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tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression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 counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to
avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as
individuals 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 individual, by exercising
critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. 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 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 or unwelcome scrutiny by government officials.
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 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 controversy and difference.
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:
1.
It is in the public interest for publishers and
librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions,
including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by 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 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.
2.
Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not
need to endorse every idea or presentation 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 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 bar access to writings on the basis of the personal
history or political affiliations of the author.
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.
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 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.
5.
It is not in the public interest to force a
reader to accept the prejudgment of a label characterizing any expression or
its 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 others. 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; and by the government whenever it seeks to
reduce or deny public access to public information.
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. Further, democratic
societies are more safe, free, and creative when the free flow of public
information is not restricted by governmental prerogative or self-censorship.
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 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 Americans 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 June 25, 1953, by the ALA Council and the AAP
Freedom to Read Committee; amended January 28, 1972; January 16, 1991;
July 12, 2000; June 30, 2004.