COMMUNITY COMMENT : U.S. Press Is Free in Many, but Not All, Ways

British historian Christopher Hill long ago described freedom as a privilege. It is a privilege I enjoy as an editor of a newspaper in the United States.

As a free-lance journalist in my native Pakistan, I remember vividly how every newspaper editor was visited by a government official and was forced under the Press and Publication Ordinance to show him the copy before sending it to press. This practice was not only common during the dictatorship of the military rulers; the first popularly elected prime minister of the country, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of current Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, also used such Draconian laws. The editors of the country’s top dailies and weeklies were jailed and tortured only because they dared to print things that he didn’t like. However, freedom of the press in this country is not without shackles. Policies of most newspapers and TV stations here are driven by economic pressures and polls. Major advertisers can force a newspaper, TV or radio station not to carry a specific item.

Still, I feel privileged that I can freely criticize President Clinton for treating Pakistan unfairly in some instances. Last year, the editor of the largest Urdu (Pakistani language) weekly in the world, who had been critical of government policy, was gunned down in daylight in front of his office in Karachi. The assailants have not been captured to this day.