Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 In Search of the Roots: Deconstructing the Institution of Freedom of the Press Chapter 3 Free Press for Social Control: From Bentham to American Pragmatists Chapter 4 Freedom to Reason, Right to Communicate Chapter 5 From the Republic of Letters to the Public of Letters to the Editor

About the Author

Slavko Splichal is professor of mass communications and public opinion at the University of Ljubjana and director of the European Institute for Communication and Culture.

Reviews

This demanding, well-supported, and carefully documented argument requires very attentive reading. Recommended.
*CHOICE*

Raises some interesting issues regarding the conceptualization of freedom of the press.
*Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly*

Splichal offers an insightful and richly illustrated historical account of modern-day understandings of press freedom and responsibility by tracing the liberal democratic ideal of news media as 'public watchdogs' and Habermas' ideal of news media as 'public forums' back to Jeremy Bentham's and Immanuel Kant's radically different conceptions of publicity.
*Journal of Communication*

Slavko Splichal's book is a thorough and brilliant rethinking, from philosophical and historical perspectives, of the basic meanings of press freedoms: why we have them, where we got them, and how they have been captured, redefined, and—in some cases—twisted in a modern Orwellian mode.
*Monroe Price, Oxford University*