In this Assignment, you analyze the complex administrative responsibilities in ensuring public freedom while protecting civil liberties. For this Discussion, read one of the articles highlighting the threat to civil liberties in the United States (Greenb
Free Speech at Risk Will it survive government repression?
G overnments around the globe have been weaken-
ing free-speech protections because of concerns
about security or offending religious believers.
After a phone-hacking scandal erupted in the
British press and Muslims worldwide violently protested images in
the Western media of the Prophet Muhammad, European nations
enacted new restrictions on hate speech, and Britain is considering
limiting press freedom. Autocratic regimes increasingly are jailing
journalists and political dissidents or simply buying media compa-
nies to use them for propaganda and to negate criticism. Muslim
countries are adopting and rigidly enforcing blasphemy laws,
some of which carry the death penalty. Meanwhile, some govern-
ments are blocking or monitoring social media and cybertraffic,
increasing the risk of arrest for those who freely express their
thoughts online and dashing hopes that new technologies would
allow unlimited distribution of information and opinion.
I
N
S
I
D
E
THE ISSUES ....................379
BACKGROUND ................386
CHRONOLOGY ................387
CURRENT SITUATION ........392
AT ISSUE........................393
OUTLOOK......................395
BIBLIOGRAPHY................398
THE NEXT STEP ..............399
THISREPORT
Russian police arrest a supporter of the punk rock band Pussy Riot near a court building in Moscow on Aug. 17, 2012. Three members of the all-female group were convicted of hooliganism and sentenced to
prison after a performance in Moscow’s main cathedral in which they ridiculed President Vladimir Putin.
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CQ Researcher • April 26, 2013 • www.cqresearcher.com Volume 23, Number 16 • Pages 377-400
RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE � AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD
90th Anniversary
1923-2013
378 CQ Researcher
THE ISSUES
379 • Has technology madespeech freer? • Should religious sensibil- ities be allowed to limit free expression? • Should the U.S. pro- mote free speech abroad?
BACKGROUND
386 Refusal to “Revoco”The struggle for free speech has been a long story about testing limits.
388 Controlling the PressIt remained heavily regulated in the United Kingdom and its American colonies.
390 Expanding RightsAfter World War II, the sense that free speech was an inalienable right took deep hold in the country.
CURRENT SITUATION
392 Government SecretsThe case of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who leaked sensitive government documents to WikiLeaks, has made him a cause célèbre in some circles.
392 Information ExplosionOnline databases have complicated free-speech legal issues.
394 Regulating the Press?A phone-hacking scandal in Britain has led to concerns about press freedom there.
394 Reporters Under AttackMore than 230 journalists were imprisoned last year.
OUTLOOK
395 Shame, Not Laws?“Every new technology, by its nature, is open to both use and abuse.”
SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS
380 Democracies Enjoy theMost Press Freedom Totalitarian regimes have the least.
381 Number of JournalistsKilled on the Rise Seventy journalists were killed in 2012.
384 Blasphemy Laws ProliferateVideos and cartoons mock- ing the Muslim prophet Muhammad have led many countries to enact anti-blasphe- my laws.
387 ChronologyKey events since 1946.
388 Free Speech Can Be Deadly in Russia “Many journalists end up dead, assaulted or threatened.”
390 China Opens Up — ButJust a Crack It still monitors journalists and dissenters’ activities.
393 At Issue:Should journalists be regulated?
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
397 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.
398 BibliographySelected sources used.
399 The Next StepAdditional articles.
399 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
Cover: AFP/Getty Images/Andrei Smirnov
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Free Speech at Risk
THE ISSUES I
t wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. On April 1, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart
defended Egyptian political satirist Bassem Youssef, who had undergone police ques- tioning for allegedly insult- ing President Mohammed Morsi and Islam. “That’s illegal? Seriously?
That’s illegal in Egypt?” Stew- art said on his Comedy Cen- tral show. “Because if insult- ing the president and Islam were a jailable offense here, Fox News go bye-bye.” Stewart was kidding, but
Youssef’s case has drawn at- tention from free-speech ad- vocates who worry Egypt’s nascent democracy is ac- cording no more respect to- ward freedom of expression than the regime it replaced. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo,
which had linked to Stew- art’s broadcast on its Twitter feed, temporarily shut down the feed after Egyptian au- thorities objected to it. Egypt’s nascent government also has filed charges against hundreds of journalists, although Morsi asked that they all be dropped earlier this month. Concerns are widespread that
commentators, journalists, bloggers — and, yes, even comedians — are being intimidated into silence. And not just in Egypt. Free speech, once seen as close to
an absolute right in some countries, is beginning to conflict with other val- ues, such as security, the protection of children and the desire not to offend religious sensibilities, not just in the Middle East but in much of the world, including Western Europe.
In many cases, freedom of speech is losing. “Free speech is dying in the Western world,” asserts Jonathan Tur- ley, a George Washington University law professor. “The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions de- signed to maintain social harmony.” 1
In an era when words and images can be transmitted around the world instantaneously by anyone with a cell phone, even some American acade- mics argue that an absolutist view of
First Amendment protections couldn’t be expected to pre- vail. Several made that case after protests broke out in several Muslim countries last September over an American- made video uploaded to YouTube defamed the Prophet Muhammad. Even the administration of
President Obama, who de- fended the nation’s free-speech traditions at the United Na- tions in the wake of video backlash, supports a proposed U.N. resolution to create an international standard to re- strict some anti-religious speech. And, under Obama, the Justice Department has prosecuted a record number of government employees who have leaked sensitive doc- uments, discouraging poten- tial whistleblowers from ex- posing government waste, fraud or abuse. 2
“Wherever you look, you see legislation or other mea- sures seeking to reassert state control over speech and the means of speech,” says John Kampfner, author of the 2010 book Freedom for Sale. In the United Kingdom and
Australia, government minis- ters last month proposed that media outlets be governed by
new regulatory bodies with statutory authority, although they ran into op- position. Two years ago, a new media law in Hungary created a regulatory council with wide-ranging powers to grant licenses to media outlets and as- sess content in a way that Human Rights Watch says compromises press freedom. 3
“Not only is legislation such as this bad in and of itself, but it is crucial in sending a green light to authori- tarians who use these kind of mea-
BY ALAN GREENBLATT
A F P /G e tt y I m a g e s/ K h a le d D e so u k i
Egyptian political satirist Bassem Youssef arrives at the public prosecutor’s office in Cairo on March 31. Police questioned Youssef for allegedly insulting President Mohammed Morsi and Islam. The government filed charges against hundreds of Egyptian journalists but dropped them earlier this month. Free-speech advocates
worry that journalists, bloggers and democracy supporters worldwide are being intimidated into silence.
