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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > Freedom of information & freedom of speech
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely the unexamined media is not worth heeding. Sentinel Under Siege traces the evolution of the media in the United States and its capacity to examine and regulate itself, from its earliest colonial roots to the modern explosion of digital technology.Once the Bill of Rights was enacted in 1791, the press became the first and only enterprise explicitly protected by the United States Constitution. This book is concerned with the legal content given to freedom of the press by the Supreme Court, and the fitful attempts of media criticism?both intramural and external?to build a greater sense of responsibility among the practitioners.Stanley Flink, former correspondent of Life Magazine and writer/producer at NBC and CBS, is concerned less with the people's right to know than with the people's need to know. Only a competent, responsible press?whatever its means of distribution?can perform the role of watchdog over official abuse of power, business corruption, and political distortions. But the acquisition of so many newspapers, magazines, and broadcasting facilities by corporate conglomerates threatens a new kind of prior restraint on an independent press?the conflicts of interest; the power of advertising; the unspoken self-censorship of reporters and editors, print or electronic, based on the perceived predilections of their employers; and the financial interests of related companies.Flink believes that responsible journalism can also be economically viable in the twenty-first century because the mass communication of reliable news reporting and media accountability will be vital to the democratic process. Unless the news media persistently seeks the high moral ground of public service, the first casualty will be an informed electorate. The second may well be constitutional protection.
American public schools often censor controversial student speech that the Constitution protects. Lessons in Censorship brings clarity to a bewildering array of court rulings that define the speech rights of young citizens in the school setting. Catherine J. Ross examines disputes that have erupted in our schools and courts over the civil rights movement, war and peace, rights for LGBTs, abortion, immigration, evangelical proselytizing, and the Confederate flag. She argues that the failure of schools to respect civil liberties betrays their educational mission and threatens democracy. From the 1940s through the Warren years, the Supreme Court celebrated free expression and emphasized the role of schools in cultivating liberty. But the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts courts retreated from that vision, curtailing certain categories of student speech in the name of order and authority. Drawing on hundreds of lower court decisions, Ross shows how some judges either misunderstand the law or decline to rein in censorship that is clearly unconstitutional, and she powerfully demonstrates the continuing vitality of the Supreme Court's initial affirmation of students' expressive rights. Placing these battles in their social and historical context, Ross introduces us to the young protesters, journalists, and artists at the center of these stories. Lessons in Censorship highlights the troubling and growing tendency of schools to clamp down on off-campus speech such as texting and sexting and reveals how well-intentioned measures to counter verbal bullying and hate speech may impinge on free speech. Throughout, Ross proposes ways to protect free expression without disrupting education.
The issue's special report looks at religion and freedom of expression as well as religious offence. When is the right to religious freedom suppressed or censored? Where do we draw the line between offence and faith and how should society respond? It looks at persecution of religions around the world, including the Bishop of Bradford Nicholas Baines's account of Christians in Sudan, analysis of China's Uighur Muslim minority community; Islamist challenges to free speech in Turkey; Felix Corley on Uzbekistan, where owning religious texts can get you into trouble; the new law on offence to religious feelings introduced in Russia in July 2013; and clashes between church and state in South Africa. The issue also looks at religious offence and art with Martin Rowson, Samira Ahmed and an interview with playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti to mark the10-year anniversary of the Behzti affair. The issue also publishes, for the first time in English, an extract from Lebanese playwright Lucien Borjely's banned play.
Professor Fiss examines contemporary free-speech issues in the context of the collision of liberal ideas of equality and freedom with modern social structures and speculates on what role the state might play in furthering robust public debate.
Who is the 'Devil'? And what is he due? The Devil is anyone who disagrees with you. And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence 'unpleasant' ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? This book is a full-throated defense of free speech and open inquiry in politics, science, and culture by the New York Times bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer. The new collection of essays and articles takes the Devil by the horns by tackling five key themes: free thought and free speech, politics and society, scientific humanism, religion, and the ideas of controversial intellectuals. For our own sake, we must give the Devil his due.
