A Rare Joint Appearance p.

By: David Reilly

Fugitive author Salman Rushdie and former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein address audience in Dublin sp.

FUGITIVE AUTHOR SALMAN Rushdie and former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein came together in Dublin recently in a rare and unplanned joint public appearance to slam press censorship in Britain and Ireland.
Bernstein, the scheduled keynote speaker for a conference on censorship, secrecy and democracy at Trinity College, was joined by the author of The Satanic Verses when Rushdie made a string of public appearances in Ireland.
The two spoke out against press censorship and renewed attacks on free speech just days after the publication of the lusty Camillagate tapes involving Prince Charles.
The release of the tapes in Britain's tabloid press brought renewed calls for the muzzling of Fleet Street and coincided with the announcement by the British government of planned legislation to impose even more stringent limits on the press there.
This Rushdie-Bernstein appearance preceded by days Ireland's annual renewal of an order prohibiting the broadcast of radio or television interviews with banned political groups. Additionally, in December, the country had banned Madonna's new book, Sex.
"The idea that in the end of the 20th century we must convene in the land of Swift and Blake and Joyce to consider these issues is a terrible indictment," Bernstein said in addressing the audience of nearly 800 people attending the first night of the Let in the Light Conference.
Rushdie, who describes himself as an absolutist on free speech issues, said the present calls for more limits on expression were part of an alarming but growing trend.
They are less violent, but still dangerous echoes of the threat to speech that writers in Third World and fundamentalist countries are all too familiar with.
Rushdie has lived in hiding since 1989 when the late Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a death sentence on him for The Satanic Verses. In his speech to the conference, he recounted anecdotes from his own experiences with censorship in India, Pakistan and the ultimate threat from Iran.
"Iran has been killing its writers all the time," Rushdie said, "but they think that's what you do to writers. It confuses them that people think otherwise."
After living through his four-year ordeal and coming of age as a writer in societies that endorse censorship, Rushdie said it is depressing to listen to Westerners argue that giving up a little of their freedom can be acceptable.
"People who live in countries where there is freedom of the press take this for granted," said Rushdie, who is living with a $2 million price on his head. "And when you allow limits on this, you think you are giving away 1% of your freedom and you think you still have 99% left, but it's amazing how quickly you lose that other 99%."
Rushdie says as difficult and sometimes painful as free speech can be, it is necessary for any society to be truly free.
"The point of freedom of speech is to allow uncivilized discourse," the Indian-born writer said. "It's easy to agree that I would say that, wouldn't I? But it's even hard for me sometimes to do with people calling for my death."
Attacks from fundamentalists and conservatives are quite obvious assaults on free speech, Rushdie said, but just as insidious are liberal attempts to limit speech that is not politically correct.
Blasphemy, he said, can take many forms but, in every sense, it should be allowed. To forbid it is to herald a new inquisition and an end to rational thought.
"It becomes like the witch hysteria of the 17th century and anyone can then become a victim if someone points at them and says they're a witch," Rushdie said. "That's what's happening again, that's what's happening to me. Somebody pointed across the world and said, 'Witch.'
"So to a European audience, I would say remember your history," he added, "and remember that the attention on The Satanic Verses is only one small piece of a much larger fight in which one moment of darkness will not make us blind."
While similarly decrying governmental and national attacks on free speech, Bernstein suggested that much of the danger to the press comes from within.
The now gray-haired free-lance writer, who was portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in All the President's Men, said journalism today is losing sight of its guiding ideal "to publish the best obtainable version of the truth."
Instead, Bernstein said, journalism is being turned into "sleazoid infotainment. The press is becoming a celebrity and sensation and scandal machine that's relegating truth and real reporting to an anachronism.
"And this is an even greater threat to freedom than an official secrets act," Bernstein continued. "It's the role of writers, journalists, scholars to challenge people, not merely amuse them."
In forgetting this, the profession has come to reflect what Bernstein called "the idiot culture" permeating society.
The publication of Prince Charles' love tapes, and the British press's subsequent defense of their release, was a triumph of this idiot culture, Bernstein said.
"The hypocrisy of the British press this week is a thing to behold," he said. "Their editorials suggest that the world was saved because the royals' telephone conversations were published, but if one-one-hundredth of the investigative assignments into the private lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales were assigned to real reporting, Britain would be a much better place."
Bernstein quickly added that, despite this failing, the British government's calls for statutory control of the press were an even worse evil.
"Is such censorship necessary or right?" he asked. "Of course not, but with the freedom of information that empowers us, we don't all have to become porn publishers."