Freedom of Expression and Economic Prosperity

Remarks by U.S. Ambassador Christopher W. Dell to the School of Journalism at the National University of Science and Technology, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2006

Thank you very much for this opportunity to address you all in the beautiful City of Kings on this occasion of World Press Freedom Day. I am especially pleased to be addressing the School of Journalism today, given that so much of our world’s future rests on the shoulders of an ever more influential media.

THE JOURNALIST’S POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY

Today’s media has command over a greater breadth and depth of knowledge than ever. It enjoys unprecedented levels of technology and capital and reaches billions of people. With the ideological struggles of the Cold War behind most of the world, the media is less politically or legally fettered than ever before in most places. If Francis Bacon’s dictum “knowledge is power” remains true – and certainly it does – then the media today is surely more powerful than ever.
But with Bacon’s dictum I would charge the future journalists among us here to always keep close a second, more recent dictum. It is the lesson of the great American comic book superhero, Spiderman. Spiderman says, “With great power comes great responsibility.” For those not familiar with Peter Parker’s web-slinging alter ego, Spiderman repeatedly sees his super-powered attempts to do good produce unintended, sometimes unhappy consequences. Disillusioned, he often tries to walk away from the super-hero business of trying to help people and make the world a better place. Yet, each time, however, Spiderman – whose alter ego, by the way, is a photojournalist – returns to the inescapable conclusion that those with power have an obligation to use it, and to use it responsibly to the best of their ability.
But what exactly is the journalist’s responsibility? There are no doubt many formulations, but let me share with you one advanced by Mahatma Gandhi – a man who very effectively used newspapers over the span of his life to improve governance in his own country, change attitudes around the globe, and make the world a better place. Gandhi cast the journalist’s responsibility, and I quote, “(1) to understand the popular feeling and give expression to it, (2) to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments, and (3) fearlessly to expose defects.” To be sure, each of these objectives sometimes conflicts with another, testifying to the complexity of the future tasks of you journalism students. But it is hard to imagine any proper journalistic effort that does not draw on one or more of these objectives.

 

GLOBAL ACCEPTANCE OF FREE SPEECH

Ladies and gentlemen, that freedom of expression is a fundamental right is axiomatic in the modern world. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Ms. Burkett just quoted, let me repeat it for you:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Unifying diverse, even conflicting political regimes, the Declaration was ratified in 1948 by proclamation of the UN General Assembly with no opposing votes. In my country, this right is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In pertinent part, it provides simply that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” The great American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed this amendment’s rationale and centrality to the Constitution in a famous opinion given in 1919. He concluded that “the ultimate good” was best reached by “a free trade in ideas … that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the marketplace.” The Zimbabwean Constitution describes freedom of expression at some length in its Article 20. In the case of In Re Munhumeso in 1992, the Zimbabwean Supreme Court cast freedom of expression as a “vitally important right” that lies “at the foundation of a democratic society” and is a “basic condition for the progress of society and in the development of persons.” According to the Supreme Court, freedom of expression serves four broad purposes: (1) it helps an individual to obtain self-fulfillment; (2) it assists in the discovery of truth; (3) it strengthens the capacity of an individual to participate in decision making; and (4) it provides a mechanism for establishing a reasonable balance between stability and social change.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FREE SPEECH AND ECONOMIC PROSPERITY 

I am not going to belabor freedom of expression’s intrinsic value, which is now almost universally accepted. Instead, I would like to elaborate on one aspect of free speech that has been perhaps under-appreciated. I’m talking about the relationship between free speech and economic prosperity. Indeed, most of the four purposes of free speech defined by your Supreme Court in the decision I just quoted apply directly to the foundations of economic development. The logic of the connection is not hard to understand. In a society where freedom of expression is tolerated, open debate can flourish. In a competitive marketplace of ideas, all ideas – in large part expressed by and through an energetic media – can be aired and the best can rise to the top. Here I’m simply quoting Justice Holmes’ thoughts on the marketplace of ideas and the second purpose articulated in the

Zimbabwean Court

’s formula. For governments, this dynamic process yields policies that best account for conflicting variables, policies that balance the interests of all groups. Such policies maximize the effectiveness of economic players – buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, regulators and the regulated, individuals and corporations. The result instills confidence in domestic and international investors to act in such a climate. The whole open process drives growth, builds prosperity, and – advancing the Zimbabwean Court’s first purpose–fosters individual self-fulfillment.