Decentering Citizenship follows three groups of Filipina migrants' struggles to belong in South Korea: factory workers claiming rights as workers, wives of South Korean men claiming rights as mothers, and hostesses at American military clubs who are excluded from claims—unless they claim to be victims of trafficking. Moving beyond laws and policies, Hae Yeon Choo examines how rights are enacted, translated, and challenged in daily life and ultimately interrogates the concept of citizenship. Choo reveals citizenship as a language of social and personal transformation within the pursuit of dignity, security, and mobility. Her vivid ethnography of both migrants and their South Korean advocates illuminates how social inequalities of gender, race, class, and nation operate in defining citizenship. Decentering Citizenship argues that citizenship emerges from negotiations about rights and belonging between South Koreans and migrants. As the promise of equal rights and full membership in a polity erodes in the face of global inequalities, this decentering illuminates important contestation at the margins of citizenship.
Decentering Citizenship follows three groups of Filipina migrants' struggles to belong in South Korea: factory workers claiming rights as workers, wives of South Korean men claiming rights as mothers, and hostesses at American military clubs who are excluded from claims-unless they claim to be victims of trafficking. Moving beyond laws and policies, Hae Yeon Choo examines how rights are enacted, translated, and challenged in daily life and ultimately interrogates the concept of citizenship. Choo reveals citizenship as a language of social and personal transformation within the pursuit of dignity, security, and mobility. Her vivid ethnography of both migrants and their South Korean advocates illuminates how social inequalities of gender, race, class, and nation operate in defining citizenship. Decentering Citizenship argues that citizenship emerges from negotiations about rights and belonging between South Koreans and migrants. As the promise of equal rights and full membership in a polity erodes in the face of global inequalities, this decentering illuminates important contestation at the margins of citizenship.
Cultures of Resistance provides new insight on a long-standing question: whether government efforts to repress social movements produce a chilling effect on dissent, or backfire and spur greater mobilization. In recent decades, the U.S. government’s repressive capacity has expanded dramatically, as the legal, technological, and bureaucratic tools wielded by agents of the state have become increasingly powerful. Today, more than ever, it is critical to understand how repression impacts the freedom to dissent and collectively express political grievances. Through analysis of activists’ rich and often deeply moving experiences of repression and resistance, the book uncovers key group processes that shape how individuals understand, experience, and weigh these risks of participating in collective action. Qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrate that, following experiences of state repression, the achievement or breakdown of these group processes, not the type or severity of repression experienced, best explain why some individuals persist while others disengage. In doing so, the book bridges prevailing theoretical divides in social movement research by illuminating how individual rationality is collectively constructed, mediated, and obscured by protest group culture.
A deeply researched legal drama that documents this landmark First Amendment ruling-one that is more critical and controversial than ever. Actual Malice tells the full story of New York Times v. Sullivan, the dramatic case that grew out of segregationists' attempts to quash reporting on the civil rights movement. In its landmark 1964 decision, the Supreme Court held that a public official must prove "actual malice" or reckless disregard of the truth to win a libel lawsuit, providing critical protections for free speech and freedom of the press. Drawing on previously unexplored sources, including the archives of the New York Times Company and civil rights leaders, Samantha Barbas tracks the saga behind one of the most important First Amendment rulings in history. She situates the case within the turbulent 1960s and the history of the press, alongside striking portraits of the lawyers, officials, judges, activists, editors, and journalists who brought and defended the case. As the Sullivan doctrine faces growing controversy, Actual Malice reminds us of the stakes of the case that shaped American reporting and public discourse as we know it.
Theatre has always been subject to a wide range of social, political, moral, and doctrinal controls, with authorities and social groups imposing constraints on scripts, venues, staging, acting, and reception. Focusing on a range of countries and political regimes, this book examines the many forms that theatre censorship has taken in the 20th century and continues to take in the 21st, arguing that it remains a live issue in the contemporary world. The book re-examines assumptions about prohibition and state control, and offers a more complex reading of theatre censorship as a continuum ranging from the unconscious self-censorship built into social structures and discursive practices, through bureaucratic regulation or unofficial influence, up to detention and physical violence. An international team of contributors offers an illuminating set of case studies informed by both new archival research and the first-hand experience of playwrights and directors, covering theatre censorship in areas such as Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Poland, East Germany, Nepal, Zimbabwe, the USA, Ireland, and Britain. Focusing on right-wing dictatorships, post-colonial regimes, communist systems and Western democracies, the essays analyze methods and discourses of censorship, identify the multiple agents involved, examine the responses of theatremakers, and show how each example reveals important features of its political and cultural contexts. Expanding understanding of the nature and effects of censorship, this volume affirms the power of theatre to challenge authorized discourses and makes a timely contribution to debates about freedom of expression through performance.