380 CQ Researcher
sures by Western states to say, when- ever they are criticized by the West, ‘Hey, you guys do the same,’ ” says Kampfner, former CEO of Index on Censorship, a London-based nonprofit group that fights censorship. Some observers have hoped the
growth of social media and other technologies that spread information faster and more widely than previ- ously thought possible could act as
an automatic bulwark protecting free- dom of expression. “The best example of the impact of technology on free speech is to look at the Arab Spring,” says Dan Wallach, a computer scientist at Rice University, referring to the se- ries of upheavals starting in 2011 that led to the fall of autocratic leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. 4
But as studies by Wallach and many others show, countries such as
China and Iran are building new fire- walls to block sensitive information and track dissidents. “The pattern seems to be that governments that fear mass movements on the street have real- ized that they might want to be able to shut off all Internet communica- tions in the country and have started building the infrastructure that en- ables them to do that,” said Andrew McLaughlin, a former White House
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
Democracies Enjoy the Most Press Freedom Democracies such as Finland, Norway and the Netherlands have the most press freedom, while authori- tarian regimes such as Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea have the least, according to Reporters Without Borders’ 2012 index of global press freedom. European and Islamic governments have enacted or considered new press restrictions after a recent phone-hacking scandal in Britain and Western media outlets’ irreverent images of the Prophet Muhammad triggered deadly protests by Muslims. Myanmar (formerly Burma), which recently enacted democratic reforms, has reached its greatest level of press freedom ever, the report said.
Source: “Freedom of the Press Worldwide in 2013,” Reporters Without Borders, http://fr.rsf.org/IMG/jpg/2013-carte-liberte-presse_1900.jpg
Press Freedom Worldwide, 2013
C A N A D A
U N I T E D S T A T E S O F
A M E R I C A
MEXICO
BELIZE
DOMINICAN REPUBLICHAITI
PUERTO RICO GUATEMALA
COSTA RICA
EL SALVADOR
PANAMA
COLOMBIA
VENEZUELA
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
G UY
AN A
SU RI
NA M
FR EN
CH G
UI AN
A
B R A Z I L P E R U
B O L I V I A
PARAGUAY
A R G E N T I N A
URUGUAY
CHILE
FALKLAND/MALVINAS ISLANDS
G R E E N L A N D
ICELAND
N O R WAY
SWEDEN F I N L A N D
DENMARKUNITED KINGDOM
IRELAND
FRANCE
BELGIUM
NETHERLANDS
LUXEMBOURG GERMANY
ESTONIA LATVIALITHUANIA
RUSSIA
P O L A N D BELARUS
U K R A I N E
S PA I N
PORTUGAL
CZECH REP.AUSTRIA
SWITZERLAND
SLOVENIA ITALY
CRO ATI
A
SLOVAKIA
HUNGARY ROMANIA
MOLDOVA
ALB ANI
A
GREECE T U R K E Y
CYPRUS
MOROCCO
WESTERN SAHARA
A L G E R I A L I B Y A
TUNISIA
MAURITANIA
SENEGAL
GAMBIA GUINEA-BISSAU
GUINEA
SIERRA LEONE
LIBERIA
M A L I
BURKINA FASO
IVORY COAST
TO G
O B
E N
IN
NIGERIA
N I G E R C H A D
E G Y P T
S U D A N
SOUTH SUDAN
ERITREA
E T H I O P I A CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
CAMEROON
GABON RWANDA BURUNDI
UGANDA KENYA
SOMALIA
A N G O L A
NAMIBIA
Z A M B I A
TA N Z A N I A
MALAWI
ZIMBABWE
BOTSWANA
MOZAMBIQUE MADAGASCAR
SWAZILAND
LESOTHO
S O U T H A F R I C A
MAURITIUS
RÉUNION
GEORGIA
LEBANON
ISRAEL I R A Q
I R A N
S A U D I
A R A B I A
QATAR UNITED ARAB
EMIRATES
OMAN
YEMEN
I N D I A
AFGHANISTAN
PAKISTAN
TURKMENISTAN
UZBEKISTAN KYRGYZSTAN
TAJIKISTAN
K A Z A K H S T A N
SRI LANKA
NEPAL BHUTAN
BANGLADESH
MYANMAR LAOS
THAILAND
CAMBODIA
VIETNAM
M A L A Y S I A
BRUNEI
TIMOR LESTE
PHILIPPINES
TAIWAN
I N D O N E S I A
PA P UA N E W
G U I N E A
SOLOMON ISLANDS
FIJI
VANUATU
NEW CALEDONIA A U S T R A L I A
NEW ZEALAND
R U S S I A
M O N G O L I A
NORTH KOREA
SOUTH KOREA
J A P A N
C H I N A
HONG KONG
ANDORRA
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
BAHAMAS
GHANA
MACEDONIA
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS
South Georgia
N o r w e g i a n
S e a
B l a c k S e a
R e
d
S e
a
S e a o f
O k h o t s k
G u l f o f
A d e n
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
S O U T H
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N A r a b i a n
S e a
SYRIA
JORDAN
ARMENIAAZERBAIJAN
DEM. REP. OF
CONGO
BULGARIA
Good
Satisfactory
Noticeable problems
Difficult
Very serious
Press Freedom
SERBIA
MONTENEGRO
CONGO EQUATORIAL GUINEA
NICARAGUA
HONDURAS
ECUADOR
CUBA
JAMAICA
April 26, 2013 381www.cqresearcher.com
adviser on technology. 5
In January, a French court ordered Twitter to help identify people who had tweeted racist or anti-Semitic remarks, or face fines of 1,000 euros (about $1,300) per day. The San Francisco-based com- pany refused to comply, citing First Amendment protections for free speech. 6
But even as Twitter appeals the French court order, the microblogging site in October blocked the account of a neo-Nazi group called Besseres Hannover, or Better Hanover, which had been charged with inciting racial hatred. Twitter said it was the first time it had used technology to mon- itor and withhold content based on a given country’s concerns and laws. Meanwhile, government arrests of
journalists and mob attacks against them are on the rise. Journalists are being arrested more often than in pre- vious years in countries such as Rus- sia and Turkey, and in 2012, mobs at- tacked journalists in Mali and Canada — among other countries — for what the protesters perceived as their blas- phemous coverage of Islam. Blasphe- my prosecutions have become more common, especially in predominantly Islamic countries such as Pakistan, where blasphemy laws apply only to comments about Islam or Muhammad, not to derogatory comments about Christianity, Judaism or other world religions. 7
“There have been attempts to pass so-called religious-sensibility laws, which are, in fact, a way of curbing press freedom and expression,” says Robert Mahoney, director of the Com- mittee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based nonprofit group that pro- motes press freedom. In one widely covered case, three
