Threats to journalists carry many different lessons, but one is constant: People who would intimidate or kill journalists are usually terrified that someone might find out. Journalists who want to protect one another need do nothing more than what should come naturally to them: report on threats to journalists--big threats and small threats, whether they are directed against the international luminaries of the profession or small timers.

Non-journalists can also play a big part in the fight to protect journalists. Next to tough and timely reporting that establishes the facts of a case, nothing protects a journalist so much as public outrage and public support. Ordinary citizens can play an enormous role by pressuring thugs and tyrants who would like to stifle the freedom of the press. The freedom of journalists is consequently the bedrock of freedom for all people.

Chapters and contributors to "Journalists in Peril "include: "The Clash of Arms in Exotic Locales" by Peter Arnett; "Press Freedom--Balkan Style" by Kati Marton; "Grim Prospects for Hong Kong" by John Schidlovsky; "Russian Reporters--Between a Hammer and an Anvil" by losif M. Dzyaloshinsky; "Defiant Publishing in Nigeria" by Dapo Olorunyomi; "Turkish Journalists on Trial" by Ahmet Emin; "In America, Justice for Some" by Ana Arana; and "Blood and Fear in Italy" by Candida Curzi. The tragic accounts detailed in "Journalists in Peril "are poignantly written and are important reading for all concerned with democracy in the world, especially political scientists, government officials, and those involved in the various communications professions.

In recent years, the Danish cartoons affair, the Charlie Hebdo murders and the terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris have resulted in increasingly strident anti-Islamic speeches by politicians. This raises questions about the limits to freedom of expression and whether this freedom can and should be restricted to protect the religious feelings of believers. This book uses the case law of the European Court of Human Rights to provide a comprehensive analysis of the questions: whether legal prohibitions of religious hate speech violate the right to freedom of expression; and, whether such laws should be used to prosecute politicians and others who contribute to current debates when they use anti-Islam rhetoric. A well-known politician who uses such rhetoric is Dutch politician Geert Wilders. He has been prosecuted twice for hate speech, and was acquitted in the first case and recently convicted in the second. These prosecutions are used to illustrate the issues involved in drawing the line between freedom of expression and religious hate speech. The author argues that freedom of expression of politicians and those contributing to the public debate should not be restricted except in two very limited circumstances: when they incite to hatred or violence and there is an imminent danger that violence will follow or where it stops people from holding or manifesting their religion. Based on this, the author concludes that the European Court of Human Rights should decide, if it is asked to do so, that Wilders conviction for hate speech violates his freedom of expression.

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?
To engage these crucial questions, the editors have assembled some of the nation's leading experts on academic freedom, from a broad range of disciplines including law, political science, and the history of science.

"Freedom of Information in a Post 9-11 World" is, to date, the first international scholarly examination of the impact of the terrorist attack on the United States in terms of how it may alter academic and corporate research, as well as the sharing of information generated by that research, by international colleagues in technological fields. The collection of essays brings together a widely varied panel of communications experts from different backgrounds and cultures to focus their expertise on the ramifications of this world-changing event. Drawing upon the related but separate disciplines of law, interpersonal communication, semiotics, rhetoric, management, information sciences, and education, the collection adds new insight to the potential future challenges high-tech professionals and academics will face in a global community that now seems much less communal than it did prior to September 11, 2001.

This book traces the life of free speech in Russia from the final years of the Soviet Union to the present. It shows how long-cherished hopes for an open society in which people would speak freely and tell truth to power fared under Gorbachev's glasnost; how free speech was a real, if fractured, achievement of Yeltsin's years in power; and how easy it was for Putin to reverse these newly won freedoms, imposing a 'patrimonial' media that sits comfortably with old autocratic and feudal traditions. The book explores why this turn seemed so inexorable and now seems so entrenched. It examines the historical legacy, and Russia's culturally ambivalent perception of freedom, which Dostoyevsky called that 'terrible gift'. It evaluates the allure of western consumerism and Soviet-era illusions that stunted the initial promise of freedom and democracy. The behaviour of journalists and their apparent complicity in the distortion of their profession come under scrutiny. This ambitious study covering more than 30 years of radical change looks at responses 'from above' and 'from below', and asks whether the players truly understood what was involved in the practice of free speech.

