Freedom of Expression

One of the issues generally considered to belong to the minimum area of non-interference is freedom of expression. J.S. Mill set out powerful reasons why freedom of expression should not be restricted, and this remains one of the strongest test cases for the ideas discussed so far.

At various times there have been demands to ban books, plays, films or academic articles. Mill offered four distinct reasons, in On Liberty, for why expression should not be restricted even when the ideas expressed appear false or misleading. First, no idea is ever completely false — an idea we consider 'false' usually contains some element of truth, and banning it means losing that element along with the rest. Second, and related to the first, truth does not emerge on its own: it is only through the conflict of opposing views that truth actually comes to be recognised, so ideas that seem wrong today may still have been genuinely valuable in helping the truly right ideas emerge. Third, this conflict of ideas stays valuable not just in the past but at all times, because an accepted truth that is never challenged constantly risks hardening into an unthinking cliché — it is only by testing it against opposing views that we can be sure it remains a truth worth trusting. Finally, we can never be completely certain that what we currently hold to be true really is true — history is full of ideas that an entire society once considered false, and even suppressed, that later turned out to be true; a society that suppresses every idea it currently finds unacceptable therefore risks permanently losing knowledge that might later prove genuinely valuable.

Real examples show how this plays out. Film-maker Deepa Mehta's attempt to make a film about the plight of widows in Varanasi met strong protest from those who felt it would show India in a bad light or cater to foreign audiences, and the film could not, in the end, be made there — it was made elsewhere instead. Similarly, Ramayana Retold by Aubrey Menon and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie were both banned after protest from sections of society, as were the film The Last Temptation of Christ and the play Me Nathuram Boltey. As the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire's often-quoted line puts it, 'I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it' — a fair test of how deeply any society is really committed to freedom of expression.

Banning is an easy short-term solution, since it satisfies an immediate demand, but it is harmful to the long-term prospects of freedom in a society, because once a society begins banning things, banning easily becomes a habit. This does not mean nothing should ever be banned — societies do, after all, practise censorship of films — but it does raise the harder question of exactly when a ban is justified and when it is not, and whether a partial cut (banning only part of a film) is different from banning it altogether. An interesting real illustration of how far such constraints can reach: in England, anyone employed by the Royal Household is bound, by the terms of their employment contract, not to write about the household's internal affairs — so a former employee cannot give an interview, write an article, or author a book about the politics of the household even after leaving the job. Whether this is a justified restriction, or an unjustified one, on their freedom of expression is itself a genuinely debated question.

Constraints of this kind exist in different situations, and we are all subject to them in one way or another. What we need to keep in mind is that when constraints are backed by organised social, religious or cultural authority, or by the power of the state, they restrict our freedom in ways that are genuinely difficult to resist. But if we accept certain restrictions willingly — because we are pursuing our own goals or ambitions — our freedom is not similarly limited by them; and as long as we are not coerced into accepting a condition, we cannot really say that our freedom has been curtailed by it. …