Category: First Amendment

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

A Time To Celebrate Free Speech

National Freedom of Speech Week – NFSW for short – is upon us.  This week of Oct. 20-26, 2008, marks the fourth year in which freedom of speech has been remembered with a commemorative  week of its own. 

When The Media Institute launched NFSW in 2005, we knew that the success of the week would depend on the participation of many organizations that would take the free-speech message to their constituents.  In that first year we partnered with the NAB Education Foundation and four other groups.

NABEF is still a stalwart, and those four groups have grown to many times that number.  Broadcasting, cable, newspapers, movies, electronics – virtually all of the major media platforms are represented this year in addition to educational institutions and a variety of other organizations.  That has always been the point – to make NFSW an open-ended collaboration rather than a proprietary event.

What I find exciting about NFSW’s evolution is the way in which a growing number of groups are taking the First Amendment message to young people and involving them in creative  and interactive ways. 

For example: NABEF is sponsoring a competition for college students, inviting them to produce public service announcements on free speech.  The Radio and Television News Directors Foundation is conducting a similar competition for high school and middle school students.  The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression is sponsoring a poetry and songwriting contest on free-speech themes.  And the National Communication Association is encouraging the members of its college chapters to publicize and celebrate the week on their campuses.  (See the NFSW website, www.freespeechweek.org, for more details.)

It’s a well-worn cliche that today’s youth are the future of our country.  A fact far less widely touted is that they’re also the future of the First Amendment and our precious freedoms of speech and press.  But we need to do a better job of making our young people aware of these freedoms.  The activities above are good starts, and these groups are to be commended.
   
Ultimately the success of National Freedom of Speech Week will be secured when Americans in general and young people in particular demonstrate a heightened awareness of the importance of free speech and free press – and are willing to stand up for those freedoms even if means protecting speech that is unpopular or unpalatable.  

Even as we pause to celebrate freedom of speech this week, let’s be mindful that we still have a long way to go.

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

Sheer Lunacy: Taxing the Technologies of Freedom

Imagine that someone came up with an idea to solve the “problem” of information overload (a.k.a. “too much information”) by levying a tax on the technologies that have sparked our information explosion.  Making it too expensive for many people to blog or otherwise send and receive information through digital and Internet-based technologies would not only reduce a lot of superfluous, self-indulgent electronic clutter, but would reverse the fragmentation of opinion threatening our democracy, the theory would go.

Well, someone has come up with just such a scheme.  An environmental attorney named Dusty Horwitt published his incredibly outlandish idea in the Aug. 24 Outlook section of the Washington Post.  (“If Everyone’s Talking, Who Will Listen?”)  He proposes a “progressive energy tax” that would “make the technologies that overproduce information more expensive and less widespread.”

Anyone who has the faintest sensibility about the free flow of information must find this notion not only preposterous, but repulsive.

Forget, for a minute, that such a scheme would be utterly unworkable.  (How, for instance, would the government tax the electricity going into your computer differently than the electricity keeping the beer in your refrigerator cold?)  And we’ll leave it to our economist friends like Harold Furchtgott-Roth to point out the fatal flaws from an economic standpoint.

From a First Amendment perspective, Mr. Horwitt’s proposal is simply horrendous.  Restricting the means of disseminating information is tantamount to restricting information itself.  And information is speech, almost all of which is protected from government interference by the First Amendment. 

It is freedom of speech, and the free flow of information, that distinguishes the United States from China, totalitarian regimes, and most third-world countries.  Restricting the availability of information is a totalitarian tactic that is the antithesis of democracy, not something undertaken in support of it, as Mr. Horwitt alleges. 

Under Mr. Horwitt’s scheme, who would decide how much information was enough? Perhaps we would need a Ministry of Information to make those decisions.  And if the quantity of information were regulated, would the regulation of content be far behind?

In an earlier age, maybe Mr. Horwitt would have favored a stiff tax on printing presses and newsprint.  It’s no coincidence that the Founding Fathers created the First Amendment, because taxing the means of producing speech was a form of government coercion they found utterly repugnant. 

And perhaps it’s no coincidence that Mr. Horwitt never mentions the First Amendment or acknowledges any constitutional concerns about his proposal.  I don’t see how his scheme could possibly pass constitutional muster under the Supreme Court’s O’Brien test, for instance.  Taxing speech isn’t the same as taxing cigarettes or gasoline.