Of course, in today’s complicated, interconnected global economy, even open societies can still get policies wrong. But freedom of expression is a central self-correcting mechanism in such societies. When the consequences of bad policies emerge, a free press covers the outcry from affected groups. The party in power learns to adjust its policies. If the party doesn’t, and conditions deteriorate further, democratic systems allow informed citizens to vote that party out, and a new government comes to power with the chance to try different ideas. (Recall here, if you will, the Zimbabwean Court’s third purpose: to strengthen the capacity of an individual to participate in decision-making.) In this way, an open society gives its leadership a chance to learn and to adapt to a constantly changing and ever more competitive world at a pace that suits the people. (This, too, is consistent with the Zimbabwean court’s fourth purpose: to provide a mechanism for establishing a reasonable balance between stability and social change.) Beyond the policy front, freedom of expression is also a crucial element in a functioning market economy on the microeconomic level. Indeed, “the free flow of information” is an essential element of definitions of “perfect competition” and “market economy” in classic economic theory. Investors, companies, and individuals can’t make informed economic decisions in their interest without free access to information. Thus, an important political right is also a pivotal economic mechanism.
Again, as in the case of economic policy, the logic of free speech’s underpinning of economic prosperity on the micro level is not complicated. If producers and consumers do not operate in a transparent system with information flowing freely between and among them, pricing mechanisms will always be distorted to the detriment of society as a whole. In some cases, prices will be “too high”, resulting in consumers spending more of their disposable income - at the expense of other consumption - and getting less. In other words, if you have to spend all your available money to buy petrol at black market prices, you will have to forego something else – sadza, school fees, chibuku, whatever. In some cases prices will be “too low”, resulting in wide shortages and disinvestments by producers. When the price of sugar is frozen by regulation below its cost to the shopkeeper, for example, sugar disappears from the shelves and consumers must do without. Innumerable distortions emerge in this environment: shortages of basic commodities such as food, fuel, and foreign exchange; unfair two-tiered pricing, with artificially cheap prices for elites and steep black market prices for those not politically favored; diversion of increasingly scarce private resources from productive investment to basic consumption; diversion of increasingly scarce public and private resources to import what the economy can no longer produce; resistance by elites with a personal stake in an inefficient and unfair system to any efforts to change that system. In short, all of this happens because government is not fulfilling one of its primary responsibilities—the provision of so-called “public goods,” one of which is information. As a result, the market fails to function efficiently and all the distortions I have just enumerated—and others—appear to the detriment of everyone except those in charge. Without a free flow of information, the privileged few who have access to and control of information can manipulate that information to benefit themselves at the expense of the majority. While such a system enriches a few, it impoverishes the vast majority and undermines society’s overall economic prosperity. In nearly all cases, the system of restricted access to information serves as a foundation for corruption on a massive scale that misallocates societal resources and widens the gulf between the haves and the havenots.

This control over the information lifeblood of the market economy often goes beyond failure of government to fulfill its duty to provide the public good which is information. Governments so obsessed with control over information typically go beyond even this to prevent others—including a free press—from fulfilling that gap. In all cases, efficiency and productivity suffer. While it is today fashionable, in some quarters, to declare that the laws of supply and demand, for example, can be suspended at will, you don’t need a PhD in economics to understand that this flaunts human nature– people understand their interests and act accordingly. Those who pretend otherwise should remember King Canute and his doomed effort to tell the tide not to rise. Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank and Nobel Prize winner in economics for his work on asymmetries of information, concludes that corruption is more of an economic issue than a political one. Noting that economists – really, all of us –oppose “artificially created scarcities”, he calls secrecy in the economy an artificially created scarcity of knowledge. Artificially created scarcities – in this case of knowledge – give rise to rent-seeking behavior, that is, making money not by producing but by exploiting the imperfect market that they have themselves created, in part by manipulating market information to their own advantage. These in turn give rise to corruption, as it becomes easier and less risky to make a fast dollar by exploiting your access to information than to produce goods or services.

