The Right to Know
“A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.” ALBERT CAMUS · HOMAGE TO AN EXILE
In 1955 Camus spoke at a dinner honoring an exiled president whose newspaper had been shut down by a dictatorship. Camus had been a journalist himself during the French Resistance, editing the underground paper Combat, so he was not speaking in theory.
It is an honest line, because it refuses the easy defense. Camus does not pretend a free press is always wise or even decent. He concedes the point his opponents love to make, then closes the door on them anyway. A free press can be bad and get better. An unfree press cannot, because nobody is permitted to say so.
The principle reaches well past newspapers. It is the case for open speech in general, and for letting yourself hear things you would rather not. We are tempted, in our own small circles, to mute the inconvenient voice, to trim our feeds and our friendships down to the agreeable. It feels like peace.
But a world where you only hear what you already approve of is an unfree one, and by Camus’s logic it can only get worse, because nothing is left that can tell you when you are wrong.
If nobody has contradicted you this week, you have arranged your life badly. Take in one honest view you find uncomfortable, from a person or a source you do not control. The freedom to be corrected is the one we surrender most easily.