In twenty-first century Japan there are numerous instances of media harassment, intimidation, censorship and self-censorship that undermine the freedom of the press and influence how the news is reported. Since Abe returned to power in 2012, the recrudescence of nationalism under his leadership has emboldened right-wing activists and organizations targeting liberal media outlets, journalists, peace museums and ethnic Korean residents in Japan. This ongoing culture war involves the media, school textbooks, constitutional revision, pacifism and security doctrine. This text is divided into five sections that cover: Politics of press freedom; The legal landscape; History and culture; Marginalization; PR, public diplomacy and manipulating opinion. Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan brings together contributions from an international and interdisciplinary line-up of academics and journalists intimately familiar with the current climate, in order to discuss and evaluate these issues and explore potential future outcomes. It is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand contemporary Japan and the politics of freedom of expression and transparency in the Abe era. It will appeal to students, academics, Japan specialists, journalists, legal scholars, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and those engaged in human rights, media studies and Asian Studies.

In twenty-first century Japan there are numerous instances of media harassment, intimidation, censorship and self-censorship that undermine the freedom of the press and influence how the news is reported. Since Abe returned to power in 2012, the recrudescence of nationalism under his leadership has emboldened right-wing activists and organizations targeting liberal media outlets, journalists, peace museums and ethnic Korean residents in Japan. This ongoing culture war involves the media, school textbooks, constitutional revision, pacifism and security doctrine. This text is divided into five sections that cover: Politics of press freedom; The legal landscape; History and culture; Marginalization; PR, public diplomacy and manipulating opinion. Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan brings together contributions from an international and interdisciplinary line-up of academics and journalists intimately familiar with the current climate, in order to discuss and evaluate these issues and explore potential future outcomes. It is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand contemporary Japan and the politics of freedom of expression and transparency in the Abe era. It will appeal to students, academics, Japan specialists, journalists, legal scholars, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and those engaged in human rights, media studies and Asian Studies.

This book traces the life of free speech in Russia from the final years of the Soviet Union to the present. It shows how long-cherished hopes for an open society in which people would speak freely and tell truth to power fared under Gorbachev's glasnost; how free speech was a real, if fractured, achievement of Yeltsin's years in power; and how easy it was for Putin to reverse these newly won freedoms, imposing a 'patrimonial' media that sits comfortably with old autocratic and feudal traditions. The book explores why this turn seemed so inexorable and now seems so entrenched. It examines the historical legacy, and Russia's culturally ambivalent perception of freedom, which Dostoyevsky called that 'terrible gift'. It evaluates the allure of western consumerism and Soviet-era illusions that stunted the initial promise of freedom and democracy. The behaviour of journalists and their apparent complicity in the distortion of their profession come under scrutiny. This ambitious study covering more than 30 years of radical change looks at responses 'from above' and 'from below', and asks whether the players truly understood what was involved in the practice of free speech.

Americans often believe that the First Amendment and free speech are synonymous and that all restrictions on speech can be addressed by the legal framework of the First Amendment. Political theorist Samuel P. Nelson argues that the current legal framework for free speech actually undermines attempts to resolve many of these issues and that the law of the First Amendment has supplanted the vital politics of free speech.

To cut through the confusion, Nelson takes a step back from the First Amendment framework to understand the social nature of speech, moving toward a more pluralistsic and value-based understanding. He examines three philosophies commonly used to justify speech protection -- libertarianism, expressivism, and egalitarianism -- and finds none of them sufficiently responsive in today's contemporary political landscape.

