PressEthic

This week, both Iran and China took significant steps to further restrain their domestic news agencies.

The Iranian reformist newspaper Shargh was one of four publications shut down this week by Iran’s conservative press monitor. The government order to shut down Shargh came after repeated warnings for publishing “heretical articles, insulting religious, political and national figures and revealing information in defiance of the Supreme National Security Council”, according to the Iranian press monitor.

In China, new regulations were enacted on Sunday that gave the government-run news agency Xinhua control over distribution of news and information from foreign media services such as the Associated Press and Reuters. Xinhua said it would prohibit information that it thought might violate national unity or social stability.

In the emerging geopolitical landscape, these developments are worthy of serious consideration.

Freedom of the press has been a sacrosanct civil liberty in the West long before America was the world’s dominant economic power. Michael Moore, Anne Coulter, even David Icke, are free to say whatever they want. Indeed, this basic freedom seems a necessary element of every wealthy industrialized nation. But perhaps this assumption is not necessarily correct.

If popular predications hold true, China will be the world’s dominant economic force by the year 2050 at the latest. Iran is swiftly becoming the world’s most important Islamic nation. Can these countries continue to grow and prosper in the absence of an open and honest discourse among their people?

As China’s private sector surges forward and an immense middle class is formed, will these many millions of newly wealthy citizens be content to have their human rights dictated to them?

Unless there is a large-scale social revolution in Asia, the future may be strange indeed.