If the Truth Be Told : Why the silencing of even a party paper, like Pravda, is a mistake

No government should have the power to muzzle a newspaper or a broadcaster. Where such power exists, there is no justifying its use.

The fact that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin stifled the press, although perhaps just temporarily, was his only big mistake since he helped crush last week’s coup in the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin silenced the Communist Party newspaper Pravda--for decades the voice of the Kremlin--and five others hours after it was clear that the coup had failed.

Roughly translated, Pravda means truth in Russian, and cynics in the Soviet Union have long been happy to warn that there was no truth in Pravda. That may be a reason not to buy a newspaper, but it is no reason to deny people the right to decide for themselves.

And it is the right to choose, and to argue about choices, that is one of the basic strengths of democracy--toward which the Soviets are feeling their way in the wake of one of the century’s most monumental events.

Censorship doesn’t belong in the new, open Soviet Union. One of the first things the Committee for the State of Emergency did after it moved to seize the Soviet government was to try to shut down the unfriendly press. If such a move was no good then, it’s no good now.

That’s a lesson learned long ago. When Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in the United States in the early 1800s, he discovered that precious link between a free press and democracy. Coming from a society whose press was constrained, he at first found the American press too brash, too shrill and too adversarial for his taste and wrote that he had severe doubts about the wisdom of the First Amendment guarantees of free press.

He left persuaded--after trying and failing to draw an acceptable line somewhere between total freedom and censorship--that the First Amendment was essential to a healthy democracy.

Yeltsin owes much of his victory to reporters who refused to hide what was happening. He must learn that this approach to news is as important in a peaceful democracy as it was in turmoil.