Posts Tagged ‘free speech’

The “All Access” Pass

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Cartoon

Cartoon from "Under the Jacaranda Tree"

According to the results of a recent survey by BBC World Service, 4 out 5 adults around the world believe that having access to the Internet is a “fundamental right.” I completely agree. I’ve written before about the Internet as a public utility, and I consider equal access one of the cornerstones to a modern world where opportunities and resources are spread out for the masses rather than coveted by a few. However, when people talk about Internet access, they can be talking about (at least) two different things. “Access” can refer to the ability to go online, in a strictly technical context, or it can be related to censorship. The technical side of Internet access is doable–it is a tall order, but doable. For example, satellite technology has allowed countries lacking land telephone lines to move on to cell phones. But censorship is an entirely different issue, and one which is key to the question of access. After all, if someone can only view websites which are in line with one agenda, can they really be said to have access? If having access, in all senses of the word, is a “fundamental right,” shouldn’t all people worldwide have the unfettered chance to view whatever they want online?

Like free speech in general, this can be a fuzzy area. I think most of us can agree that child pornography and bomb-making instructions do not really need to be available, but in principle those websites should be allowed to operate freely. As always, drawing the line is hard. Here in the US, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently reaffirmed the American government’s commitment to protecting free speech online around the world. However, both the United States and, by way of another example in the Western Francehave taken steps towards a porn-free Internet. So who are we to condemn other countries for taking action against items which fall under their definition of obscene? (For a quick rundown of other instances of ‘net censorship around the world, see this 2002 articleby Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute.)

When it comes to global policy, one might turn to the United Nations for guidance. Secretary Clinton mentioned in her speech that Internet freedoms are included in a resolution to the UN Human Rights Council. However, the United Nations track record regarding foreign policy and Internet censorship is no clearer than the United States. In November of 2009, the UN held a forum on Internet governance in Egypt, but UN officials demanded that an anti-censorship group remove a poster shaming China for its firewalls–effectively censoring their own anti-censorship conference. In January of 2009, a resolution crafted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference was presented to the UN General Assembly, which asked all other UN member nations to ban the “defamation” of religion (though it was opposed by many nations, it was ultimately adopted). A resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in April of 2008 was criticized by other human rights groups for its perceived emphasis on limiting free speech rather than protecting it.

Throughout the world, what one person thinks is freedom might be someone else’s idea of destruction. Bringing Internet access to more homes and communities around the world is a good thing, but with that, we will eventually have to figure out how we can get along and share a planet of readily-accessible resources and ideas. Until and unless this is addressed, we’re not living with true Internet access.

–Emily Long

This entry can also be found on IFC’s Make Media Matter blog, where I am a regular contributor.

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Gaslight: November in Media History

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Tina Fey and Seth Myers picket at Rockefeller Center.

Tina Fey and Seth Myers picket at Rockefeller Center.

November 5, 2007 marked the first day of a strike by the Writers Guild of America-West and WGA-East which lasted one hundred days. The main issue was the compensation received by writers, which was meager when compared with large studio profits, and also how writers were to be compensated for reality and online content. The WGA strike is significant for many reasons: It was a clear turning point in the business of digital media, cost Hollywood billions of dollars, and drew attention to the plight of thousands of people working behind the scenes of media which most of us take for granted as being free (not to mention illegally downloadable). On February 26, 2008, a new contract was ratified by the union, and writers went back to work with new rights and protections. However, that contract is up in 2011, and a lot can happen between now and then in the world of media and entertainment. The issue will linger as long as we have an Internet, but the WGA strike  represented the arguably first big shot across the bow of the online media business.

On November 13, 1969, United States Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, accusing the nation’s television networks of using bias and distortion in their reporting. He further urged viewers to “register their complaints on bias through mail to the networks and phone calls to local stations.” Agnew lamented that the media was dictated by a small group of men, informing the opinions of an estimated 40 millions Americans who watched the nightly news, and who had recently seen several newsmen harshly critique President Nixon’s November 3 speech on Vietnam minutes after it was delivered. Forty years later, this event is especially significant amid the conflict between Barack Obama’s White House and Roger Ailes’ Fox News, with White House Communications Director Anita Dunn saying that the Administration is “not going to legitimize them as a news organization.” Then, as now, the White House was trying to define the meaning and purpose of news, and possibly reign in an independent and free press. In both cases, it seems, the Presidents might have been wishing that Americans were just a little more news literate.

