<P> Until 1694, England had an elaborate system of licensing; the most recent was seen in the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 . No publication was allowed without the accompaniment of a government - granted license . Fifty years earlier, at a time of civil war, John Milton wrote his pamphlet Areopagitica . In this work Milton argued forcefully against this form of government censorship and parodied the idea, writing "when as debtors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but unoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailer in their title ." Although at the time it did little to halt the practice of licensing, it would be viewed later a significant milestone as one of the most eloquent defences of press freedom . </P> <P> Milton's central argument was that the individual is capable of using reason and distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad . In order to be able to exercise this ration right, the individual must have unlimited access to the ideas of his fellow men in "a free and open encounter ." From Milton's writings developed the concept of the open marketplace of ideas, the idea that when people argue against each other, the good arguments will prevail . One form of speech that was widely restricted in England was seditious libel, and laws were in place that made criticizing the government a crime . The King was above public criticism and statements critical of the government were forbidden, according to the English Court of the Star Chamber . Truth was not a defense to seditious libel because the goal was to prevent and punish all condemnation of the government . </P> <P> Locke contributed to the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, whereupon the press needed no license . Still, many libels were tried throughout the 18th century, until "the Society of the Bill of Rights" led by John Horne Tooke and John Wilkes organised a campaign to publish Parliamentary Debates . This culminated in three defeats of the Crown in the 1770 cases of Almon, of Miller and of Woodfall, who all had published one of the Letters of Junius, and the unsuccessful arrest of John Wheble in 1771 . Thereafter the Crown was much more careful in the application of libel; for example, in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre, Burdett was convicted, whereas by contrast the Junius affair was over a satire and sarcasm about the non-lethal conduct and policies of government . </P> <P> In Britain's American colonies, the first editors discovered their readers enjoyed it when they criticized the local governor; the governors discovered they could shut down the newspapers . The most dramatic confrontation came in New York in 1734, where the governor brought John Peter Zenger to trial for criminal libel after the publication of satirical attacks . The defense lawyers argued that according to English common law, truth was a valid defense against libel . The jury acquitted Zenger, who became the iconic American hero for freedom of the press . The result was an emerging tension between the media and the government . By the mid-1760s, there were 24 weekly newspapers in the 13 colonies, and the satirical attack on government became common features in American newspapers . </P>

Freedom of press is a must in a democracy