Stiglitz’s work has been instrumental in moving transparency and the vital economic function of a free press to the center of international financial institutions’ agenda for poverty reduction in the developing world. I note, for example, that the World Bank is now training some 1,000 journalists in investigative reporting, precisely because of the media’s crucial role in advancing prospects for improved governance and poverty reduction in their countries. Years ago, World Bank training for journalists would have been considered off-limits as “way too political”. Our evolving understanding of free speech’s pivotal role in development has changed all this, and we now realize journalism training is not too political at all, but it is appropriately and essentially economic.

LESSONS OF HISTORY 

My friends, history has shown time and again that an environment that fosters freedom of expression is an essential pillar to support the economic development of any people. The contrasting experiences of East and West during the Cold War offer compelling evidence of the centrality of free speech to economic prosperity. In the 1950s, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev famously told the Free World: “we will bury you.” But the ensuing decades saw the Free World achieve unprecedented levels of prosperity while the Communist Bloc suffered technological backwardness, declining health standards, and failure even to maintain food self-sufficiency. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate in 1987 on the eve of the final collapse of Stalinism, President Ronald Reagan underscored the one great and inescapable conclusion of that era, and I quote, “Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.” President Reagon could have added, we now know, “and with freedom’s victory comes greater prosperity for ever greater numbers of ordinary people.” Six years ago, then Georgian President and former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze eloquently punctuated this point on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. He wrote: “The greatest achievement of humanity - freedom of speech - has served [as] both the source and the incentive of progress... Today... hardly any nation can call itself civilized unless its citizens enjoy genuine freedom of speech... I firmly believe that the moral and political failure of the communist system was largely due to the suppression of this natural right, for it is no overstatement to say that free access to information is as crucial to human happiness and development as are water and bread for the physical survival of humankind. Suppression of free thought inevitably results in an accumulation of colossal amounts of negative energy that will ultimately smash every wall erected by a totalitarian system or dictatorship.”
I’m sure that you’d find agreement on Shevardnadze’s analysis throughout much of Eastern Europe, where the citizens of Poland and Hungary, the Baltics, and more recently Romania and Bulgaria are enjoying job creation, rising incomes and economic abundance at levels undreamed of before the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the communist system.

Ladies and gentleman, this is not the result of development assistance or balance of payment supports. For the most part, their turnaround was the product of a citizenry exploiting political and economic freedoms not previously enjoyed. For sure, international assistance can aid development, but the growing wealth of Eastern European nations is primarily the result of expanding freedom – including freedom of speech and unfettered access to information – unleashing the potential of the citizens of those countries. In other words, government got out of the way of its public and let real markets develop. Equally importantly, the political process became more inclusive so government became more responsive and accountable to its own people. The experience of the East Asian tigers over the last two decades buttresses the lesson that building a strong policy framework on freedom of expression, among other freedoms, will drive impressive economic growth. Tellingly, glaring exceptions to that pattern in East Asia are the countries that suffer the lowest levels of political and economic free speech in East Asia. Burma is a country as rich as any in natural resources but handicapped by a government that brooks no dissent and imposes a heavy hand in economic affairs. Another exception is North Korea, which by trying to enforce uniformity of thought has guaranteed a food-insecure and impoverished people. Not coincidentally, Burma and North Korea are just two of a handful of countries publicly described by the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice as the world’s remaining “outposts of tyranny”.Freedom and Famine The Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen offers a noteworthy historical truth that drives home the relationship between freedom and prosperity, especially in the developing world: Of all mankind’s terrible famines, none has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with regular, credible elections, healthy opposition parties, and an unfettered media. Famines historically have been associated with one- party states such as the Soviet Union in the 1930s, China in the 1950s, Cambodia in the 1970s, and North Korea this past decade; or with military dictatorships such as in Ethiopia and Somalia; or colonial arrangements such as in pre-independence India and Ireland. Notably, not just rich countries avoid famines; poor societies that are open and democratic have never experienced famine either.
Newly independent but democratic India underscores the point. Colonial India experienced a devastating famine just four years before independence. Desperately poor upon achieving independence, India had a huge population, suffered erratic monsoon rains and regional droughts, and relied heavily on traditional agricultural methods. You would have thought the nation was ripe for famine. Yet, it never happened. Sure, times remained difficult, but there was no collapse. I submit to you that a key reason was the openness of India’s society and adequate market mechanisms based on the free flow of information. Accordingly, people had adequate information to anticipate the agricultural and market conditions, surpluses found their way to areas of deficit, and basic food was available throughout that vast country.