A must-read collection on contemporary threats to academic freedom. Academic freedom may be threatened like never before. Yet confusion endures about what professors have a defensible right to say or publish, particularly in extramural forums like social media. At least one source of the confusion in the United States is the way in which academic freedom is often intertwined with a constitutional freedom of speech. Though related, the freedoms are distinct. In Challenges to Academic Freedom, Joseph C. Hermanowicz argues that, contrary to many historical views, academic freedom is not static. Rather, we may view academic freedom as a set of relational practices that change over time and place. Bringing together scholars from a wide range of fields, this volume examines the current conditions, as well as recent developments, of academic freedom in the United States. * the sources of recurring threat to academic freedom; * administrative interference and overreach; * the effects of administrative law on academic work, carried out under the auspices of Title IX legislation, diversity and inclusion offices, research misconduct tribunals, and institutional review boards; * the tenuous tie between academic freedom and the law, and what to do about it; * the highly contested arena of extramural speech and social media; and * academic freedom in a contingent academy. Adopting varied epistemological bases to engage their subject matter, the contributors demonstrate perspectives that are, by turn, case study analyses, historical, legal-analytic, formal-empirical, and policy oriented. Traversing such conceptual range, Challenges to Academic Freedom demonstrates the imperative of academic freedom to producing outstanding scholarly work amid the concept's entanglements in the twenty-first century. Contributors: Patricia A. Adler, Peter Adler, Timothy Reese Cain, Dan Clawson, Joseph C. Hermanowicz, Philip Lee, Gary Rhoades, Laura Stark, John R. Thelin, Hans-Joerg Tiede, Gaye Tuchman, Stephen Turner, Eve Weinbaum
A Washington Post Book of the Year Winner of the Merle Curti Award Winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize Winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award "A masterful study of privacy." -Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books "Masterful (and timely)...[A] marathon trek from Victorian propriety to social media exhibitionism...Utterly original." -Washington Post Every day, we make decisions about what to share and when, how much to expose and to whom. Securing the boundary between one's private affairs and public identity has become an urgent task of modern life. How did privacy come to loom so large in public consciousness? Sarah Igo tracks the quest for privacy from the invention of the telegraph onward, revealing enduring debates over how Americans would-and should-be known. The Known Citizen is a penetrating historical investigation with powerful lessons for our own times, when corporations, government agencies, and data miners are tracking our every move. "A mighty effort to tell the story of modern America as a story of anxieties about privacy...Shows us that although we may feel that the threat to privacy today is unprecedented, every generation has felt that way since the introduction of the postcard." -Louis Menand, New Yorker "Engaging and wide-ranging...Igo's analysis of state surveillance from the New Deal through Watergate is remarkably thorough and insightful." -The Nation
In the Chicago suburb of Skokie, one out of every six Jewish citizens in the late 1970s was a survivor--or was directly related to a survivor--of the Holocaust. These victims of terror had resettled in America expecting to lead peaceful lives free from persecution. But their safe haven was shattered when a neo-Nazi group announced its intention to parade there in 1977. Philippa Strum's dramatic retelling of the events in Skokie (and in the courts) shows why the case ignited such enormous controversy and challenged our understanding of and commitment to First Amendment values. The debate was clear-cut: American Nazis claimed the right of free speech while their Jewish "targets" claimed the right to live without intimidation. The town, arguing that the march would assault the sensibilities of its citizens and spark violence, managed to win a court injunction against the marchers. In response, the American Civil Liberties Union took the case and successfully defended the Nazis' right to free speech. Skokie had all the elements of a difficult case: a clash of absolutes, prior restraint of speech, and heated public sentiment. In recreating it, Strum presents a detailed account and analysis of the legal proceedings as well as finely delineated portraits of the protagonists: Frank Collin, National Socialist Party of America leader and the son of a Jewish Holocaust survivor; Skokie community leader Sol Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor who planned a counterdemonstration against the Nazis; Skokie mayor Albert Smith, who wanted only to protect his townspeople; and ACLU attorney David Goldberger, caught in the ironic position of being a Jew defending the rights of Nazis against fellow Jews. While the ACLU did win the case, it was a costly victory--30,000 of its members left the organization. And in the end, ironically, the Nazis never did march in Skokie. Forcefully argued, Strum's book shows that freedom of speech must be defended even when the beneficiaries of that defense are far from admirable individuals. It raises both constitutional and moral issues critical to our understanding of free speech and carries important lessons for current controversies over hate speech on college campuses, inviting readers to think more carefully about what the First Amendment really means. This book is part of the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series.
