The Magistracy of the Press through the Reflection of Antiquity according to Camille Desmoulins

Résumé 0

The end of censorship in 1789 allowed the creation of the regular press, but left the question unanswered about the role journalists were to play in the society that was emerging. Camille Desmoulins responded to this matter in the first newspaper, the Révolutions de France et de Brabant, by defending the importance of a complete freedom of the press in a “free society,” as well as the legitimacy of the revolutionary combat of the “author patriot.” Desmoulins drew on Greco-Roman antiquity to define for journalists a veritable magistracy adapted to the needs of a modern republic. Censor, historian, or orator in a potentially unlimited public forum, the journalist makes it possible for the “people” to have access to politics and to the defense of their rights. The symbiosis between the journalist-magistrate and the people who attained republican “dignity” by listening to his lessons was, for Desmoulins, the condition of liberty.