In stark contrast, the horrific three-year famine suffered in China beginning in 1958 tragically demonstrates the other side of this point. An estimated 30 million people died during that period in the wake of the Chinese government’s “great leap forward”. Statist economic policies were disastrous, but the Chinese government refused to face facts. The famine unfolded and the government did not adjust its disastrous policies for more than three years. Intolerance of dissent inside and outside the party ensured that neither government nor the party could react appropriately to famine. Steered by its own propaganda and reports from local officials hoping for credit with senior authorities, many in power even believed that the country had millions of metric tons of excess food, which, in fact, never existed. In elaborating on this tragedy, Sen noted that no less a personage than Chairman Mao himself later spotlighted the insidious role played by the suppression of information in the famine. In a 1962 speech, Mao told party cadres that, and I am quoting, “without democracy you have no understanding of what’s happening down below. The situation will be unclear. You will be unable to collect sufficient opinion from all sides. There can be no communication between top and bottom. Top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues. You will find it difficult to avoid being subjective.”

PRESS FREEDOM AND GROWTH IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

Not surprisingly, economic studies in recent years bear out a strong causal relationship between the degree of a country’s civil liberties and media independence and its development outcomes. Daniel Kaufmann, writing last year for the World Bank in a paper called “Myths and Realities of Governance and Corruption”, pointed out that even popular lore subscribes to the importance of transparency, as illustrated by the old truth that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” He found a strong positive correlation between transparency and better socioeconomic and human development indicators, as well as higher competitiveness and lower corruption. He also suggested that much progress could be achieved without investing inordinate resources. In fact, he noted that transparency reforms were substantial net savers of public resources, and could obviate the necessity for excessive regulations, rules, or taxation. His paper put forth numerous examples of concrete and effective transparency reforms such as freedom of the media, effective implementation of freedom of information laws, public disclosure of assets and incomes of public officials, and effective implementation of conflict of interest laws. One does not have to look beyond the SADC region, indeed anywhere beyond Zimbabwe’s immediate borders, to find evidence of the correlation between freedom of expression and economic growth. With one glaring exception, countries in this region are beginning to exploit the relationships between civil liberties and economic development highlighted in these recent studies. In short, those countries of the SADC region that have become more participatory, democratic, and tolerant of free expression, are becoming more responsive, more accountable – and consequently more prosperous. As a whole, the region shows positive trends on freedom of speech. Freedom House, an NGO familiar to many Zimbabweans, usually criticized by its government, annually publishes a widely respected index of freedom, which ranks the medias of three of the five countries neighboring Zimbabwe as “free” and ranks none lower than 90th in the larger community of nations. Sadly, Zimbabwe is rated “unfree” and ranks 153d. Most nations in the region reflected improvement in press freedoms, according to another NGO, Reporters Without Borders. Zimbabwe was the only nation in the region to be placed by that NGO in the bottom tiers of its press freedom index -- not surprising, in view of the continued closure of independent dailies, harassment and growing legal controls on journalists, and a strictly enforced government monopoly on broadcast media.
With growing freedom of the press and the advance of other civil liberties, the rest of the region is growing faster economically. Every one of Zimbabwe’s neighbors, for example, registered real per capita GDP growth in 2005, led by Mozambique’s 5.2% – the highest growth rate on the continent among non-oil-exporting countries. Ethnically diverse South Africa registered 4.0% per capita GDP growth in 2005 – the third straight year in which its growth rate increased. With a natural resource base similar to Zimbabwe’s, Zambia’s per capita GDP grew 2.6% in 2005 and is forecast to grow even more in 2006. With a per capita GDP growth rate of 4.2% in 2005, Botswana has averaged annual growth rates in excess of 4.0% per annum for the last decade. Sadly, Zimbabwe is the exception that in this case proves the rule. According to IMF estimates, in 2005 – a year which saw good rains but no meaningful reform – Zimbabwe registered a per capita GDP “growth” rate of minus 6.5%, the eighth year in a row the economy shrank. None but a few within the Government have predicted a return to real growth this year.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND THE ZIMBABWEAN ECONOMY