Advocating an approach grounded in value pluralism -- which describes a wider variety of free speech claims than the First Amendment allows -- Nelson pushes the debate beyond constitutional and legal questions.

Commentators on the media in Southeast Asia either emphasise with optimism the prospect for new media to provide possibilities for greater democratic discourse, or else, less optimistically, focus on the continuing ability of governments to exercise tight and sophisticated control of the media. This book explores these issues with reference to Malaysia and Singapore. It analyses how journalists monitor governments and cover elections, discussing what difference journalism makes; it examines citizen journalism, and the constraints on it, often self-imposed constraints; and it assesses how governments control the media, including outlining the development and current application of legal restrictions.

Critically examining conceptions of freedom of some of the leading contemporary philosophers from Isaiah Berlin to Charles Taylor, Hans Blokland explores the value and significance that freedom has acquired on our political consciousness. He looks specifically at: * positive and negative freedom * freedom of the individual * freedom and society * emancipation and paternalism * freedom and cultural politics.

This book examines the history of the legal discourse around political falsehood and its future in the wake of the 2012 US Supreme Court decision in US v. Alvarez through communication law, political philosophy, and communication theory perspectives. As US v. Alvarez confirmed First Amendment protection for lies, Robert N. Spicer addresses how the ramifications of that decision function by looking at statutory and judicial handling of First Amendment protection for political deception. Illustrating how commercial speech is regulated but political speech is not, Spicer evaluates the role of deception in politics and its consequences for democracy in a contemporary political environment where political personalities, partisan media, and dark money donors bend the truth and abuse the virtue of free expression.

In recent years, we have witnessed the mushrooming of pro- democracy and protest movements not only in the Arab world, but also within Europe and the Americas. Such movements have ranged from popular upheavals, like in Tunisia and Egypt, to the organization of large-scale demonstrations against unpopular policies, as in Spain, Greece and Poland. What connects these different events are not only their democratic aspirations, but also their innovative forms of communication and organization through online means, which are sometimes considered to be outside of the State's control. At the same time, however, it has become more and more apparent that countries are attempting to increase their understanding of, and control over, their citizens' actions in the digital sphere. This involves striving to develop surveillance instruments, control mechanisms and processes engineered to dominate the digital public sphere, which necessitates the assistance and support of private actors such as Internet intermediaries. Examples include the growing use of Internet surveillance technology with which online data traffic is analysed, and the extensive monitoring of social networks. Despite increased media attention, academic debate on the ambivalence of these technologies, mechanisms and techniques remains relatively limited, as is discussion of the involvement of corporate actors. The purpose of this edited volume is to reflect on how Internet-related technologies, mechanisms and techniques may be used as a means to enable expression, but also to restrict speech, manipulate public debate and govern global populaces. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics.

"A thoughtful book that offers significant insights on the potential perils of imposing restraints in the traditional First Amendment rights."
--A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.

"A powerful collection of essays challenging the advocates of curbing speech in order to promote equality. Most impressively, these writers make their case not through name-calling, but by taking them seriously, and dissecting, opposing arguments and acknowledging complexities, and by invoking informed common sense in bracing prose."
--Gerald Gunther, author of "The Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge,"

At the University of Pennsylvania, a student is reprimanded for calling a group of African-American students water buffalo. Several prominent American law schools now request that professors abstain from discussing the legal aspects of rape for fear of offending students. As debates over multiculturalism and political correctness crisscross the land, no single issue has been more of a flash point in the ongoing culture wars than hate speech codes, which seek to restrict bigoted or offensive speech and punish those who engage in it. In this provocative anthology, a range of prominent voices argue that hate speech restrictions are not only dangerous, but counterproductive. The lessons of history indicate that speech regulation designed to protect minorities is destined to be used against them. Acknowledging the legitimacy of the concerns that prompt speech codes and combining support for civil liberties with an acute concern for civil tights issues, "Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex" demonstrates that it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw the line between unprotected insults and protected ideas.Decrying such speech regulation as overly concerned with the symbols of racism rather than its realities, Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex offers a balanced and well-reasoned perspective on one of the most controversial issues of our time.

