By AMOS CHANDA
ON Monday, May 3, 2021, I was invited to attend the 2021 World Press Freedom Day commemoration at the Freedom Statue in Lusaka.
With compelling nostalgia, I wondered down memory lane into my media advocacy days and looked back with considerable satisfaction at the evolution of media freedoms and the subsequent explosion of diversity media ownership that has emerged since 1991.
This diversity itself has birthed the inviolability of freedom of speech.
From the various speeches I heard, I was attracted to one line the guest of honour, President Edgar Lungu made to the effect that we are in an era where the journalist does not exist to harm the state and conversely does the state exist to harm the journalist.
On this great day for journalists, I made a dialectical reflection on the very idea of freedom and order.
Having worked for a considerable time on both sides: government and media industry, I have a fairly good idea about the dialectical situation of Freedom and Order.
The dichotomy of freedom and order, is that more often than not, the two ideas are mistakenly seen as mutually exclusive.
Governments emphasise order whilst Journalists focus on freedom.
Press Freedom is not a sectional special interest lobby; it is an expression of democratic values inherent in the very possibility of life itself.
Democratic principles are neither a gift nor a favour from Government but an inviolable imperative in any democratic society.
The democratic space journalists desire is to deliver public good. The 2021 World Press Freedom Day theme was “Information for public good.”
Government’s guarantee of this democratic space is a decent obligation a democratic society reasonably expect.
But the dialectical dilemma of this situation is that both Freedom and Order are virtuous aspirations which can not been seen as mutually exclusive.
What is there is a constant struggle. And yes we must all be called to a broad-based consensus that speaks to the common aspirations of the very ideals of freedom and order.
So, where we see a struggle between freedom and order let’s SUPPLANT the word STRUGGLE with DIALOGUE.
A genuine, lasting dialogue towards the fulfillment of both order and freedom.
Dialectics teach us that where two seemingly opposing aspirations emerge, the ultimate end should always invariably be the triumph of ideas over adversity.
Freedom without order would lead to an implosion of society from within; conversely, order without freedom would fertilise a festering social explosion due to the absence of necessary safety valves.
Since Engels and Marx and Thomas Hobbes, the whole idea of freedom of expression has remained a constant central feature of human progression.
Freedom of expression or free speech, is at the centre of press freedom, and therefore necessary for the enjoyment of life itself.
Hence these freedoms are encased in the sanctity of the universal fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteeing civil liberties and human dignity as we all know it.
The operative word is “fundamental.” Something fundamental is something so essential without which it would not be possible to enjoy life.
That is the centrality of free speech towards the creation of a sustainable dialogue between order the freedom.
Happy World Press Freedom Day!
*The author is former Special Assistant to the President for Press and public relations and former News Editor for the Zambia Daily Mail Newspapers.