The Hollywood Ten with their lawyers

The Hollywood Ten with their lawyers

November 25, 1947: A group of ten screenwriters and directors, known collectively as “The Hollywood Ten” are fired from their jobs in the first systemic Hollywood blacklist. Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo were all held in contempt of court one day prior for refusing to testify before the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC). Ultimately, 41 artists were called to testify, and over 320 people were eventually added to the blacklist that kept them from working in Hollywood. HUAC feared that these artists were  Communists, imbuing their work with propaganda designed to recruit members to the Communist Party. Those who refused to “name names” of anyone they knew who might be a Communist were added to the list, leaving many prominent voices silent, livelihoods destroyed and promising careers cut short. Those who did testify were despised by many of Hollywood’s elite, including Elia Kazan, who, when honored with the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, was met with protest; many Oscar attendees refused to stand when he took the podium to accept the award. The blacklisting of the Hollywood 10 was a pivotal moment in American cinematic history, both acknowledging and condemning the power of film.

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The New York Post’s backhanded apology

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Most New Yorkers are aware by now of the cartoon by Sean Delonas in the New York Post, which unites the news of President Obama’s stimulus bill with the story of Travis the pet chimp, who was shot dead earlier this week after attacking his owner’s friend. The cartoon is of two officers standing over a dead monkey, rifle smoking from the shot, and one says, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The response from some members of the American public has been so strong that last night, the paper issued an apology on its website which was also published in this morning’s edition.

However, using class relationship-therapy speak, the apology amounts to little more than a statement saying, “I’m sorry you were hurt.” In no way do the editors take responsibility for the fact that they made a gross oversight by not anticipating the reaction and offense that the cartoon would elicit from all the Americans who celebrate the destruction of a significant racial barrier. With that in mind, I don’t think the Post’s editors are stupid. Insensitive, yes, but also cunning. They got us to turn our heads in their direction. I believe in free speech, and while the cartoon infuriated me, they do have a right to print it–what really got to me was the so-called “apology,” which feels more to me like a slap in the face with their inclusion of the below statement:

“However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.”

The accusation that those who spoke out against the cartoon are vengeful opportunists is nothing short of petty and childish. Not knowing the inner thoughts and secrets of every public figure who issued a statement, I can’t say for sure that their response had nothing to do with a grudge against the paper, but this is neither the time nor place for the paper to make that claim. If just one person, or even a few, were leading a crusade against the Post as a result of this column, that would be one thing, but the feeling I get from people I speak with about this is one of genuine disgust. Political cartoons are often meant to rile, and I’m a huge fan of clever satire that exposes something new (see: Thomas Nast). But there’s nothing clever about Delonas’ cartoon. There’s nothing witty. He absolutely has a right to print it. But, the New York Post should understand that we are no longer grade schoolers fighting on the playground, and take seriously the response to their work.

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Free Speech for Students on the Internet: Part II

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

First, Justin Layshock was suspended after taking to MySpace and making a fake profile for his high school principal. Layshock’s family successfully sued the school district after the court ruled that his First Amendment rights had been violated; in effect, designating the Internet as a space where speech, even by students, is protected.

Now, a Florida student by the name of Katherine Evans is facing a similar predicament. Evans was suspended from her school for an alleged crime of cyberbullying after posting a rant about her English teacher, Sarah Phelps, on Facebook. But while Evans’ case is similar to Layshock’s, in many ways, it is even more outrageous.

According to The New York Times, Evans’ rant was triggered by her frustrations with Phelps for “ignoring her pleas for help with assignments and a brusque reproach when she missed class to attend a school blood drive.” She posted a short message on Facebook—a little heavy-handed but no worse than a complaint aired over lunch with some friends:

To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms. Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred.

The response was minimal, and mixed; some students agreed with Evans, some defended Phelps. Evans removed the post after a few days, only to be notified two months later of her suspension. Now she is suing the school district to remove the offense removed from her record.

This whole episode reminds me of Gossip Girl, the CW’s hit show all about a group of ridiculously good-looking high schoolers at an elite Manhattan private school. The show is not only arguably one of the best teen dramas to ever grace our airwaves, but it also deals pretty explicitly with the issue of cyberbullying—after all, the show’s titular character is the author of a snarky blog that chronicles the lives of our favorite Upper East Siders, which fuels much of the show’s drama.

Case in point, the most recent story arch: a naive young teacher defies Blair Waldorf, a rich, powerful, and villainous brunette,by giving her poor marks on her English paper. Enraged by the grade, Blair declares war on Ms. Carr and sends a tip to Gossip Girl, accusing Ms. Carr of having an inappropriate relationship with a student (who also happens to be Blair’s best friend’s boyfriend, but that’s not really relevant here). After being turned in by one of her friends, Blair is expelled, her early admission at Yale revoked.