In recent years, there has been an increase of public employees being fired for inappropriate behavior on social media. This research explores social media conduct of public employees that have been adjudicated through the federal and state court systems. The arguments of these cases are based upon the question of an employee's first amendment rights versus the rights of the employer to maintain a desired work environment. The research found that widespread negative publicity, disruption of close working relationships, inappropriate and offensive employees comments led to favorable outcomes for the public employers. In contrast, when an employee posts on social media while off-duty as a private citizen, the employer has not cited any disruption and the comments are not personal attacks against employers but have substantial public concerns led to positive outcomes for the public employee.

Commentators on the media in Southeast Asia either emphasise with optimism the prospect for new media to provide possibilities for greater democratic discourse, or else, less optimistically, focus on the continuing ability of governments to exercise tight and sophisticated control of the media. This book explores these issues with reference to Malaysia and Singapore. It analyses how journalists monitor governments and cover elections, discussing what difference journalism makes; it examines citizen journalism, and the constraints on it, often self-imposed constraints; and it assesses how governments control the media, including outlining the development and current application of legal restrictions.

In a society that prides itself on the most expansive legal guarantees of free speech in history, why are so many individuals and groups frustrated by the American system of freedom of expression? As the public sphere continues to be redefined by advances in technology, and new debates about this technology crop up daily, the time has come to move from reflexive discussions about the value of more speech to a detailed assessment of the real power and limits of speech.

Why, this volume asks, does the First Amendment--the very document intended to ensure the freedom of U.S. citizens--need to be freed? And from what?

Long an icon in American law, politics, and journalism, the First Amendment--and the potential and real dilemmas with which it presents us--have only recently begun to be scrutinized. Challenging the idea that the only champions of free speech are traditional liberal theorists who oppose alternatives to the mainstream interpretation of the First Amendment, the contributors to this volume, among them such prominent thinkers as Frederick Schauer, Owen Fiss, and Cass Sunstein, explore new and provocative ways to think about freedom of expression. By reformulating traditional liberal and libertarian approaches to the First Amendment, this volume convincingly disputes the notion that those who question an unwavering reliance on free- and-open competition between individuals to produce free expression are necessarily enemies of free speech. It argues instead that these alleged enemies can in fact be champions as well.

aThe book constitutes a good contribution to our professional knowledge, and it is a must readinga
--Law and Politics Book Review

"Anyone who has not read A Distant Heritage cannot know the history of freedom of speech. This splendid book, based on excellent research, fills a void on the subject of seditious utterance and is a valuable corrective, as well as a substantial addition to, all previous works touching that subject."
--Leonard W. Levy

"A remarkably clear, concise history . . . Eldridge has provided impressive documentation of an often misunderstood, and vitally important, aspect of American History."
--"William and Mary Quarterly"

"Larry Eldrige's superb scholarship greatly expands our knowledge of how free speech took root in the American colonies. This exceptional book offers both engaging reading and new insights into the development of a fundamental right. "
--Jeffery A. Smith, University of Iowa, author of "Printers and Press Freedom"

"Larry Eldridge has crafted a major reinterpretation of the expansion of political speech in the American colonies. What is especially impressive is Eldridge's ability to find support for his thesis in both the growing stability of colonial society and the powerful upheavals that convulsed it. This is an original, provocative, and penetrating contribution to the literature on freedom of speech, in the colonial or any other era."
--Kermit L. Hall
Dean, Henry Kendall College of Arts & Sciences and Professor of History and Law,
The University of Tulsa

"With "A Distant Heritage," Larry Eldridge joins a handful of scholars probing a most important aspect of our free speech heritage. . . Eldridge providesvital pieces to the puzzle of how American earned the right to speak their minds. With meticulous attention to detail, Eldridge traces the seventeenth century development of free speech in colonial America, a process that opened the way for citizens to criticize their government and that established the foundation for both revolution and growth in freedom of speech for generations to come."
--Margaret A. Blanchard
Author of "Revolutionary Sparks: Freedom of Expression in Modern America"

Historians often rely on a handful of unusual cases to illustrate the absence of free speech in the colonies--such as that of Richard Barnes, who had his arms broken and a hole bored through his tongue for seditious words against the governor of Virginia. In this definitive and accessible work, Larry Eldridge convincingly debunks this view by revealing surprising evidence of free speech in early America.