The BBC commissioned Tariq Ali to write a three-part TV series on the circumstances leading to the overthrow, trial and execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first elected prime minister of Pakistan. As rehearsals were about to begin, the BBC hierarchy--under pressure from the Foreign Office--decided to cancel the project. Why? General Zia ul Haq, the dictator at the time, was leading the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He was backed by the USA. According to expert legal opinion, there was a possibility of a whole range of defamation suits from the head of state to judges involved in the case. In consequence, it was decided not to broadcast this hard-hitting and provocative play. The Leopard and the Fox presents both the script and the story of censorship.
A comprehensive history of censorship in modern Britain For Victorian lawmakers and judges, the question of whether a book should be allowed to circulate freely depended on whether it was sold to readers whose mental and moral capacities were in doubt, by which they meant the increasingly literate and enfranchised working classes. The law stayed this way even as society evolved. In 1960, in the obscenity trial over D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the prosecutor asked the jury, "Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" Christopher Hilliard traces the history of British censorship from the Victorians to Margaret Thatcher, exposing the tensions between obscenity law and a changing British society. Hilliard goes behind the scenes of major obscenity trials and uncovers the routines of everyday censorship, shedding new light on the British reception of literary modernism and popular entertainments such as the cinema and American-style pulp fiction and comic books. He reveals the thinking of lawyers and the police, authors and publishers, and politicians and ordinary citizens as they wrestled with questions of freedom and morality. He describes how supporters and opponents of censorship alike tried to remake the law as they reckoned with changes in sexuality and culture that began in the 1960s. Based on extensive archival research, this incisive and multifaceted book reveals how the issue of censorship challenged British society to confront issues ranging from mass literacy and democratization to feminism, gay rights, and multiculturalism.
"Religious Pluralism in the West: An Anthology" presents a complete historical overview of the themes relating to religious intolerance, toleration and liberty. The issue of religious pluralism continues to be high on the agenda in our increasingly multicultural societies within both secular and religious spheres. This book will therefore be a valuable resource for students studying courses in religion, theology and the social sciences. The readings contained within the anthology cover the attitudes of religious pluralism from antiquity to the present day. An interdisciplinary, as well as chronological, approach to pluralistic themes is adopted, and it is demonstrated how the issues so pertinent and visible in today's society have always been a cause for discussion and debate. One of the strengths of the book is that it shows the various ambiguities which a study of pluralism entails, so that intolerance may be viewed in a less moralistic light, while liberty is presented as being not without is own difficulties. "Religious Pluralism in the West: An Anthology" also includes a substantial introduction by the volume editor and suggestions for further reading.
A selection of George Orwell's prescient, clear-eyed and stimulating writing on the subjects of truth and lies. With an introduction by Alan Johnson. 'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.' This selection of George Orwell's writing, from both his novels and non-fiction, gathers together his thoughts on the subject of truth. It ranges from discussion of personal honesty and morality, to freedom of speech and political propaganda. Orwell's unique clarity of thought and illuminating scepticism provide the perfect defence against our post-truth world of fake news and confusion. 'The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.' Includes an introduction by Alan Johnson and passages from Burmese Days, The Road to Wigan Pier, Coming Up for Air, The Lion and the Unicorn, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell's letters, war-time diary, criticism and essays including 'Fascism and Democracy', 'Culture and Democracy', 'Looking Back on the Spanish War', 'As I Please', 'Notes on Nationalism', 'The Prevention of Literature', 'Politics and the English Language' and 'Why I Write'.