members of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred last year. They had been ar- rested in March after a performance in Moscow’s main cathedral, in which
they profanely called for the Virgin Mary to protect Russia against Vladimir Putin, who was returned to the pres- idency soon after the performance. The three were sentenced to two years in a prison colony, but one member was released on probation before being sent to prison. 8 In more open soci- eties, laws meant to protect against hate speech, Holocaust denial and of- fenses against religious sensibilities also can end up limiting what people can talk and write about. Free-speech laws traditionally have
been about the protection of unpop- ular and provocative expression. Pop- ular and uncontroversial opinions usu-
ally need no protection. But in recent years, free-speech protections have been fading away. “The new restrictions are forcing
people to meet the demands of the lowest common denominator of ac- cepted speech,” Turley contends. As people monitor the health of free
expression around the globe, here are some of the questions they’re debating:
Has technology made speech freer? As Arab protesters took to the streets
— and the Internet — in 2011 in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt, everyone from commentators for se- rious foreign-policy journals to “The
Number of Journalists Killed on the Rise
Seventy journalists were killed in 2012, nearly half of them mur- dered, a 43 percent increase from 2011. A total of 232 journalists were imprisoned in 2012, the highest number since the Committee to Protect Journalists began keeping track in 1990. Experts say a select group of countries has fueled the increase by cracking down on criticism of government policies.
Source: “Attacks on the Press,” Committee to Protect Journalists, 2013, www.cpj.org/ attacks/
Journalist Deaths, by Cause, 2012*
36% Crossfire/combat
17% Dangerous assignment
46% Murder
Imprisoned Journalists, 2000-2012
50
100
150
200
250
2012201120102009200820072006200520042003200220012000
* Figures do not total 100 because of rounding.
No. of Journalists
382 CQ Researcher
Daily Show” asked whether the world was witnessing a “Twitter revolution.” Social-media sites such as Twitter and
Facebook were used by activists both as organizing tools and as a means of communication with the outside world. “Tunisians got an alternative picture
from Facebook, which remained un- censored through the protests, and they com- municated events to the rest of the world by posting videos to YouTube and Daily- motion,” Ethan Zuck- erman, a researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for In- ternet and Society, wrote in 2011. “It’s like- ly that news of demon- strations in other parts of the country dis- seminated online helped others conclude that it was time to take to the streets.” 9
Unquestionably, new- media tools make it easier for activists to spread their messages farther and faster than was conceivable during the days of the mimeo- graph machine, or even the fax. “What’s hap- pening with new tech- nology is that it’s mak- ing publication of these stories easier, and they’re reaching a bigger audience,” says Mahoney, the Committee to Protect Jour- nalists deputy director. “Twenty years ago, you’d struggle
to get published in a local newspa- per,” Mahoney says. “Now, as a jour- nalist, you’ve got far more platforms open to you, and you can get it out.” And not just journalists. From Libya
and Iran to Syria and Myanmar, activists and average citizens are able to dis-
seminate text, images and video all over the world, ensuring that their voices can be heard even at moments when regimes are violently cracking down on them. Social media and other technolog-
ical tools have become so omnipresent that former Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., worries that people become addicted
to the online dialogue rather than reach- ing out to broader populations. “My pet peeve is that people think that so- cial media can replace traditional or- ganizing,” says Perriello, President of the Center for American Progress Ac- tion Fund, part of a liberal think tank in Washington. And even free-speech advocates
readily admit that, in a broader sense,
technology can be a two-edged sword. “Suddenly, you have the ability to reach people all over the world and communicate in ways that you never could before, and that’s wonderful,” says Eva Galperin, global policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based group that pro-
motes an unrestricted In- ternet. “But it also allows government surveillance on a scale that was never be- fore possible.” Journalists find that their
e-mail accounts have been hacked by “state-sponsored attackers” in countries such as China and Myanmar. 10
Mobile phones become surveillance devices. “Modern information
technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones . . . magnify the unique- ness of individuals, further enhancing the traditional challenges to privacy,” ac- cording to a recent study by researchers from MIT and other universities that exposed the ease of track- ing individual cellphone users. “Mobility data con- tains the approximate whereabouts of individu- als and can be used to re- construct individuals’ movements across space and time.” 11
Authoritarian regimes also use technology to ac- cess dissidents’ computers,
installing malware that tracks their movements online, according to Galperin. “It records all of their key- strokes and can use the microphones and cameras on the computers, cir- cumventing all attempts to use en- cryption,” she says. It’s not just dictatorships. Galperin
notes that EFF’s longstanding lawsuit against the National Security Agency
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
A free-speech activist in Budapest, Hungary, protests against a new media law on March 15, 2011. The law set up a regulatory council with wide control over media outlets and content, a
power that Human Rights Watch says compromises press freedom. Pictured on the poster is the revered poet of Hungary’s
1848-1849 revolution, Sandor Petofi.