Using the court records of every American colony that existed before 1700 and an analysis of over 1,200 seditious speech cases sifted from those records, A Distant Heritage shows how colonists experienced a dramatic expansion during the seventeenth century of their freedom to criticize government and its officials. Exploring important changes in the roles of juries and appeals, the nature of prosecution and punishment, and the pattern of growing leniency, Eldridge also shows us why this expansion occurred when it did. He concludes that the ironic combination of tumult and destabilization on the one hand, and steady growth and development on the other, made colonists more willing to criticize authority openly and officials less able to prevent it. That, in turn, established a foundation forthe more celebrated flowering of colonial dissent against English authority in the eighteenth century.

Steeped in primary sources and richly narrated, this is an invaluable addition to the library of anyone interested in legal history, colonial America, or the birth of free speech in the United States.

Bearing Witness While Black tells the story of this century's most powerful Black social movement through the eyes of 15 activists who documented it. At the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, African Americans filmed and tweeted evidence of fatal police encounters in dozens of US cities-using little more than the device in their pockets. Their urgent dispatches from the frontlines spurred a global debate on excessive police force, which claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children at disproportionate rates. This groundbreaking book reveals how the perfect storm of smartphones, social media, and social justice empowered Black activists to create their own news outlets, which continued a centuries-long, African American tradition of using the news to challenge racism. Bearing Witness While Black is the first book of its kind to identify three overlapping eras of domestic terror against African American people-slavery, lynching, and police brutality-and explain how storytellers during each period documented its atrocities through journalism. What results is a stunning genealogy-of how the slave narratives of the 1700s inspired the Abolitionist movement; how the black newspapers of the 1800s galvanized the anti-lynching and Civil Rights movements; and how the smartphones of today have powered the anti-police brutality movement. This lineage of black witnessing, Allissa V. Richardson argues, is formidable and forever evolving. Richardson's own activism, as an award-winning pioneer of smartphone journalism, informs this text. Weaving in personal accounts of her teaching in the US and Africa, and of her own brushes with police brutality, Richardson shares how she has inspired black youth to use mobile devices, to speak up from the margins. It is from this vantage point, as participant-observer, that she urges us not to become numb to the tragic imagery that African Americans have documented. Instead, Bearing Witness While Black conveys a crucial need to protect our right to look into the forbidden space of violence against black bodies, and to continue to regard the smartphone as an instrument of moral suasion and social change.

An innovative narrative approach combines history, politics, and legal doctrine to explore the origin and evolution of Americans' constitutional right to free speech. In a field dominated by jargon-filled texts and march-of-progress treatments, this book presents an insightful introduction to freedom of speech, skillfully blending legal analysis with accounts of how staunchly contested historical, political, and cultural issues often influenced legal reasoning. The volume traces the origins of the freedom in English law and its development through the founding of the United States, and examines how the unique struggles of 19th century Americans over such issues as political parties, slavery, women's rights, and economic inequality transformed this traditional English right into a distinctively American one. The book outlines the ways in which the U.S. Supreme Court became the prime interpreter of the meaning of free speech and introduces readers to current court rulings on the First Amendment. It also speculates about the political and legal developments likely to emerge in the new century. A-Z entries survey key individuals, laws, events, judicial decisions, statutes, institutions, organizations, and concepts Four narrative chapters examine constitutional history, evolution of ideas in this area, contemporary concerns and controversies, and prospects for the near future based on today's challenges to the status quo

