Press freedom in Liberia,1830-1970: The impact of modernity,ethnicity and power imbalances on government-press relations.
详细信息
- 作者：Burrowes ; Carl Patrick.
- 学历：Doctor
- 年：1994
- 导师：Lent,John,eadvisor
- 毕业院校：Temple University
- CBH：9516229
- Country：USA
- 语种：English
- FileSize：32068415
- Pages：758
文摘
This study examines government-press relations in Liberia from 1830 to 1970,the apparent nadir of free expression. As Africas oldest republic and one of the oldest nation-states in continuous existence,Liberia provides an ideal case for examining long-term relations between institutions and for testing propositions about institutional relations,such as the several theories found in the press-freedom literature. Gathered and analyzed here are the constitutional provisions,statutes and Supreme Court cases that impinged upon freedom of the press. These cover a variety of legal issues including civil libel,the writ of habeas corpus,criminal libel,seditious libel,obscene libel and sedition. It also examines the social relations and values--specifically Black nationalism,Christianity and republicanism,which formed the basis for shifting Liberian notions of liberty,including mores concerning the proper relationship of government to the media. The study periodizes press-government relations in the Liberian context,based on the types of judicial instruments used against the press,the types of restrictive laws and extra-legal measures employed by government against the press,and the kinds of justifications given by government officials for each major restriction or set of restrictions. Also explored are patterns in the official justifications of restrictive laws and actions as well as in newspaper editorial reactions to restrictions. Although the Liberian case confirmed significant links between press freedom on the one hand and social stability,modernization,and cultural heterogeneity as suggested in the press-freedom literature),the data also suggested the need for revisions in the ways these relationships are conceptualized. The study did not find support for a widely posited link between ethnicity and freedom in Liberian studies. It concludes,instead,that imbalances in power resources--aggravated mainly by foreign investments--would best explain a significant loss of media freedom after the Second World War in the Liberian context and perhaps in other similarly structured Third World societies).