d there, will never
accomplish anything great.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

The freedom of public utterance (of which the press is one means, having
advantage over speech in its more extended reach, though inferior to it
in vivacity), the gratification of that prickling impulse to express and
to have expressed one's opinion, is directly controlled by the police
and State laws and regulations, which partly hinder and partly punish
its excesses. The indirect guarantee lies in its innocuousness, and
this again is mainly based on the rationality of the constitution, the
stability of the government, and also on the publicity given to the
assemblies of the classes. Another security is offered by the
indifference and contempt with which insipid and malicious words are, as
a rule, quickly met.

The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write
what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as
freedom to do what one pleases. Such views belong to the uneducated
crudity and superficiality of naive thinking. The press, with its
infinite variety of content and expression, represents what is most
transient, particular, and accidental in human opinion. Beyond the
direct incitation to theft, murder, revolt, etc., lies the art of
cultivating the expression which in itself seems general and indefinite
enough, but which, in a measure, conceals a perfectly definite meaning.
Such expressions are partly responsible for consequences of which, since
they are not actually expressed, one is never sure how far they are
contained in the utterances and really follow from them. It is this
indefiniteness of the content and form of the press which prevents the
laws governing it from assuming that precision which one demands of
laws. Thus the extreme subjectivity of the wrong, injury, and crime
committed by the press, causes the decision and sentence to be equally
subjective. The laws are not only indefinite, but the press can, by the
skill and subtlety of its expressions, evade them, or criticise the
judgment of the court as wholly arbitrary. Furthermore, if the utterance
of the press is treated as an offensive deed, one may retort that it is
not a deed at all, but only an opinion, a thought, a mere saying.
Consequently, impunity is expected for opinions and words, because they
are merely subjective, trivial, and insignificant, and, in the same
breath, great respect and esteem is demanded for these opinions a