Riverside Regional Library
Freedom to Read Statement
The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously
under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of
the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials,
to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to
distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge
libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national
tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and
suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the
corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to reading and as
librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to
assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.
Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise
of democracy: that the ordinary citizen, by exercising critical
judgment, will accept the good and reject the bad. The censors, public
and private, assume that they should determine what is good and what is
bad for their fellow citizens.
We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to
make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not
believe they need the help of censors to assist them in this task. We do
not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free
press in order to be “protected” against what others think may be bad
for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and
expression.
These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern of
pressures being brought against education, the press, art and images,
films, broadcast media, and the Internet. The problem is not only one of
actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we
suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those
who seek to avoid controversy.
Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural
to a time of accelerated change. And yet suppression is never more
dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the
Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms.
The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making
generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially
command only a small audience. The written word is the natural medium
for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original
contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended
discussion that serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of
knowledge and ideas into organized collections.
We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a
free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures
toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety
of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend.
We believe that every American community must jealously guard the
freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own
freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a
profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by
making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of
offerings. The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those
with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional
guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities
that accompany these rights.
We therefore affirm these propositions:
Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The
bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and
tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by
the ruthless suppression of any concept that challenges the established
orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly
strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among
conflicting opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every
nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the democratic
process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing and
selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times
like these. We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe
it.
Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to
make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind
and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing
as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The people should have the
freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those that
may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or
church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what
another thinks proper.
No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the
political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free
people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom it will not
listen, whatever they may have to say.
To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life
itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent
writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a
responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences
in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to
help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are
affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing
them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these
matters values differ, and values cannot be legislated; nor can
machinery be devised that will suit the demands of one group without
limiting the freedom of others.
The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups
with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for the
citizen. It presupposes that individuals must be directed in making up
their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not need
others to do their thinking for them.
It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the
political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or
group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or
group. In a free society individuals are free to determine for
themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine
what it will recommend to its freely associated members. But no group
has the right to take the law into its own hands, and to impose its own
concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic
society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted
and the inoffensive.
The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot
obtain matter fit for that reader’s purpose. What is needed is not only
the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for
the people to read the best that has been thought and said. Books are
the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down,
and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of the
freedom to read requires of all publishers and librarians the utmost of
their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their
support.
We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations.
We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of the written word. We do
so because we believe that it is possessed of enormous variety and
usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the
application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas
and manners of expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not
state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read
is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply
important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of
ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous
way of life, but it is ours.
This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester
Conference of the American Library Association and the American Book
Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American
Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association of American
Publishers.
Adopted
A Joint Statement by:
Subsequently Endorsed by: |