A F P /G e tt y I m a g e s/ A tt il a K is b e n e d e k
April 26, 2013 383www.cqresearcher.com
for using warrantless wiretaps in the United States is “now old enough to go to school.” And many of the sur- veillance tools used by authoritarian regimes are made by U.S. companies, she points out. In the United Kingdom, in response
to a phone-hacking scandal that has led to government investigations and a national debate about press abuses, a communications data bill has been proposed by Home Secretary Theresa May to require Internet service providers and mobile phone services to collect and retain data on user activity. The measure is “designed to give the state blanket rights to look at e-mails and IMs [instant messages] and requires all companies to retain the data for a year and hand it over [to the government],” says Kampfner, the former editor of New Statesman magazine. “It was halt- ed a few months ago, but will be rein- troduced this year.” Iran, which saw its own “Twitter
revolution” during a spasm of post- election protests in 2009, has at- tempted to keep a “Halal Internet,” free of unclean influences and infor- mation from the outside world. In March, Iran’s Ministry of Infor-
mation and Communications Technol- ogy blocked software used by millions of Iranians to bypass the state’s elab- orate Internet filtering system. “A col- lection of illegal virtual private net- works, or VPNs, was successfully closed off by the ministry, making visits to websites deemed immoral or politi- cally dangerous — like Facebook and Whitehouse.gov — nearly impossible,” The New York Times reported. 12
Governments and Internet users are engaged in an unending game of cat and mouse, Kampfner says, with each trying to advance technology in ways that gives its side the upper hand. “There’s something called Tor, an
open-source project that aims to break through all those barriers, whether in China or Iran or anywhere else,” says Wallach, the computer scientist at Rice
University. “Tor keeps getting more and more clever about hiding what they’re doing, and regimes like Iran get more and more clever about block- ing them regardless.” But as many commentators have
noted, free speech online depends not only on government policies and court rulings, but on private companies such as Twitter, Facebook and Google. In- creasingly, these companies are being called on to block posts by terrorists and unpopular or banned political parties. “At the end of the day, the private
networks are not in any way ac- countable if they choose to censor or prevent individuals from accessing services,” says Katherine Maher, direc- tor of strategy and communications for Access, a New York-based digital- rights group. “The Internet is not something dif-
ferent,” Maher says. “It is just an ex- tension of the area in which we live.”
Should religious sensibilities be allowed to limit free expression? When an assassin’s bullet narrowly
missed the head of Lars Hedegaard, suspicion immediately fell on Muslims, since Hedegaard, a former newspaper editor in Denmark, has been an anti- Islam polemicist. But a number of Danish Muslims
condemned the February attack and rose to defend Hedegaard. “We Mus- lims have to find a new way of react- ing,” said Qaiser Najeeb, a Dane whose father had emigrated from Afghanistan. “We don’t defend Hedegaard’s views but do defend his right to speak. He can say what he wants.” 13
For free-speech advocates, it was a refreshing reaction — particularly in a country where Muslim sensitivities have run high since the 2006 publication of cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. “For those, like me, who look upon
free speech as a fundamental good, no degree of cultural or religious dis- comfort can be reason for censorship,”
writes British journalist and author Kenan Malik. “There is no free speech without the ability to offend religious and cultural sensibilities.” 14
In recent years, a growing number of people around the globe have been prosecuted on charges of blasphemy or offending cultural sensibilities through hate speech. According to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), only three people were arrested for committing blasphemy via social media between 2007 and 2011, but more than a dozen such arrests occurred in 10 countries last year. 15
Turkish pianist Fazil Say, for in- stance, was given a suspended sen- tence of 10 months in jail on April 15 for posting tweets considered blas- phemous, while Gamal Abdou Mas- soud, a 17-year-old Egyptian, was sen- tenced to three years for posting blasphemous cartoons on Facebook. “When 21st-century technology col-
lides with medieval blasphemy laws, it seems to be atheists who are get- ting hurt, as more of them go to prison for sharing their personal beliefs via social media,” says Matt Cherry, editor of the IHEU report. In Pakistan, those accused of blas-
phemy often fall victim to violence — before they even get their day in court. — Dozens have been killed after being charged with blasphemy over the past 20 years. Last November, a mob burned Farooqi Girls’ High School in Lahore after a teacher assigned homework that supposedly contained derogatory references to Muhammad. “Repeating the blasphemy under
Pakistan law is seen as blasphemy in itself,” says Padraig Reidy, news editor for the Index on Censorship. “You have these bizarre cases where evi- dence is barely given but people are sentenced to death.” Even criticizing Pakistan’s blasphe-
my law can be dangerous. Sherry Rehman, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, has received death threats since calling for changes in the
384 CQ Researcher
law, while two like-minded politicians have been assassinated. 16
In Pakistan, free speech is pretty much limited to those hanging around cafes and literary festivals, says Huma
Yusuf, a columnist for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. “The threat of blas- phemy — a crime that carries the death penalty — has stifled public dis- course,” she writes. 17
YouTube has been blocked through- out Pakistan since September, when an anti-Muslim video was uploaded to the site. Thousands of other websites also have been blocked, allegedly for containing pornographic or blasphe- mous content. “In truth, most had pub- lished material criticizing the state,” ac- cording to Yusuf. In counties such as Pakistan and
Egypt, the line between blasphemy laws designed to protect against reli- gious offense and those meant to pun- ish minorities and stifle dissent is high- ly porous. “There have been attempts to protect religious sensibility which are in fact a way of curbing press freedom and expression,” says Mahoney, of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the West, worries about offend-
ing religious and cultural sensibilities have sometimes trumped free-speech concerns. “Denigration of religious be- liefs is never acceptable,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard stated be- fore the United Nations in September. “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.” 18
Gillard emphasized her disdain for speech that incites hatred and violence, which has become a common concern among Western politicians. “Western gov- ernments seem to be sending the mes- sage that free-speech rights will not pro- tect you” when it comes to hate speech, writes Turley, the George Washington University law professor. 19
Hate speech is intended to incite discrimination or violence against members of a particular national, racial or ethnic group, writes Aryeh Neier, a former top official with the Amer- ican Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute. But, Neier notes, “It is important to
differentiate blasphemy from hate speech. The proclivity of some else- where to react violently to what they consider blasphemous cannot be the criterion for imposing limits on free expression in the U.S., the United
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Blasphemy Laws Proliferate
Videos and cartoons mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad have prompted many countries to enact strict anti-blasphemy laws. Christians and Muslims have used the laws to prosecute people seen as insulting religion. Blasphemy laws in Muslim countries usually refer only to defaming Islam, and punishments can include the death penalty. Many cases involve comments or videos posted on social media such as Twitter and YouTube.
