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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 books from sale, to
censor textbooks, to label "controversial" books, 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expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are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 the use of books and as librarians
and publishers responsible for disseminating them, wish to assert the
public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.
We are deeply concerned about these attempts at
suppression. Most such attempts 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 to
reject it. 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.
We are aware, of course, that books are not alone in
being subjected to efforts at suppression. We are aware that these
efforts are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought
against education, the press, films, radio and television. The problem
is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these
pressures lead, 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 uneasy change and pervading fear. Especially when so many of
our apprehensions are directed against an ideology, the expression of a
dissident idea becomes a thing feared in itself, and we tend to move
against it as against a hostile deed, with suppression.
And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such
a time social tension. Freedom has given the United States the
elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and
creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every
silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the
toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to
deal with stress.
Now as always in our history, books are among our
greatest instruments of freedom. They are almost the only means for
making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can
initially command only a small audience. They are the natural medium
for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original
contributions to social growth. They are essential to the extended
discussion which 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 towards 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:
1. It is in the public interest for publishers and
librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and
expressions, including those which are unorthodox or unpopular with the
majority.
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 which
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.
2. Publishers, librarians and booksellers do not need
to endorse every idea or presentation contained in the books they make
available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to
establish their own political, moral or aesthetic views as a standard
for determining what books should be published or circulated.
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.
3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers
or librarians to determine the acceptability of a book on the basis of
the personal history or political affiliations of the author.
A book should be judged as a book. 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 which
draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may
have to say.
4. There is no place in our society for efforts to
coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter
deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to
achieve artistic expression.
To some, much of modern literature 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 taste differs, and taste cannot
be legislated; nor can machinery be devised which will suit the demands
of one group without limiting the freedom of others.
5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader
to accept with any book the prejudgment of a label characterizing the
book or author as subversive or dangerous.
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.
6. It is the responsibility of publishers and
librarians, as guardians of the people's freedom to read, to contest
encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups seeking to
impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large.
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.
7. It is the responsibility of publishers and
librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing
books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate
that the answer to a bad book is a good one, the answer to a bad idea is
a good one.
The freedom to read is of little consequence when
expended on the trivial; it is frustrated 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 their freedom and integrity, and the enlargement
of their service to society, 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
books. We do so because we believe that they are good, 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 suppressions of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.
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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 June 25, 1953; revised January 28, 1972, January
16, 1991, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee. |
