State Rep. Mike Pitts drew attention from journalists across the nation Tuesday — not for his proposal to do away with lethal injections by requiring all state executions to be carried out by electric chair nor his plan to transfer control of public universities to private not-for-profit organizations nor a bill that would prohibit the state from enforcing federal gun laws taking effect after Jan. 1, 2016. Instead, it was the Laurens representative’s journalism registry law that earned headlines.
Under the “South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry Law,” all journalists would be required to register with the Secretary of State’s office before working for any media outlet. According to the bill, “A person seeking to register shall provide all information required by the office including, but not limited to, a criminal record background check, an affidavit from the media outlet attesting to the applicant’s journalistic competence, and an application fee in an amount determined by the office.” The law would also allow the state to deny, revoke, or refuse a person’s application if he or she has failed to pay the proper fees or is deemed not competent to be a journalist. Those caught working as a journalist without registering would face a maximum $25 fine upon their first offense, followed by increased fines and possible jail time for subsequent offenses.
In an interview with the Post and Courier, Pitts admitted that the bill is an effort to “stimulate discussion” over the media’s treatment of Second Amendment rights. The bill’s proposal makes slightly more sense when coupled with the fact that Pitts also introduced his “Second Amendment Preservation Act” on the same day — news of which was overshadowed by heated debate over the unlikely possibility of licensing the press. While one bill would create a database of journalists, the other would prevent the state from expending any state funds toward the enforcement of any new federal laws that would require firearms to be registered or confiscated.
Acknowledging that Pitts’ call for a journalist registry had little chance of gaining traction with the General Assembly, Bill Rogers, executive director of the S.C. Press Association, of which the City Paper is a member, spoke about the larger issues associated with the bill.
“This bill is unconstitutional on its face. Government can’t force journalists to register, unless you live in China, North Korea, or Iran,” said Rogers. “I’m not sure what Rep. Pitts is thinking, but this idea is totally un-American.”
A History of Censorship
Although this most recent attempt by government officials to regulate the press is essentially an attention grab, what role have politicians played in not only making the news, but also shaping it?
Each year, nonprofit organization Reporters Without Borders releases its World Press Freedom Index ranking each nation on the amount of direct and indirect pressure received by members of the press. Finland claimed the top spot in 2015, earning the ranking as the nation with the greatest press freedom. China and North Korea placed in the bottom 10 out of the 180 countries examined, whereas the United States came in 49th. That ranking, of course, begs the question: What is holding back freedom of the press in America?
In her book The Influencing Machine, author Brooke Gladstone offers a brief history of journalism and its occasional run-ins with government. In 1643, England’s Parliament began enforcing prepublication licensing and the registration of printing materials, including authors’ names. In response to this mandate, John Milton, best known for writing Paradise Lost, penned an appeal for a free press titled Areopagitica.
“Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets, and statutes, and standards,” said Milton. “We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broad cloth and our wool packs.”
Skipping ahead to after the American Revolutionary War, Gladstone writes that “Rather than tax newspapers as England does, [the United States] spends tax money to subsidize their delivery.” By this point, the First Amendment is in place protecting freedom of speech in the fledgling nation. That is until 1798 when President John Adams signs the Alien and Sedition Acts during a naval war with France. In addition to granting the government new powers of deportation and tougher voting restrictions for new immigrants, the laws also imposed fines and imprisonment for those who write or publish “false, scandalous, or malicious writing” against the government. The Sedition Act expires when Thomas Jefferson became president.
As history is bound to repeat itself, each new war is accompanied by closer government regulation of the media. For a time during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s office shut down opposition newspapers and censored dispatches from the battlefield.
On a local level, James Tillman, the lieutenant governor of South Carolina, shot and killed one of the founder of The State newspaper in 1903. Tillman served no jail time for the murder of Narciso Gonzales, whose publication had been critical of the politician.
In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act as the U.S. entered World War I, making it illegal to print any criticism of the government or its allies. This same trend of political leaders protecting themselves from the public eye continued with President Richard Nixon’s attempted use of the Espionage Act following the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which detailed a Department of Defense study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001.
As America continues to find itself in one battle after another, whether it be on foreign soil or a domestic debate over guns, the relationship between the government and the press has always be a tenuous one. As for establishing a registry for journalists, Bill Rogers is confident that the bill will go nowhere, but prepared to act if it does, saying, “We will fight it tooth and nail if it gets any traction.”
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