Examples of Recent Blasphemy Cases
Source: International Humanist and Ethical Union, December 2012
Country Law Austria Prohibits disparaging a religious object, society or doctrine.
On Dec. 11, 2010, Helmut Griese, 63, was convicted for offending his Muslim neighbor by yodeling while mowing his lawn; the neighbor claimed Griese was imitating the Muslim call to prayer. On Jan. 22, 2009, politician Susanne Winter was fined $24,000 for saying Muhammad was a pedophile because he had a 9-year-old wife.
India Allows up to three years in prison for insulting religion or religious beliefs.
On April 21, 2012, the Catholic Church filed a complaint against Sanal Edama- ruku, the founder of the reason-based organization Rationalist International, after he exposed a “miracle” by showing water from a statue of Jesus was coming from a leaky drain. On Nov. 19, 2012, college student Shaheen Dhada and a friend were arrested for complaining on Facebook that Mumbai had been shut down for the funeral of the leader of the Hindu nationalist party.
Iran Bars criticism of Islam or deviation from the ruling Islamic standards.
Web designer Saeed Malekpour, 35, a Canadian, served four years on death row in Iran for “insulting Islam.” He was arrested while visiting his dying father in Iran in 2008 because a photo-sharing program he created while in Canada was used by others to download pornography. The death sentence was suspended in 2012 after Malekpour “repented.”
Netherlands Penalizes “scornful blasphemy” that insults religious feelings.
On March 19, 2008, Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot was arrested for insulting Muslims in his drawings. On Jan. 21, 2009, politician Geert Wilders was put on trial because his film “Fitna” compared Islam and Nazism. He was acquitted.
Pakistan Bans blasphemy, including defiling the Quran and making remarks against the Prophet Muhammad.
In 2011 the governor of Punjab and the minister for minority affairs were assassi- nated because they opposed the country’s blasphemy laws. On June 22, 2011, 29-year-old Larkana resident Abdul Sattar was sentenced to death and fined $1,000 for sending text messages and blaspheming the Quran, Muhammad and other Islamic figures during a phone conversation.
United Kingdom Prohibits “hate speech” against religious groups.
On March 4, 2010, philosophy tutor Harry Taylor was sentenced to six months in prison, 100 hours of community service and fined €250 ($337 at the time) for leaving anti-Christian and anti-Islam cartoons in an airport prayer room.
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Kingdom, Denmark or the Netherlands (or anywhere else).” 20
In recent months, the human rights group American Freedom Defense Ini- tiative (AFDI) has been running anti- Muslim ads on public transportation systems around the United States. Posters that appeared on San Francis- co buses last month, for example, in- cluded a picture of Osama bin Laden and a made-up quote from “Hamas MTV” that said, “Killing Jews is wor- ship that brings us closer to Allah.” After New York’s
Metropolitan Tran- sit Authority tried to block the ads last summer, Feder- al District Judge Paul A. Engelmay- er ruled that the agency had violat- ed AFDI’s First Amendment rights. “Not only did
[he] rule that the ads should be ’afforded the highest level of protection under the First Amendment,’ he went on to offer some eye-opening examples,” writes San Francisco Chroniclecolumnist C. W. Nevius. “Engelmayer said an ad could accuse a private citizen of being a child abuser. Or, he suggested, it could say, ’Fat peo- ple are slobs’ or ’Blondes are bimbos’ and still be protected.” 21
Rather than put up a legal fight, San Francisco’s Municipal Railway de- cided to put up peace posters of its own and donate the AFDI’s advertis- ing fee to the city’s Human Rights Commission.
Should the United States promote free speech abroad? Because of the First Amendment
and the history of its interpretation,
the United States has what comes closest to absolute protection of free speech of any country on Earth. And many believe free expression is not only essential to democracy but a value Americans should help export to other countries. At a 2011 Internet freedom confer-
ence in The Hague, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said,
“The United States will be making the case for an open Internet in our work worldwide. “The right to express one’s views,
practice one’s faith, peacefully assem- ble with others to pursue political or social change — these are all rights to which all human beings are enti- tled, whether they choose to exercise them in a city square or an Internet chat room,” Clinton said. “And just as we have worked together since the last century to secure these rights in the material world, we must work to- gether in this century to secure them in cyberspace.” 22
But the right to free expression that is taken for granted in the United
States is not shared around the world. Some people — including some Amer- icans — worry that the United States risks offending governments and citi- zens in other nations by preserving free-speech rights — including the right to racist and blasphemous speech — above nearly every other consideration. Such voices have been prominent
when Americans have exercised their free-speech rights in ways that offend others. Threats to burn the Quran — as well as ac- tual Quran burnings — by Florida pastor Terry Jones led to deadly riots in the Muslim world in 2010 and 2011. Last fall, video portions from an anti-Muslim film called “Innocence of Muslims” triggered riots in several predominantly Muslim nations. Speaking to the Unit-
ed Nations two weeks later, President Obama explained that the U.S. government could not ban such a video because of free-speech rights en- shrined in the U.S. Con- stitution.
“Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly dis- agree with,” Obama said. “We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders un- derstood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to ex- press their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened.” 23
But Obama noted that modern tech- nology means “anyone with a cellphone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button.” While reality, some commentators
said it was foolish to expect other na- tions to understand the American right
Indians protest against the American-made anti-Muslim video “Innocence of Muslims” in Kolkata on Oct. 5, 2012. The film incited a wave of anti-U.S. violence in Libya, Egypt and other countries across the Muslim world. Speaking at the United Nations after the protests,
President Obama explained that such films could not be banned in the United States because of the U.S. Constitution’s free-speech rights.
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FREE SPEECH AT RISK
to unbridled speech. “While the First Amendment right to free expression is important, it is also important to re- member that other countries and cul- tures do not have to understand or re- spect our right,” Anthea Butler, a University of Pennsylvania religious studies professor, wrote in USA Today. 24
Americans must remember that “our First Amendment values are not uni- versal,” cautioned Eric Posner, a Uni- versity of Chicago law professor. “Americans need to learn that the
rest of the world — and not just Mus- lims — see no sense in the First Amendment,” Posner wrote in Slate. “Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order. Our own history suggests that they might have a point.” 25
Access’ Maher, who has consulted on technology issues with the World Bank and UNICEF, notes that even other Western nations tend to hold free-speech rights less dear, viewing them within a context not of person- al liberty but a framework where they risk infringing on the rights of others. “This often leads to robust debates about incitement, hate speech, blas- phemy and their role in the political discourse, often in a manner more open to possible circumscription than would be acceptable in the United States,” she says. Even some who promote free ex-
pression worry about the United States taking a leading role in its promotion, because of the risk of it being seen elsewhere as an American value being imposed from without. “The problem is freedom of ex-
pression has come to be seen as ei- ther an American or Anglo-Saxon con- struct, whereas we would all like to see it as a universal principle,” says Kampfner, the British journalist. “There is a danger that if this value is seen as proselytized primarily by the Unit-
ed States, it will reinforce those who are suspicious of it.” But it may be that America’s
staunch adherence to free speech makes the United States uniquely well- suited to promote and defend the idea. “The United States values a free press
and should promote those values abroad,” says Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “No Western country wants to ap-
pear to be lecturing other countries to uphold its values, but it’s not an Amer- ican construct,” he says. “We have a duty to remind them of that, and we expect international bodies like the U.N. and countries like the United King- dom and the European Union to do the same thing.” During his first trip abroad as sec-
retary of State, John Kerry in Febru- ary defended free speech — includ- ing the “right to be stupid” — as a virtue “worth fighting for.” 26
It’s important that individuals and groups in foreign countries take the lead in explaining free-speech rights, “so it’s not seen as a Western concept,” says Reidy, the Index on Censorship editor. “Certain human rights are not West-
ern,” he says, “they’re universal. That’s the whole point of human rights.”
BACKGROUND Refusal to “Revoco”
T he struggle for free speech hasbeen a long story about testing limits. Many of the most famous mo- ments in the development of free speech in the Western world involved notable figures such as the French philosopher Voltaire, the Biblical trans- lator William Tyndale and the Italian astronomer Galileo, who were vari- ously exiled, executed or forced to re- cant things they had said or written.
“Governments in all places in all times have succumbed to the impulse to exert control over speech and con- science,” writes Rodney A. Smolla, pres- ident of Furman University. 27
The first great flowering of democ- racy and free speech occurred 500 years before the birth of Christ in the Greek city-state of Athens. The city pioneered the idea of government by consent, allowing the people the free- dom to choose their own rules. “Free speech was an inseparable
part of the new Athenian order,” Robert Hargreaves, who was a British broadcaster, writes in his 2002 book The First Freedom. “Never before had ordinary citizens been given the right to debate such vital matters as war and peace, public finance or crime and punishment.” 28
But although Athens embraced, off and on, the concept of government by consent, it did not yet accept the idea of individual free speech that might upset the prevailing order. Athens now may be remembered less for pi- oneering free speech than for trying and executing the great philosopher Socrates in 399 B.C., after he refused to recant his teachings. Demanding that critics and heretics
recant has been a persistent theme throughout history. After Martin Luther printed his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, which criticized clerical abuses, Cardi- nal Thomas Cajetan, the papal legate in Rome, asked him to say revoco, or “I recant,” and all would be well. Luther refused. Cajetan wanted to turn Luther over
to Rome on charges of heresy, but Frederick III, the elector of Saxony, al- lowed him to stay. Luther’s works be- came bestsellers. Not only was he a celebrity, but his writings helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Eventually, Pope Leo X and the
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V also asked Luther to recant his writings. He argued that he was defending works
Continued on p. 388
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Chronology 1940s-1980s New laws, international entities and court decisions expand free-speech rights.
1946 French constitution upholds princi- ple that “free communication of thought and of opinion is one of the most precious rights of man.”
1948 United Nations adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights, de- claring “the right to freedom of opinion and expression” for all.
1952 U.S. Supreme Court extends First Amendment protections to movies.
1954 Congress effectively criminalizes the Communist Party.
1961 British jury allows Penguin to publish the novel Lady Chatterly's Lover, which had been on a list of obscene material.
1964 In landmark New York Times v. Sullivan decision, U.S. Supreme Court rules that public officials must prove “actual malice” on the part of journalists in order to sue for libel. . . . Free Speech Move- ment at University of California, Berkeley, insists that administrators allow campus protests.
1968 U.K. abolishes 400-year-old laws allowing for government censorship of theater performances.
1971 In the first instance of prior re- straint on the press in U.S. history, a court blocks The New York Times from publishing the Penta-
gon Papers, but the Supreme Court OKs publication of the clas- sified Vietnam War history.
1989 Iran’s Islamic government issues a fatwa, or kill order, against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie forc- ing him into hiding for years. . . . Supreme Court upholds the right to burn the U.S. flag in protest.
