What Should Be the Nature of the Law on the Press and Information?

Abstract

I would like to continue the discussion of the questions examined by M. A. Fedotov in the article "Toward Conceptualization of the Law on the Press and Information."¹ I am particularly interested in discussing the basic question: What should the projected law regulate? We can support the basic premise of the article's author: to follow the ideas of the 1917 Decree on the Press. The more we study our society's very recent past, the more obvious is the timeliness of the decree's provision establishing total freedom for the press "according to the broadest and most progressive law in this respect."² Would the "absolutization of the forms of social organization existing in practice," which was openly discussed at the January 1987 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee,³ have been possible if our legal system provided effective guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press? It is no secret that the corresponding organizational and ideological policy of the leadership of the Party and the country was not by any means carried out under conditions of total consensus of opinion regarding the official point of view. However, there was no politico-legal mechanism for securing legality in the decision-making process even though it could have specifically been used as a counterweight to the position taken by those leaders who, because of subjective factors, could not make a timely and complete assessment of the need for change⁴ —a circumstance that speaks in favor of the special role of the future law for democratizing society. In my opinion, from this, and not only from the bare formulation of the legislative agenda, it follows that a conclusion regarding the subject of the law's regulation must be reached. The approach chosen by M. A. Fedotov, therefore, must be defined somewhat more precisely.