The technologies that Mr. Horwitt would like to tax into oblivion, or at least into submission, are the latest iteration of what Ithiel de Sola Pool famously called the “Technologies of Freedom.”  Give me my newspaper and my traditional radio and TV, but also give me the rollicking, raucous world of the blogosphere, satellite and Internet radio, hundreds of cable and satellite TV channels, and the incredible wealth of information available on the Web.  These are today’s “technologies of freedom” that make our democracy what it is. 

How could anyone be fearful of “too much information”?  Information is the lifeblood of democracy, and the more the better.  The idea of restricting speech by taxing the messenger is repulsive indeed.    

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

The FCC, Indecency, and the Rule of Law

Call it a victory for the rule of law.  And a victory for common sense.

On July 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned the Federal Communications Commission’s fine against CBS televisions stations for airing the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident.

As you might remember, this was the so-called “wardrobe malfunction” involving Justin Timberlake that allegedly traumatized millions of children watching the Super Bowl halftime show.  Activist groups mobilized, Congress jumped in, and the FCC swiftly cracked down on “indecency” in an abrupt departure from its decades-long policy of restraint toward “fleeting” incidents.

However, the Third Circuit concluded that the FCC had reversed its policy in a manner that was arbitrary and capricious without adequate notice to broadcasters.  In doing so, the Commission had violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the court found.  In essence, the court told the FCC that it can’t do whatever it feels like doing in response to the winds of public opinion or the grandstanding of certain politicians.  

That’s the right decision.  Yet the ruling was greeted in many quarters with reactions ranging from keen disappointment to outrage, as if the indecency crackdown were an end that should be justified by any means.  As John Eggerton reported in Broadcasting & Cable, even the FCC chairman was “surprised” and “disappointed.”  In our judicial system, however, the rule of law trumps personal feelings and public opinion – even the “public opinion” of mass e-mail campaigns orchestrated by activist groups.

So far, the Second Circuit and now the Third Circuit have rebuked the FCC for its recent approach to indecency enforcement.  In response to the Third Circuit’s decision, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin noted “the importance of the Supreme Court’s consideration of our indecency rules this fall.”  He’s right about that – and we trust the Supreme Court will be the next judicial body to get it right.
 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Problem With Google

For a company whose corporate motto is “Don’t be evil,” Google has an unfortunate capacity to look past the most obvious things.

Take, for instance, its stance in favor of “net neutrality.” Insofar as this concept is more than a slogan it’s a bad idea, and especially so as a matter of policy.  Legislation like the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, for example, invites real government regulation of the Internet as a solution to an imaginary problem.

As seen in the title of the congressional legislation, the language of net neutrality proponents, always over the top, has lately taken on a kind of goofy grandeur, with some — like Save the Internet, a coalition coordinated by Free Press — trafficking in such pap as “Net neutrality, the First Amendment of the Internet.”  (Of course it is.)

But what’s the attraction in all of this for Google?

The critics’ answer is that Google wants to ensure, whatever the cost to the future development and independence of the Internet, its own dominant, and free riding, position.

Google’s approach to the problem of copyright infringement also calls into question the company’s high-mindedness.

As charged in the case of Viacom v. YouTube,  Google is accused of flagrant violation of copyrighted material on the website of its YouTube subsidiary.  Google’s defense is that it takes down offending posts after being notified, and that this is sufficient under the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA.

But in its complaint Viacom makes a compelling case that the takedown process is an endless loop of notifications and re-postings, and that, in fact, copyright infringement is at the heart of YouTube’s business plan.

A number of observers have suggested that Viacom’s lawsuit is just an attempt to win a favorable licensing agreement, and that in the end the parties will work out some satisfactory arrangement between themselves.

Perhaps, but copyright infringement is not a crime against humanity, it’s a crime against copyright holders, and if a negotiated settlement is the result, so be it.  This said, much might be usefully clarified if the dispute goes all the way through trial.

In any case, the point is that, as with net neutrality, Google’s posture regarding copyright infringement seems to be driven more by its own interests than by any sense of a community of interests.

By the standards of those of us at The Media Institute, which is primarily a First Amendment organization, Google’s lack of any meaningful concern or action regarding freedom of speech and of the press is the most troubling aspect of the company.

