Freedom
to Read
The Freedom to Read Statement
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from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no
longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid
the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as
citizens 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 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 misinformation, and to make their own decisions
about what they read and believe. We do not believe they need the
help of censors to assist them in this task. 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.
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:
- 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 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- It is not in the public interest to force a reader
to accept with any expression the prejudgment of a label
characterizing it 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 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.
- 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.
- 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 citizens the fullest of their support.
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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; revised January 28, 1972, January 16, 1991,
July 12, 2000, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee.
Adopted by the Rockford Public Library Board of Trustees January 14,
2003
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