Censorship has been a universal phenomenon through history. However, its rationale and implementation has varied, and public reaction to it has differed across societies and times. This book recovers, narrates, and interrogates the history of censorship of publications in India over three crucial decades - encompassing the Gandhian anti-colonial movement, the Second World War, Partition, and the early years of Independent India. In doing so, it examines state policy and practice, and also its subversion, in a tumultuous period of transition from colonial to self-rule in India. Populated with an array of powerful and powerless individuals, the story of Indians grappling with free speech and (in)tolerance is a fascinating one, and deserves to be widely known. It will help readers make sense of global present-day debates over free speech and hate speech, illustrate historical trends that change - and those that don't - and help them appreciate how the past inevitably informs the present.
This volume explores the state of academic freedom in the United
States and abroad. What impact have the attacks of September 11th
and the ensuing war on terrorism had on free speech, access to
information, government funding of the sciences, and other
cornerstones of freedom of inquiry at American universities? How
has the renewed emphasis on patriotism affected the "culture wars"
that aroused so much controversy on American campuses? And how does
academic freedom in the United States compare to that of other
nations?
This edited collection addresses a number of free speech vs security concerns that are engaged by counter-terrorism law and policy makers across a number of liberal democracies, and explores the delicate balance between free speech and the censoring of views that promote hatred or clash with fundamental democratic values. It does this by looking at the perspectives and level of disagreement between those who consider today's counter-terrorism and extremism strategies to be a soft and liberal approach, and those who believe these strategies disproportionately impact freedom of expression and association and non-violent political dissent. The contributors include academics, practicing lawyers, and think-tank analysts who examine whether universities and schools incubators of violent radicalism and debate, and whether the views of 'extremist' speakers and hate preachers need to be censored. Outside the UK, critical discussion of the regulation of counter-terrorism, extremism, and free speech in other liberal democracies is also offered. This book will be of great interest to researchers and practitioners with interests in extremism, terrorism, civil rights, and freedom of speech.
How digital media are transforming Arab culture, literature, and politics In recent years, Arab activists have confronted authoritarian regimes both on the street and online, leaking videos and exposing atrocities, and demanding political rights. Tarek El-Ariss situates these critiques of power within a pervasive culture of scandal and leaks and shows how cultural production and political change in the contemporary Arab world are enabled by digital technology yet emerge from traditional cultural models. Focusing on a new generation of activists and authors from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, El-Ariss connects WikiLeaks to The Arabian Nights, Twitter to mystical revelation, cyberattacks to pre-Islamic tribal raids, and digital activism to the affective scene-making of Arab popular culture. He shifts the epistemological and historical frameworks from the postcolonial condition to the digital condition and shows how new media challenge the novel as the traditional vehicle for political consciousness and intellectual debate. Theorizing the rise of "the leaking subject" who reveals, contests, and writes through chaotic yet highly political means, El-Ariss investigates the digital consciousness, virality, and affective forms of knowledge that jolt and inform the public and that draw readers in to the unfolding fiction of scandal. Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals maps the changing landscape of Arab modernity, or Nahda, in the digital age and traces how concepts such as the nation, community, power, the intellectual, the author, and the novel are hacked and recoded through new modes of confrontation, circulation, and dissent.
If the Al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked the United States in 2001 wanted to weaken the West, they achieved their mission by striking a blow at the heart of democracy. Since 9/11 governments including those of the USA, the UK, France and Australia have introduced tough, intimidating legislation to discourage the legitimate activities of a probing press, so greatly needed after the Iraq War proved that executive government could not be trusted. Often hiding behind arguments about defending national security and fighting the war on terror, governments criminalised legitimate journalistic work, ramping up their attacks on journalists' sources, and the whistle-blowers who are so essential in keeping governments honest. Through detailed research and analysis, this book, which includes interviews with leading figures in the field, including Edward Snowden, explains how mass surveillance and anti-terror laws are of questionable value in defeating terrorism, but have had a 'chilling effect' on one of the foundations of democracy: revelatory journalism. |
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