From New York Times bestselling author Cass Sunstein, a brisk, provocative book that shows what freedom really means-and requires-today In this pathbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Cass Sunstein asks us to rethink freedom. He shows that freedom of choice isn't nearly enough. To be free, we must also be able to navigate life. People often need something like a GPS device to help them get where they want to go-whether the issue involves health, money, jobs, children, or relationships. In both rich and poor countries, citizens often have no idea how to get to their desired destination. That is why they are unfree. People also face serious problems of self-control, as many of them make decisions today that can make their lives worse tomorrow. And in some cases, we would be just as happy with other choices, whether a different partner, career, or place to live-which raises the difficult question of which outcome best promotes our well-being. Accessible and lively, and drawing on perspectives from the humanities, religion, and the arts, as well as social science and the law, On Freedom explores a crucial dimension of the human condition that philosophers and economists have long missed-and shows what it would take to make freedom real.

By examining the highly contested legal debate about the regulation of pornography through an epistemic lens, this book analyzes competing claims about the proper role of speech in our society, pornography's harm, the relationship between speech and equality, and whether law should regulate and, if so, upon what grounds. In maintaining that inegalitarian pornography generates discursive effects, the book contends that law cannot simply adopt a libertarian approach to free speech. While inegalitarian pornography may not be determinative of gender inequality, it does contribute, reinforce, reflect and help maintain such unfairness. As a result, we can place reasonable gender-based regulations on inegalitarian pornography while upholding our most treasured commitments to dissident speech just as other liberal democracies with strong free speech traditions have done.

What did "freedom of the press" really mean to the framers of the First Amendment and their contemporaries? This masterful book by a Pulitzer Prize winning constitutional historian answers that question. In Emergence of a Free Press (a greatly revised and enlarged edition of his landmark Legacy of Suppression), Leonard W. Levy argues that the First Amendment was not designed to be the bulwark of a free press that many thought, nor had the amendment's framers intended to overturn the common law of seditious libel that was the principal means of stifling political dissent. Yet he notes how robust and rambunctious the early press was, and he takes that paradox into account in tracing the succession of cases and reforms that figured in the genesis of a free press. Mr. Levy's brilliant account offers a new generation of readers a penetrating look into the origins of one of America's most cherished freedoms."

This volume offers a historical, philosophical, and practical critique of public and civic journalism--a movement that gained momentum in the final decade of the 20th century. During that period, proponents of the movement have published nearly a dozen books expanding upon and expounding the virtues of journalism, seeking to repair what is thought to be the torn social, political, and moral fabric in America. Although previous works have established a strong practical underpinning for public and civic journalism, none has examined its philosophical roots or challenged its methodology and grounding in neoliberal constructs. This volume does just that, tracing its origins in early philosophy to the current newsroom policies and practices that conflict with traditional constructs in libertarian press theory.
"Twilight of Press Freedom" postulates that institutionalized journalism is fading away and world journalism--prompted by the people--is veering toward more order and social harmony, and away from the traditional idea of the great value of press freedom. The volume provides a critical examination of the trend toward public journalism and considers how press freedom will be impacted by this trend in coming years. Scholars and students in journalism, public opinion, and media studies will find this book insightful and invaluable.

In 2005, the Australian Federal Police referred eight Islamic books to the Australian Classification Board. The goal was to secure a ban of the books, all of which were alleged to advocate 'terrorist acts'. After nearly a year of review, and intense public debate, two of the books were refused classification and effectively banned in a move that would have severe repercussions for librarians, scholars, authors and the state of free speech in Australia. Banning Islamic Books in Australia examines the cultural and political contexts that led up to the ban, and the content of the books themselves in an attempt to determine what it was that made them seem so dangerous. It also documents the unintended consequences of the ban on library collections and academic freedom, and how this in turn affects free speech in contemporary Australia.