The point here is this: Blair falsely accused her teacher of something illegal with the intention of getting her fired. By all accounts, that qualifies as slander, whether she is saying it in a crowded lunchroom, printing it in a newspaper, or, yes, even writing it on a blog on the Internet. But Evans’ Facebook post made no allegations against Phelps, nor was her impetus for the rant malicious. In fact, it was completely reasonable. As a student, Evans felt neglected by her teacher and had every right to air her grievances. Expressing “feelings of hatred” was hyperbole at best, and tasteless at worst, but in either case, it certainly did not violate the school’s rules “against threats of physical violence, verbal threats, nonverbal assaults and disruption of the school’s function” that assistant director of the school district Pamela Brown noted in her interview with the NYT. What happened here wasn’t an incident of cyberbullying—it was hardly an incident of bullying at all.

The case here seems simple to me: Katherine Evans never should have been suspended. Add to that the fact that she’s only suing for a clean record and attorney’s fees—no monetary compensation—and the answer is clear. It doesn’t take Gossip Girl to solve this mystery.

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Will the Internet limit free speech for students?

Monday, December 15th, 2008

How far should freedom of speech and the press extend, anyway? It’s a question that keeps coming up in this country whenever we develop new ways to communicate.

The First Amendment to our Constitution was written when speech and print were the predominant means available for political and social discourse. But as each new communication technology–first broadcasting and now the Internet and other digital means–has developed, we take another look at what freedom of speech and the press ought to mean when a new environment for discourse is created. Whose rights should be curbed, and under what circumstances? Underpinning these new inquiries is a fear of the social implications of the new communication technology/environment,especially where young people are concerned. How can we control them?

The Philadelphia Inquirer just reported that the Hermitage School District in western Pennsylvania is appealing a judge’s decision that a high school student had not violated a school’s civility code by things he posted in a MySpace profile. The profile, first posted in 2006, was bogus. It was a parody profile that the student, Justin Layshock, made up, attaching his high school principal’s name and image. The student was making fun of his principal, and was, according to the attorney representing the district, being vulgar about it, thus violating the school’s civility code.

The school district wrought heavy discipline on Justin who was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in a suit Justin’s parents brought against the school district. That judge ruled in favor of the student, and now the decision is under appeal in a Federal Appeals Court in Philadelphia.

Without going into all of the details here, it seems the Appeals Court will uphold the first judge’s ruling. What I really mean to say is, if I were a judge hearing the appeal, I’d uphold the decision. Why? Because the comments were made on MySpace and, as the first judge declared, that’s not in school, and it’s out of the jurisdiction of school.

Now, there could possibly be a libel case in there, if the principal could sufficiently prove malice, irreparable harm to his reputation, and a host of other things, but this was a case about a student saying something kind of nasty about a school authority figure—which happens all the time. Except this time it was on a social networking site where young people post lots of things that they used to just say to each other face to face or on the telephone. And it wasn’t posted on a school computer, using a school’s server. It was away from school, on his grandmother’s computer, no less.

Understandably, the whole incident is upsetting to the principal and other school figures, and probably lots of other people. But the big issue here is preserving freedom of speech. Even if it’s not pleasant speech, and even if it’s speech by a minor who probably deserves some kind of reprimand.

Maybe the reprimand could come by way of giving this young person—and all young people—a better understanding of the ramifications of speech on the Internet, particularly via social networking sites. Who wants to go through all of this kind of legal wrangling, anyway?

Instead of fearing this medium, these social networking sites, it’s best to take a breath, accept that we, all of us who use the Internet for a host of things everyday, are part of a new communication environment. And it’s challenging us while it’s changing us. That’s what environments do. We’re being shaped and it’s sometimes frightening, and we want to protect young people from this thing we don’t understand.

It’s best to offer measured guidance about wise uses of social networking sites—maybe uses that aren’t depraved. But let’s not censor anyone anew just because of the new means of communicating. And let’s listen to those—many of them students–who use the sites without fear. We can probably learn a lot from each other.

–Katherine Fry, Ph.D., LAMP Education Director

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A Blogger Registry in Europe?

Monday, July 21st, 2008

In an excellently written article on the PBS MediaShift blog, author Jennifer Woodard Maderazo takes on a plan suggested by Estonion EU Parliament member Marianne Mikko.  She suggests that, in the interest of preserving reliability and quality, all bloggers register themselves and identify their credibility, relationships, potential personal interests, all the while claiming that “we do not need to know the exact identity of the bloggers.”

I’ll spare you a recap of the entire article, but let’s think about this concept for a second, and what might happen if it were to be instituted.  It would be nearly impossible to enforce this law, since as they say, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.  Credentials and identities can be easily faked, as with the fake Steve Jobs blog.  Libel and copyright lawsuits follow, of course, and free speech is ultimately somewhat inhibited as a result, but in the end the efforts by a government body to regulate who can post what on the Internet is nothing more than a silly attempt at policing our intelligence.

