civil War|civil war]], [[John Milton]] wrote his [[pamphlet]] ''[[Areopagitica]]'' (1644).<ref name="Sanders">{{cite book | last = Sanders| first = Karen| title = Ethics & Journalism| publisher = Sage| year = 2003| page = 66| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=bnpliIUyO60C&q=Areopagitica+freedom+of+speech+britain| isbn = 978-0-7619-6967-9}}</ref> In this work Milton argued forcefully against this form of government censorship and parodied the idea, writing "when as debtors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but inoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailer in their title". Although at the time it did little to halt the practice of licensing, it would be viewed later a significant milestone as one of the most eloquent defenses of [[News media|press]] freedom.<ref name="Sanders"/>

Milton's central argument was that the individual is capable of using reason and distinguishing right from wrong, and good from bad. In order to be able to exercise this ration right, the individual must have unlimited access to the ideas of his fellow men in "a free and open encounter" Milton's writings developed the concept of the open [[marketplace of ideas]], the idea that when people argue against each other, good arguments will prevail. One form of speech that was widely restricted in Great Britain was [[seditious libel]], and laws were in place that made criticizing the government a crime. The king was above public criticism and statements critical of the government were forbidden, according to the English court of the [[Star Chamber]]. The truth was not a defense to seditious libel because the goal was to prevent and punish all condemnation of the government.

Locke contributed to the [[Statute of Anne#Lapse of the Licensing Act|lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695]], whereupon the press needed no license. Still, some libels were tried throughout the 18th century, until "the Society of the Bill of Rights" led by [[John Horne Tooke]] and [[John Wilkes]] organized a campaign to publish Parliamentary Debates. This culminated in three defeats of the Crown in the 1770 cases of Almon, Miller and [[Henry Sampson Woodfall|Woodfall]], who all had published one of the [[Letters of Junius]], and the unsuccessful arrest of [[John Wheble]] in 1771. Thereafter the Crown was much more careful in the application of [[libel]]; for example, in the aftermath of the [[Peterloo Massacre]], [[Francis Burdett|Burdett]] was convicted, whereas by contrast, the [[Junius (writer)|Junius]] affair was over a [[satire]] and sarcasm about the non-lethal conduct and policies of the government.

In Britain's American colonies, the first editors discovered their readers enjoyed it when they criticised the local governor; the governors discovered they could shut down the newspapers. The most dramatic confrontation came in New York in 1734, where the governor brought [[John Peter Zenger]] to trial for criminal libel after the publication of satirical attacks. The defense lawyers argued that according to English common law, the truth was a valid defense against libel. The jury acquitted Zenger, who became the iconic American hero for freedom of the press. The result was an emerging tension between the media and the government. By the mid-1760s, there were 24 weekly newspapers in the 13 colonies, and the satirical attack on the government became common features in American newspapers.<ref>Alison Olson, [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eal/summary/v035/35.3olson.html "The Zenger Case Revisited: Satire, Sedition and Political Debate in Eighteenth Century America"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160217081612/http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eal/summary/v035/35.3olson.html |date=2016-02-17 }}, ''Early American Literature'', vol.35 no.3 (2000), pp. 223–245.</ref>

In the [[Victorian era]], the press became more influential than it had been previously, to the dismay of some readers. [[Thomas Carlyle]], in his essay "[[Critical and Miscellaneous Essays|Signs of the Times]]" (1829), said that the "true [[Church of England]], at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first [[Protestant Reformers|Reformers]], and a long-past class of [[Pope|Popes]], were possessed of". Similarly, [[Charles Dickens]], in his ''[[Pickwick Papers]]'' (1837), caricatured the newspapers as but the "chosen organ and representative" of either the [[Whigs (British political party)|Whigs]] or the [[Tories (UK)|Tories]], and that they were "essentially and indispensably necessary" to the parties' operations.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Carlyle and Dickens on the Dark Side of Freedom of the Press |url=https://victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pickwick/egervarymt2.html |access-date=2022-08-11 |website=victorianweb.org |archive-date=2022-12-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221208134814/https://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pickwick/egervarymt2.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[John Stuart Mill]] in 1869 in his book ''[[On Liberty]]'' approached the problem of authority versus liberty from the viewpoint of a 19th-century [[utilitarian]]: The individual has the right of expressing himself so long as he does not harm other individuals. The good society is one in which the greatest number of persons enjoy the greatest possible amount of happiness. Applying these general principles of liberty to freedom of expression, Mill states that if we silence an opinion, we may silence the truth. The individual freedom of expression is therefore essential to the well-being of society. Mill wrote:
:If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and one, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.<ref>{{cite book|author=John Stuart Mill|title=On Liberty|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GxA-AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA10|year=1867|page=10|publisher=Longmans |isbn=9780758337283}}</ref>

The December 1817 Trials of writer and satirist [[William Hone]] for publishing three political pamphlets is considered a landmark in the fight for a free press.