We would not have this concern if Google were just a small affair, or if the legacy media were fat and sassy.  But neither is the case.  Google is a giant while newspapers, for instance, are in a fight for their very survival.

Just to establish a frame of reference, as this post is being written (midday, July 10), here are the market capitalizations of some leading media companies: Time Warner, $50B; Disney, $56B; Washington Post, $6B; Gannett, $4B; New York Times, $2B; and McClatchy, $427M. And Google’s market cap?  It is just in excess of $172B!

In other words, the market values Google more than it values Time Warner, Disney, Washington Post, New York Times, Gannett, and McClatchy put together!  In fact a lot more — 45 per cent more.

And the rub in this is that, as an historical matter, the most important players in promoting and defending the First Amendment have been Hollywood and newspapers.  Yet these are two industries much beleaguered by the Internet, of which Google is the leader.

Against this background one might expect a company determined not to be evil to mount a major effort, if not in assistance to the old media, then in lending a hand in promotion of the First Amendment. Sorry to say, Google’s record in this regard is a blank slate.

It’s in the nature of the way the world works that one can “be evil” in more than one way.  One can do it by acts of commission, and one can do it by acts of omission.  Judging by the examples above, Google does it both ways.

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

Those “Outlaw” Television Networks?

George Carlin’s death on June 22 came only days before the 30th anniversary of what has become his legacy in Washington policy circles: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Pacifica decision.

That ruling centered on Carlin’s comedy bit "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" (commonly known as the “Seven Dirty Words” routine), and guided the FCC’s enforcement of so-called “indecent” broadcast content for the next 30 years.

The Parents Television Council took the opportunity of Pacifica’s anniversary July 3 to hammer the networks for daring to challenge the FCC’s indecency-enforcement regime.  “The broadcast medium remains uniquely pervasive," said PTC President Tim Winter.  “It’s time for the broadcast networks to obey the law instead of undermining it.”

The networks have indeed challenged a number of FCC indecency findings in recent years, reaching U.S. Courts of Appeal in the Second and Third circuits, and now the Supreme Court.

But the challenges have revolved, for the most part, around how the FCC defines and then goes about enforcing its indecency standards (now with a new emphasis on profanity as well) – rather than on the underlying law. 

The question has generally been whether the FCC’s interpretation of the law is valid, and whether the FCC is applying that interpretation in a way that is not arbitrary and capricious.  The networks have every right to challenge the FCC’s interpretation and actions, as they are presently doing.  That does not make the networks lawbreakers, as Mr. Winter disingenuously implies. 

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

The Threat to Free Speech Is Just Across the Border

Note to American journalists: Step across the border into Canada and you will give up every vestige of your right to free speech and free press. If you write a piece that someone finds offensive or that merely hurts his feelings, you may end up facing trial before one of Canada’s “human rights” tribunals that collectively boast a conviction rate in the range of 100%.

Hard to believe?   Just ask Mark Steyn, widely regarded as one of Canada’s finest journalists.  He recently went on trial before one of these kangaroo courts in British Columbia because a group called the Canadian Islamic Congress didn’t like a book excerpt of his that appeared as an article in Maclean’s magazine. 

The Islamic group claimed that the excerpt from Steyn’s book America Alone engaged in “spreading hatred against Muslims” – despite praise from other journalists such as Rich Lowry, who calls the piece “a sparkling model of the polemical art” and lauds its “profound social analysis.”

No matter.  Before the national Canadian Human Rights Commission and its provincial counterparts, truth is no defense.  And there is no requirement to prove harm.  All you have to do is disagree with the writer’s point of view.  Forget freedom of speech.  Lowry quotes one of the national commission’s principal investigators as saying: “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.”

It is incomprehensible to think that freedom of speech and press have been so thoroughly brutalized within the borders of our northern neighbor.  Equally unbelievable, however, is the fact that the plight of Mark Steyn has been greeted with such a stunning and nearly universal silence by U.S. media.  With a handful of exceptions like Lowry, American journalists have completely ignored this travesty to the north. 

It’s true that Steyn and Lowry both are conservatives – Lowry is editor of National Review  – but I don’t want to say the deafening silence is driven by ideology.  (One of the few other Americans to break the silence, for example, is New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, writing in the International Herald Tribune.)  I think it’s a matter of journalistic indifference to something that’s not happening here.

