IMGpapers 1968–75

Newspapers of the International Marxist Group and its forerunners, 1968–75

Nationalise the media

Red Weekly No. 105, 12 June 1975 · p. 6 of the scan · 321 words

The scan: rw-no105-jun-12-1975.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 1-2 of 5; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 6 of the scan

agencies.

an entire economic plan.

basis of a national re-allocation of the existing facilities. and put democracy on their side.

movement on a difficult question.

That is why the struggle of the Republica workers could have fitted in so well with the general interests of the Portuguese working class. Thus we, as revolutionary communists, demand first of all the immediate nationalisation without compensation of the paper-mills, the printing works and manufacturers of printing materials, the radio and TV networks, and the news By itself that wouldn't resolve the problem of a critical and democratic information service. But it is a necessary pre-condition if the workers' and cultural organisations, the different local or labour groupings, are to have access to the means of communication to exchange their experiences and proposals; if they are to have at their disposal the necessary means to conduct the great collective debate which will be required for any democratic elaboration of To nationalise the means of communication means only to remove them from the control of private interests. It does not mean State control of all information. This or that organisation, this or that union, this or that university or cultural grouping can keep its press on the In this light the workers of a printing company or a newspaper cannot set themselves up as censors in the name of the whole working class, of which they are only a small fraction. Workers' control over the organs of information cannot justify the right of censorship, but only the right of counter-information. Thus instead of blocking publication or cutting out articles, the workers of the Republica co-ordinating commission should have demanded the simultaneous publication of their own views whenever they thought that news coverage was biased. They should also have posed publiely the question of real freedom of information That is our point of view — a friendly criticism, a difference of positions inside the workers'

← Workers' commissionPost-electoral offensive →

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