Friends, permit me to elaborate a bit on the case of Zimbabwe. It is undeniable that Zimbabwe’s economy is in a downward spiral unmatched by any other country not at war. And yet, if you rely on the state media, things aren’t that bad. In fact, the outlook is very rosy indeed and recovery is only months away. Read the government dailies – the only daily newspapers circulated in this country. Listen to the state radio – the only radio permitted to broadcast from Zimbabwean soil. Watch state TV, if you can – the only TV permitted to originate in Zimbabwe. The economy will grow we’re told 1-2% this year – the agricultural sector by nearly 10%. And this despite a 40% contraction over eight straight years of decline and no foreseeable change in economic policy on the horizon! I for one will watch with great interest to see how this turnaround will be effected. I say that noting that the Government has just announced a National Economic Development Priority Program (an NEDPP) and the composition of a National Economic Recovery Council (the NERC) – what it casts as a public-private partnership to tackle the nation’s severe economic ills. However, I have carefully read the Government’s statements for evidence that there will be policy shifts that might address the fundamental problems in the economy here – shifts that would restore domestic and international faith in the Zimbabwean economy, restore the Government’s credibility on economic issues, and lead to renewed investment and a cycle of recovery. So far, I see structure, but no real debate. I see form, but no reform. I see committees, but no commitment to change policies that have shown they do not work. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, history and economics both prove that the repeated distortion of truth and the empty pronouncement of hollow policies without content quickly erode and undermine any government credibility among its own people. This, of course, makes it even harder to achieve a turnaround, when finally, albeit belatedly, sound policies are embraced.In this regard, one can’t help but recall the series of economic plans announced periodically since the country’s economic crises got underway at the beginning of this decade. We have had a MERP - Millennium Economic Recovery Plan; a NERP – New Economic Recovery Plan; a Ten-point Plan; a NERP 2; a TNF – a Tripartite Negotiating Forum; and now, a NERC. All announced with great fanfare; unfortunately, none yielding effective policies to arrest economic decline. We certainly hope the NEDPP and the NERC enjoy a different and happier fate, but in view of their precursors, one can understand the widespread skepticism already expressed by many, many ordinary Zimbabweans.