Yes, it’s a Canadian matter.  But threats to free speech and free press transcend borders.  Especially when the threat is this serious, and the border this close.  That makes it our matter, too. 

Final note to American journalists:  WAKE UP!!

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The (Il)liberal Critics, Part II

Unless you hang in the fever swamps of the hard Left, you’re probably not aware that the group calling itself Free Press hosted last weekend the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform.  Like the name of the host organization,  “media reform” is more a euphemism than a description of the group’s real agenda.  Mostly, what they’re interested in is using government to yoke the media — broadcasting in particular — to their ideology.

And what an ideology it is!  The president and founder of Free Press is one Robert McChesney, a professor of “communications” at the University of Illinois.  And he writes books. His latest, published by the book-publishing arm of what Wikipedia calls “an independent Marxist journal” (Monthly Review, of which McChesney was co-editor from 2000 to 2004), is titled The Political Economy of Media (PEM).

I recently sprang for the purchase of PEM because I saw that the good professor had written a chapter about the First Amendment.  Titled “The New Theology of the First Amendment: Class Privilege Over Democracy,” this chapter reveals, in remarkably transparent language, how real is the threat to the First Amendment from the Left.

But judge for yourself.  Herewith, some of McChesney’s observations on the subject, in a chapter that deals primarily with his unhappiness with the ACLU for its advocacy of what he characterizes as “extensions” of the First Amendment:

"In the hands of the wealthy, the advertisers and the corporate media, the newfangled First Amendment takes on an almost Orwellian caste.  It defends the right of the wealthy few to effectively control our electoral system, thereby taking the risk out of democracy for the rich, and making a farce of it for most everyone else.  These semi-monopolistic corporations that brandish the constitution as their personal property eschew any public service obligations, and claim that public efforts to demand them violate their First Amendment rights, which in their view means their unimpeded ability to maximize profit regardless of the social consequences….

"The job for progressives and activists, then, is to raise holy hell about our corrupt electoral system and our bogus corporate media system, and make it a key target of a social movement that takes direct aim at social inequality and class privilege….  And in the process of doing so we need to pressure the ACLU to return to its roots as a force for justice and democracy, or expose it as a liberal fig leaf for plutocracy."
 
PEM features more of the same — lots more — but you get the idea. The class struggle, the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie, the whole nine yards.  So the question you may be asking is why?  Why even mention Free Press or Robert McChesney? It’s not, after all, as though views such as his, or missions like that of Free Press, hoary and ludicrous though they are, are all that rare among academics in the liberal arts, or among left-wing activist organizations.

Sorry to say, the explanation is that Free Press is gathering strength among policymakers and regulators, many of whom (one hopes) are unaware of the group’s ideological underpinnings.  This, because the mainstream press have told us virtually nothing about the organization.  No I-teams or investigative reporters; no “following the money trail” here.  Though the group was only formed in 2002, it is these days accorded a matter-of-fact acceptance by mainstream journalists that is breathtaking.

Though Free Press is said to be the beneficiary of substantial funding from George Soros, the billionaire currency speculator and serial hypocrite, you can’t prove it by anything either party has divulged.  The only clue, shown in an IRS filing, is that the Soros-funded Open Society Institute is listed as a contributor.

Through its lobbying arm, the Free Press Action Fund, the group worked the halls of Congress recently in an ongoing campaign to undo the modest liberalization of media ownership rules recently enacted by the FCC.  And just last weekend, two FCC Commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, were featured speakers at the above-mentioned National Conference for Media Reform.

If, as appears to be the case, liberalism in the U.S. is on the rise, it’s going to be interesting, and perhaps of some moment, to see how, and in what ways, liberals deal with hard Left activists like the Free Press crowd.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The (Il)liberal Critics

One of the most underreported stories in the country today is the extent to which media bashing–formerly the almost exclusive preserve of conservatives–is these days being waged by liberals and leftists.

From blogs like DailyKos and the Huffington Post, filled to the gunwales with attacks on “corporate media,” to “media reform” groups like Free Press, Media Matters for America, and the Orwellianesque  FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), liberal activists are sounding and acting more and more illiberal. Indeed, they sound and act like conservatives.

