Freedom of the Press

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 9, 1916

Freedom of the Press

IN the Buffalo Evening News of Feb. 14, 1916, Dr. Frank Crane refers to a resolution passed by one of the Seventh-day Adventist conferences, protesting against the passage of bills in Congress which would tend to restrict the liberty of the press. Regarding this question he makes the following sensible comments:—

“But there are a number of periodicals which are open advocates of some religious faith. The Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and other churches have their official organs.”

“Each of these in defending its own peculiar tenets must necessarily endeavor to expose the fallacy of those who hold contrary creeds. The heat of protest is the life of the sectarian paper; it is what its readers want.”

“And it is not the right to advocate that constitutes religious liberty; it is the right to protest. There can be no freedom that is not freedom to resist, whether by argument, denunciation, ridicule, or what else.”

“The only limit to this is the responsibility of any person or publication for scurrility, libel, and other manifest indecencies or injurious utterances.”

“To make the Postmaster-General and his agents, or any other government officials, censors of the press to any further degree than the powers they now possess to prohibit fraudulent or obscene matter from going through the mails is wholly undesirable.”

“If any man is aggrieved because his religion is attacked, let him remember that freedom to criticize is the other and indispensable half of his freedom to believe as he pleases. Without one there could not be the other.”