Theoretical Foundations of Freedom of the Press

The concept of press freedom is derived from modern political economy and journalism. Western mainstream journalism academics believe that the traditional theoretical foundations of press freedom include the theory of natural human rights, the theory of the marketplace of ideas and the theory of democracy promotion, and the early idea of freedom of expression put forward by Milton is also relevant to the modern theory of press freedom. A more recent theoretical basis for press freedom is the fourth estate theory. The basic spirit of natural human rights, or natural rights, is to emphasize that human beings have inherent rights, which they are born with, not given by others, and therefore should never be deprived of. A more systematic theory of natural human rights can be traced to the Dutch international jurist and philosopher Grotius (1583-1645), who proposed that "natural rights are the dictates of right reason." His follower, Spinoza (1632-1677), suggested that everyone is endowed with natural rights. These ideas were inherited and developed by the English political economists Hobbes (1588-1679) and Locke (1632-1704). The former stated that "natural right is the liberty of every man to use his powers to preserve his nature as he will"; the latter argued for the natural state of mankind, natural rights and natural law.

The mastermind of the doctrine of natural human rights was the French Enlightenment thinker Rousseau. The doctrine of natural human rights put forward by English and French scholars played an important role in the bourgeois revolutions in their respective countries. And the advocates of natural human rights invariably considered freedom of speech and freedom of the press as one of the most important of natural rights. This view was articulated in Locke's Essay on Human Understanding and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws. In the struggle for freedom of the press in Western countries, "natural human rights" has always been one of the most powerful theoretical weapons. The "free market of opinion" was first put forward by the English political commentator and writer John Milton in his "On Liberty of the Press" in 1644. Milton argued that truth is gained through free debate and competition between opinions and viewpoints, rather than being bestowed by power. A variety of ideas, speech, and values must be allowed to flourish freely in society, as in a free market, in order for people to recognize truth in comparison and discernment. The first person to theorize about the "free market of ideas" was the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). In his book "On Liberty", he pointed out that "we can never be sure that the opinion we seek to stifle is a fallacious one, and if we were sure, it would still be a fallacy to stifle it".

The "free market of opinion" and the related theory of "self-correction of opinion" came to be known as the theoretical foundations of liberal journalism and of a free press in the West. Although modified in the 1950s by the American theory of social responsibility, it still has a strong and lasting influence on the Western press. Popular sovereignty is an extension of the theory of natural human rights, and the theoretical cornerstone of modern Western democratic societies. The gist of the theory is that the basis of government legitimacy comes from the consent of the people at large, and that if any form of government becomes detrimental to the interests of the people in order to protect their rights, the people have the right to change or abolish it and establish a new government. This view was first articulated by Enlightenment thinkers in France. This idea later gave rise to the famous principle of the "separation of powers".

Freedom of the press is of great importance to the establishment of the principle of popular sovereignty. Rousseau believed that public opinion is the "law outside the law", and that any power must respect public opinion, or else it cannot maintain its existence.

Tocqueville (1805-1859), a 19th-century French philosopher, pointed out in his discussion of the freedom of the press in the United States that "when every citizen is invested with the power to govern the state, then it must be recognized that citizens are capable of choosing between the various opinions of their contemporaries, and of discerning the various facts which, when known, can guide their conduct." The fourth power theory was developed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart on November 2, 1974, in a speech at Yale University. As a theory of freedom of the press, it distinguishes freedom of the press from freedom of speech by emphasizing the role of the press in a modern democratic society as a fourth power organization in addition to the three powers of government (executive, legislative, and judicial), which is used to supervise the government and prevent it from abusing its power. The theory of the fourth power is also known as the "supervisory function theory".

Justice Stiva analyzed the Supreme Court's decisions over the years and concluded that the purpose of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press is to make the news media an institutional organization that is independent of the government, autonomous, and free from government interference. In other words, according to the fourth power theory, the purpose of freedom of the press is not to form a free market of opinion or expression; nor is it to regard the media as a neutral channel of communication between the government and the people; and it is not to fulfill the self-expression of individuals. From this theoretical basis, there is a considerable gap between freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

But the U.S. legal profession has not been without skepticism about Justice Stewart's fourth estate theory. First, from the point of view of the legislative intent of the U.S. Constitution, it seems that the Framers did not intend to make a distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and some scholars have pointed out that the Framers only regarded freedom of the press (i.e., freedom of the press in the modern sense) as a manifestation of freedom of speech. Moreover, the majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court never considered freedom of the press and freedom of speech as two different underlying rights.