Hardly a day goes by that at least one of them fails to fault the mainstream media for their coverage, or non-coverage, of some issue in which they have an ideological investment. And when that’s not enough they don’t hesitate to call on policymakers for laws or regulations they think would help promote their political views.

In this and in other ways, the Left’s assault on the media is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Right. The conservative Parents Television Council petitions the FCC for sanctions on TV indecency; the left-leaning Free Press petitions the FCC to stop media consolidation. Media Matters purports to expose “conservative misinformation” in the  media; the Media Research Center “leads in documenting, exposing, and neutralizing liberal media bias.”

Both sides incorporate “content analysis” as a research tool, and both organize letter-writing campaigns aimed at Congress and the FCC.

But it’s the rise of liberal media bashing that is the newer and more worrisome thing, because liberals have a past history of tolerance for free speech.

The transparent lie among all organized media bashers is that their attacks are objective and selfless. They are not. Ideologues see the media as a kind of blackboard on which to write and spin their political opinions. This, and nothing else. Not fairness. Or accuracy. Or a free press.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Cross Ownership: That ’70s Show in the Senate

There they go again. No, not the FCC.  This time it’s the U.S. Senate, still worried after all these years that the same company might own a newspaper and a TV station in the same market.  The Senate recently passed Senate Joint Resolution 28, which cancels a very modest attempt by the FCC to relax the newspaper-broadcast cross ownership rule in the nation’s top 20 media markets.

In effect, the Senate is saying that ownership of newspapers and TV stations should be restricted just as it was in 1975 when the rule was adopted – when viewers in big cities were lucky to get six over-the-air channels, and “cable” was still the “community antenna” in rural areas.

The effort to relax or even eliminate the cross ownership ban has gone on for years, even as the FCC was repealing virtually all of its other ’70s-era ownership restrictions.  The FCC’s action on Dec. 18 wasn’t much, but it was still too much for a Senate that’s apparently afraid to move out of the 1970s.

John F. Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, summed it up when he said: “It is incomprehensible that Congress would shackle local newspapers – and only newspapers – with a ban that fits the eight-track era, but not the iPod world we live in.”

There is no logical reason for the Senate to act this way.  Could the reason be political?  Congress and the FCC are routinely barraged with mass e-mails orchestrated by various interest groups.  The magnitude of these mailings can appear far greater to policymakers than it really is.  Think of the man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz."

A popular policy target of such groups has been “media consolidation,” always portrayed as a looming evil.  But in today’s economic environment, multiple ownership of media outlets has become an economic necessity – a matter of survival. 

Critics fear that “consolidation” will result in fewer voices and viewpoints reaching the public.  The real danger, however, is that media voices will be lost as struggling newspapers and broadcast outlets are forced out of business, suffocated by antiquated rules that prevent them from taking advantage of the economies of scale that come with multiple ownership.

It will be ironic indeed if the anti-consolidation forces triumph, leaving us with less rather than more media diversity.  The politically timid Senate is playing right into the critics’ hands.  It’s time for our solons to pitch their eight-tracks and reach for an iPod. 

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

Where Are the First Amendment Champions?

First Amendment advocates must acknowledge a stark reality:  Too many players in the new generation of digital media either do not understand the First Amendment, or think the First Amendment is irrelevant to their piece of the digital action, or both.    
   
This is a dangerous situation because these digital gurus are the future of America’s media.  Are they eager to uphold constitutional principles like freedom of speech?  No.  Their interests revolve around technological innovation, software and hardware applications, content availability, distribution platforms, consumer acceptance, cost per unit … business considerations wherein technology and the marketplace trump policy concerns.  What does this bode for the future of free speech and free press as we know it?
   
Right now, the equipment manufacturers appear to be the standard bearers for the First Amendment rights of the new media.  Their Washington reps at the Consumer Electronics Association aren’t afraid to invoke free-speech arguments in policy circles.  But even within this industry, and certainly among the new media generally, we have yet to see emerge an entrepreneur or company head willing to lead the First Amendment fight in the way that William Paley championed freedom of speech in an earlier era.
   
We need a new generation of First Amendment champions.  They must, of necessity, be recruited widely from the ranks of the new media.  Before they can be champions, however, they must be educated about the First Amendment.  They must realize that the First Amendment will prove utterly and crucially relevant to all manner of digital media in coming years.  And they must be willing to embrace our cherished constitutional guarantee of free speech and free press as their unqualified ally.