•
2000s In response to terrorist attacks, many Western countries limit civil liberties.
2000 At the first meeting of the post- Cold War Community of Democra- cies, 106 countries pledge to up- hold democratic principles, including freedom of expression
2005 George W. Bush administration ul- timately fails in its year-long cam- paign to pressure New York Times not to publish a story about war- rantless wiretaps
2006 More than 200 people die in vio- lent protests across the Muslim world after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad. . . . United Kingdom bans language intended “to stir up religious hatred.” . . . In response to July 2005 terrorist bombings of bus and subway system that killed more than 50 people, U.K. enacts Prevention of Terrorism Act, which curtails speech in the name of security. . . . Crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, known for her coverage of the Chechen conflict, is assassinated.
2010s In an age of
new media, both rich and developing countries restrict speech that may offend.
2010 WikiLeaks publishes thousands of sen- sitive documents related to U.S. diplo- matic efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. . . . Google announces it is pulling out of China due to govern- ment censorship of its service.
2012 U.S. Supreme Court finds the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional; the 2006 law made it a crime to falsely claim to have won military decorations. . . . Members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot are convicted of hooli- ganism for protesting President Vladimir Putin’s policies in a Moscow church. . . . “Innocence of Muslims,” an anti-Muslim video post- ed on YouTube, triggers riots in sev- eral Middle Eastern and North African countries. . . . Twitter blocks German access to posts by a banned neo- Nazi party, its first bow to “country- withheld content” regulations. . . . In- quiry on press abuses in Britain spurred by telephone-hacking scandal by media outlets calls for greater reg- ulation. . . . Egyptian court sentences to death in absentia Florida pastor Terry Jones, who had offended Mus- lims through Quran burnings and promotion of an anti-Muslim film.
2013 Pfc. Bradley Manning pleads guilty to 10 charges of giving government secrets to WikiLeaks (Feb. 28). . . . Due to lack of support, Australia’s ruling party withdraws a proposal to regulate the press (March 21). . . . Privately owned newspapers are distributed in Myanmar for the first time in 50 years (April 1). . . . Egyptian court drops charges against popular comedian Bassem Youssef, who had been accused of insulting the president (April 6).
388 CQ Researcher
about the teachings of Christ and therefore was not free to retract them. He offered this famous defense: “Here I stand; God help me; I can do no other.” 29 As a result, the pope ex- communicated him, and the emperor condemned him as an outlaw.
Controlling the Press
L uther’s writings were spread thanksto the advent of the printing press, a new technology that governments sought to control. The Star Chamber of the British Parliament in 1586 strictly
limited the number of master printers, apprentices and printing presses that could operate in London. All books were required to be licensed by the archbishop of Canterbury or the bish- op of London. A few decades later, members of
Parliament won the ability to speak and vote without royal restraint. This led to a freer press, as London print- ers began publishing journals that were largely accounts of Parliament but also contained news. By 1645, the printers were putting out an average of 14 separate weekly titles. 30
A year earlier, the English poet John Milton had published his Aereopagitica,
remembered as one of the most elo- quent pleas for a free press ever penned. “Truth is strong next to the Almighty, she needs no policies, no stratagems nor licensing to make her victorious,” Milton wrote in the treatise. “Give her but room, and do not bind her.” Although it grew out of ongoing de-
bates about press licensing and limiting free speech, the Aereopagitica had little influence in its day. The press remained heavily regulated both in the United King- dom and in its American colonies. In 1734, a German-born printer in
New York named John Peter Zenger published criticism of royalist Gov. William Cosby, calling him “a governor
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
Continued from p. 386
A leksei A. Navalny expects to go to jail. Last month, a Russian court announced it would schedule a trial against Navalny, who is accused of embezzling from a
timber company, even though the case was dismissed last year for lack of evidence. Still, Navalny said, “Honestly, I am almost certain I am going to prison.” 1
Many of Navalny’s supporters believe his real crimes were organizing protests in Moscow in 2011 and 2012, blogging and running a nonprofit group that operates websites that allow citizens to report incidents of government corruption. Navalny, who announced on April 4 that he will run for
president, is not the only activist to come under pressure from Russia’s government. Since Vladimir Putin returned to the pres- idency last May, new restrictions have been imposed on In- ternet content, and fines of up to $32,000 have been imposed for participating in protests deemed illegal. International nonprofit groups such as Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch and Transparency International have been ordered to register as foreign agents. All have refused, and their offices recently have been raided by government investigators. Last month, Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition politician and
one of only two members of the Russian parliament to sup- port public protests such as those organized by Navalny, was accused of treason by some of his colleagues after he visited the United States in March. Gudkov’s father was stripped of his seat in parliament last fall. While cracking down on opposition voices, Putin’s govern-
ment has been able to rely on friendly state-run media cover- age, including from Channel One, the nation’s most widely watched television station. During his U.S. visit, Gudkov noted
that Russian state-controlled media had accused him of trea- son and selling secrets. While some countries try to crack down on independent
media outlets through intimidation, Russia for the most part controls communications directly, with the state or its friends owning most of the major newspapers and broadcasters. Arch Puddington, vice president for research at Freedom House,
a Washington-based watchdog group, says what he calls the “Putin model” is widely practiced. “They buy television stations and turn them into mouthpieces of the government,” he says. It’s a case of, “If you can’t beat them, buy them,” says An-
thony Mills, deputy director of the International Press Institute in Austria. Russia is not alone. In some Central Asian and Latin Amer-
ican countries, government-owned media are commonly used for propaganda and to negate foreign criticism. In Turkey, most of the media are controlled by a few pri-
vate companies, which leads more to collusion than intimida- tion, says former Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va. “In Turkey, you have less of the situation of people being shaken down [or threat- ened] if they print this story,” he says. “Instead, many of the TV companies are doing contracts with the government, so there’s a financial interest in not wanting to irritate people in the . . . government.” In other countries, antagonism is the norm. According to
Freedom House, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa has called the press his “greatest political enemy,” which he says is “ig- norant,” “mediocre,” “primitive,” “bloodthirsty” and “deceitful.” 2
“Ecuador under its president of the last five years, Rafael Cor- rea, has become one of the world’s leading oppressors of free
Free Speech Can Be Deadly in Russia “Many journalists end up dead, assaulted or threatened.”