It is up to us, the people who read blogs and otherwise surf the Web for content, to question the reliability of what we find.  When you read a scholarly report, it is expected  and suggested that you look at the citations and assess the source for yourself.  When writing a paper of your own, you’re expected to assess your own sources.  Why should it be any different for something you find on the Internet?

Regulation of the Web is a tricky topic.  A conversation about free speech online easily turns to online child pornography and material that seems designed with malicious intent, such as instructions for how to make a bomb.  (For the curious, see the results of a Google search for “free speech online” which results in over 10 million hits, and you can join the debate.)  In the end, however, it is and always should be our responsibility to ask questions about the things we see and read both on the Internet and in the real world.  It’s up to us to determine reliability and perform our own “due diligence” before accepting anything as gospel.  Perhaps the efforts of Mikko and the EU Parliament would be better spent by investing in media literacy and the critical thinking skills that go with it.

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The Mouse is Mightier than the Sword

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

In his contributing article in the Opinion section of today’s New York Times, Daniel Kimmage calls for the use of a different kind of weapon in the war on terror: Web 2.0.  While researching a report for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty which was released in March 2008 on jihadist media, Kimmage discovered that Al Qaeda’s grasp of user-generated web content is tentative at best.  He suggests that we do whatever we can to encourage increased Internet freedoms in areas targeted by the terrorist group, saying, ”There is a simple lesson here: unfettered access to a free Internet is not merely a goal to which we should aspire on principle, but also a very practical means of countering Al Qaeda. As users increasingly make themselves heard, the ensuing chaos will not be to everyone’s liking, but it may shake the online edifice of Al Qaeda’s totalitarian ideology.”

A Google search for “underground press” “iraq” yields little, but by no means does that indicate it does not exist.  (Not able to speak or read Arabic, I can’t search any native languages, and the search terms may also be too obvious.)  Wherever the underground press is, in whatever form, it is in our best interest for it to thrive online, and for the journalists, bloggers, vloggers and everyone else to be afforded any anonymity they desire for their safety and the safety of their families.  As they say, attention must be paid, and this applies not just to oppressed communities in the Middle East, but those in all countries. The discussion of global Internet freedom is a complex one.  It is no less complex than the issues surrounding freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.  But if we are truly in Iraq to promote democracy and freedom, we have to support a free media landscape.

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Carlin, the FCC, and Finding Our Way

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Sadly, one of our most brilliant and insightful comics has died. George Carlin, who dared to be political and outspoken in his scorn for the establishment, was also a looming media presence for most of his career. Carlin was one of those personalities who showed us where the invisible lines are drawn because, thankfully, he overstepped them routinely. Cultures need such characters to not only point out their flaws, but also to help induce change. They make us uncomfortable for good reason.

What I remember him for, here, is the part he played in helping to establish federal broadcast policy regarding indecent speech. His famous 7 Dirty Words broadcast on WBAI radio in New York City, which led ultimately to the Supreme Court case, Pacifica v. FCC, established community standards as the yardstick to measure the extent to which the federal government can sanction broadcast indecency, particularly during periods of time when children could be in the audience. Before Carlin dared to say what could not be said on TV and the radio, the FCC was able to fine stations for what it considered indecent speech, not taking into consideration what was and is acceptable in different parts of the country, and at different times during the day. It took someone to (boldly and offensively) start that conversation and bring about policy change that is still the legal blueprint used today for broadcast stations. Even though now we have content carried via cable and the Internet, both of which are outside the strict confines of the FCC’s content restrictions, broadcast television and radio remains a staple for millions of Americans. When we no longer have free over-the-air broadcasting, if that day ever comes, I wonder how a counterculture curmudgeon like Carlin will be able to wake all of us up—no matter our age, income, ethnicity or digital abilities–when we’ve gotten too sleepy?

–Katherine G. Fry

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TV Show Complaints

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Judging what is offensive and what is not can be a difficult thing.  No one has the right to stop any other person from feeling uncomfortable with a comment or action, and I was reminded today of how easily it is for people to still be offended by modern television.

TVshowcomplaints.org is a portal to both submitting complaints about content on television shows, and seeing examples of complaints filed by other individuals.  A few of the complaints are bound to make you chuckle, others will make you wonder how much of the general public is aware of the television rating system.  In all seriousness, reading the complaints raises some good questions about the role of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC): Does the agency exist solely to “protect” us from profanity, or does it have any other purpose?  Where does free speech come into play?  If so many complaints are being lodged about using swear words, is the FCC doing its part to educate the public on what the rating system–or is that even the responsibility of the FCC?

Whether you’re up for a laugh, a perspective different from yours,  or just a peek into incredibly poor writing and grammar skills, be sure to check out the website.

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