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THE NEW MEDIA: The Internet,
Democracy, Free Speech and the Management of Temperance
By Richard O. Mason
Copyright © 1997
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An
earlier version of this paper was originally presented Tuesday,
February 18, 1997 at the Freedom and Responsibility in a New Media
Age conference organized by the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics
and Public Responsibility; Southern Methodist University, Dallas,
Texas.
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"If there is ever to be an amelioration
of the condition of mankind, philosophers, theologians, legislators,
politicians and moralists will find that the regulation of the
press is the most difficult, dangerous and important problem
they have to resolve. Mankind cannot be governed without it,
nor at present with it."
John Adams to James Lloyd,
February 11, 1815
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A Crucial Challenge in the
Past
About 50 years ago Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc. and publisher
of Fortune, Life and many other successful magazines, approached
Robert Hutchins, then Chancellor of the University of Chicago,
and asked him to form a commission, the purpose of which was to
determine the effects of new technology and social-economic changes
on the freedom of the press. Luce was concerned that the revolution
underway in mass communications, a force in which he personally
had played a key role, was out-stripping society's ability to
harness it effectively. As Luce looked to the future, he foresaw
a continual stream of innovations in media. After some reflection
Hutchins agreed and formed a commission comprised of some of the
leading thinkers of the time. Members included John M. Clark,
Professor of Economics; John Dickinson, Professor of Law; William
E. Hocking, Professor of Philosophy; Harold D. Lasswell, Professor
of Law; Archibald MacLeish, Poet, Librarian of Congress and Undersecretary
of State; Charles E. Merrian, Professor of Political Science;
Reinhold Niebuhr, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion;
Robert Redfield, Professor of Anthropology; Beardsley Ruml, Chairman
of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Professor of History; and George N. Shuster, President of Hunter
College.
In 1947 the Hutchins commission published its findings: A Free
and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication:
Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines, and Books. This
landmark report, in the words of an Annenberg Senior Fellow, Stephen
Bates, "contends that the press is free for the purpose of
serving democracy; a press that shirks its democratic duties will
lose its freedom. The report calls on the press to improve itself
in the name of morality, democracy and self-preservation."
(Bates, 1995, p.3) The report marked a new era in the media. It
provided a philosophical framework for the daily workings of the
press, one that replaced the prevailing, rather unbridled, libertarian
view. This "social responsibility" approach, as it is
sometimes called, is, by and large, the philosophy under which
the press has operated during the last 50 years.
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