If I’ve done my job at all well here today, the relevance of freedom of expression to economic prosperity in Zimbabwe should already be clear to all of you. I would hope you have the chance to debate the relevance of this economic theory to Zimbabwe and decide for yourselves whether it is relevant or not. I am not going to go into details lest some accuse me of overstepping diplomatic limits – notwithstanding my undeniable right of reply to the Government’s repeated attribution of all its economic woes to my government’s policies rather than of its own. But simply recall the lessons of history and you will see that there in fact is little groundbreaking in what I have said today, nor should it be either surprising or controversial. When governments attempt to control information throughout society, economic “strategies” tend to be top-down, prescriptive exercises that produce little, because those most affected have little real input. When prices are set by cumbersome bureaucracies with imperfect information and political agendas instead of by innumerable motivated buyers and sellers responding nimbly to ever-shifting market information, then disinvestment, shortages, and black markets inevitably occur. And with distorting artificial scarcities of knowledge, everyone cheats – from the farmer who buys scarce inputs from black market dealers and sells outside unremunerative government channels to survive, to the elites who access scarce inputs at subsidized prices and exploit the black market to resell those cheap goods for a huge, quick profit. In short, look behind nearly every economic dysfunction and shortage in this country – unavailability of fertilizer and fuel, underutilization of land, burgeoning corruption – and you will likely find some impediment to the free flow of information or the freedom to act on that information.
Such statist systems – with their obsession to control political and economic information -- didn’t work in the 1930s Soviet Union or 1950s China, and it seems doubtful that they’ll ever work elsewhere. Recall Chairman Mao’s caution: “You (i.e., government) will be unable to collect sufficient opinion from all sides. There can be no communication between top and bottom. Top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues. You will find it difficult to avoid being subjective.” In other words, operating in an information vacuum, any government – even with the best of intentions – will get it wrong under the best of circumstances. Remembering the experience of China and the conclusions of Chairman Mao on the central importance of information flow is, I submit, ladies and gentlemen, an extremely valuable lesson and a real benefit to be learned from a policy of “Looking East.”

CONCLUSION

Friends, the environment in which we exercise our freedom of expression in today’s world would be almost unrecognizable to the framers of the U.S. Constitution more than 200 years ago. But the empowerment freedom of expression confers on citizens and the dynamism it imparts to our political and economic systems remain important to us here, just as they were to the yeoman farmer whose political and economic independence Thomas Jefferson believed would be the bedrock on which genuine and lasting democracy could be built. Jefferson and the founders of our constitution lived in a time of revolution. I can assure you that it was no coincidence that a representative government based on individual liberties was established just as the idea of and right to free expression was taking off in the 18th century. It was an era characterized by proliferating printing presses, the first newspapers (including reports both positive and negative on parliamentary debates of government activities), a vibrant coffee house atmosphere of debate, discussion and information exchange, and a culture of town hall meetings, which continues in some places to this day.
Similarly, it is no coincidence that the modern market economy emerged in precisely this same environment of burgeoning freedom of expression as men discovered the power of free speech and greater access to information. The growing flow of information allowed the development of those institutions – stock markets, corporations, intellectual property protection, transportation infrastructure, liberalized international trade – that underpinned the unprecedented scientific and economic expansion, which we all today know as “the Industrial Revolution” in the next century.
Today we are in an information revolution that holds profound implications for politics and economics throughout this ever-smaller planet. I cannot predict where the internet revolution and the attendant dynamism of web publishing, blogging, and mass communication on an unprecedented scale will take us. But I can predict with great confidence that 50 years from now, as you, the students of today, are finishing your own illustrious careers, you will look back to 2006 and hardly recognize it, the changes will have been so vast. Those who learn to use the power of this information revolution will benefit enormously. In that vein, to unleash that power and maximize social benefit, governments will need to trust and empower their citizenry in both political and economic spheres. Those who stand in the information revolution’s way, who try to block, control, squeeze or limit information, will – to borrow Mr. Khrushchev’s line – simply be buried, buried under the ashes of history and condemned to irrelevance. Some final parting thoughts to all of you in the School of Journalism – Remember Bacon: knowledge is power. As developers of knowledge, you future journalists will be critical developers of power in our society. Remember Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility. You have an obligation to use your power, and to use it responsibly. Indeed, societies who fail to exercise the power of free speech risk having it taken away by those who fear it. Free speech is a self-reinforcing asset; expression of dynamic ideas in and of itself contributes to an environment that encourages wider freedom of expression and all its attendant benefits. In short, free speech: use it… or lose it!

Thank you, and I’ll be happy to entertain some questions now...

2006-08-11/ 10:48:52