From Freedom of Speech to Freedom of News Media: The Historical Evolution of Western Thoughts of Freedom of the Press

It has always been despised by western historians of news if the press marry with politics, especially with any political party. In fact, these historians overlooked the fact that it was the close relationship between the press and politics in the history that made newspapers the important instrument of transmitting opinions and thoughts, and took on the roles that books or pamphlets had played. Therefore authorities or officials have turned their suppressing targets to newspapers just as they had done to books and pamphlets before. Hence newspapers have naturally been linked with the traditional freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the thoughts of freedom of speech and the press have logically been extended to that of information, and eventually formed the general understanding of freedom of news media by western countries. The relationship between the press and politics or the government has changed radically since the (appearance) of popular press. Keeping political neutrality, representing the public opinion and monitoring the government are the social roles and professional orientation which the popular press have pursued and boosted. The appearance of the public opinion theories and the view about restricting public rights by public opinion in political science since the 1920's provided the theoretical basis for the new roles that the popular press would like to play at that moment. Freedom of the press, which is something that no external force, especially the government, is allowed to interfere with-for example, news gathering and releasing-has made a clear (distinction) between the government and the media and established a legal barrier for the media to perform such functions. When the press became the estate, then freedom of the press naturally became freedom of media, namely, a kind of freedom of social organization and institution. Given this, therefore, the original meaning of (freedom) of the press legally referred to the individual, and it could not safeguard the special position of news media in a society, and is not fit in with the reality of (freedom) of news media at present. Potter Stewart, the grand justice of the supreme court of the U.S. federal government put forth the fourth estate theory in 1974, and he argued that freedom of the press is an (institutional) power and the main body of this right is news media but not individual. This assertion shows the radical distinction from the former definitions of free speech and freedom of the press.