April 26, 2013 389www.cqresearcher.com
turned rogue” who was undermining the colony’s laws. At Zenger’s trial the following year, attorney Andrew Hamil- ton argued that the judge and jury should not separately consider the ques- tions of whether he had published the material and whether it was libelous, as was the practice at the time, but rather simply determine whether it could not be libel because it was true. The jury’s verdict of not guilty was
considered an important precedent, but it would be 70 years before New York changed its libels laws so the question of truth could be entered into evidence. William Blackstone, in his Com-
mentaries on the Laws of England of
1769, laid the groundwork for the idea that there should be no licensing or prior restraint of the press, but that publishers could still face punishment after publication. This formed the basis for the thinking of the American Founders, who remained skeptical about a completely free press. “License of the press is no proof of
liberty,” John Adams wrote in his No- vanglus Letters of 1774. “When a peo- ple are corrupted, the press may be made an engine to complete their ruin . . . and the freedom of the press, in- stead of promoting the cause of liber- ty, will but hasten its destruction.” As U.S. president, Adams signed the
Alien and Sedition Acts, which led to multiple arrests and convictions of print- ers and publicists (all Republicans, or political opponents of Adams). The law was overturned under Thomas Jef- ferson, who had been skeptical about the need for unbridled press but em- braced it in his second inaugural, stat- ing that the press needed no other legal restraint than the truth. The principle that there was a right
to disseminate facts in a democracy was crystallized in British philosopher John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty of 1859. “News, independently gathered and impartially conveyed, was seen to be an indispensable commodity in a so-
speech,” Peter Hartcher, international editor for The Sydney Morning Her- ald, wrote last summer. “Correa has appropriated, closed and intimidated many media outlets critical of his gov- ernment. He has sued journalists for crippling damages.” 3
Analysts say the Venezuelan gov- ernment tries to own or control near- ly all media, while vilifying and jailing independent journalists. And in Russia, government ha-
rassment of independent voices is common. Only a few independent outlets operate, such as Novaya Gaze- ta, a newspaper co-owned by for- mer Soviet President Mikhail Gor- bachev, but they aren’t widely read or heard except by law enforcement agencies that often arrest, beat and — according to watchdog groups — even kill journalists. 4
The 2006 killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a Novaya Gazeta reporter noted for her coverage of the Chechen conflict, drew international attention, although no one has been convicted of her murder. “Russia is among the most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist,” says Rajan Menon, a political scien- tist at City College of New York. “Many journalists end up dead, assaulted or threatened for looking into hot-button issues, es- pecially corruption.”
In some countries, state-owned media criticize their own governments, says Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, citing the example of the BBC. But when near- ly all media are owned by a few indi- viduals or companies, it’s not “good in the long term for a diverse and vibrant free press,” he says. Nor is it good when journalists fear
they might be killed for digging into sto- ries. In Russia, for instance, journalists are routinely killed with impunity. “There are 17 cases where journalists were killed in the last dozen years or so,” Ma- honey says, “and there have been no prosecutions.”
— Alan Greenblatt
1 Andrew E. Kramer, “With Trial Suddenly Loom- ing, Russian Activist Expects the Worst,” The New York Times, March 28, 2013, p. A4, www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/world/europe/with-case-reopened-the- russian-activist-aleksei-navalny-expects-the-worst.html. 2 “Freedom of the Press 2011: Ecuador,” Freedom House, Sept. 1, 2011, www. freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2011/ecuador. 3 Peter Hartcher, “Hypocrisy Ends Hero’s Freedom to Preach,” The Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 21, 2012, www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/hypocrisy- ends-heros-freedom-to-preach-20120820-24ijx.html. 4 Peter Preston, “Putin’s win is a hollow victory for a Russian free press,” The Guardian, March 10, 2012, www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/11/putin- win-russian-free-press.
Russian activist Aleksei Navalny, a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin, addresses an anti-Putin rally in St. Petersburg on Feb. 12, 2012.
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ciety where the people ruled them- selves,” Mill wrote.
Expanding Rights
T he U.S. Supreme Court seldom ex-amined the question of free speech during the 19th century, but justices began to expand its sense in the 20th century. During World War I, more than 1,900
Americans were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedi- tion Act of 1918, which banned print- ing, writing and uttering of statements deemed disloyal or abusive of the U.S. government.
One case led to the famous formu- lation of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in false- ly shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and creating a panic,” Holmes wrote in his dissent in Schenck v. U.S. in 1919. “The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such cir- cumstances and are of such a nature to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” Although fewer dissenters were pros-
ecuted during World War II there were still dozens. “The Roosevelt administra- tion investigated suspects for their ‘un-
American’ associations and employed a variety of legal devices to harass the dissenters and suppress the dissent,” writes historian Richard W. Steele. 31
During the 1940s and ’50s, Con- gress did what it could to ban Com- munist Party activities in the United States, but after World War II, the sense that free speech was an inalienable right took deep hold in the country and the courts. It was even included in Article 19 of the Universal Decla- ration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, which says: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right in- cludes freedom to hold opinions with-
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
I t’s been decades now since China opened up to the West. But it’s still not completely open, especially with regard to freedom of speech and the press. In recent months, angered by coverage it viewed as hos-
tile, such as reports that the families of top government offi- cials have enriched themselves while the officials have been in power, China has denied entry visas to reporters from media organizations such as The New York Times, Al-Jazeera English and Reuters. Since October, it has blocked access within China to The
Times’ website, while Chinese hackers have broken into email accounts belonging to reporters from The Times and The Wall Street Journal, possibly to determine the sources of stories crit- ical of government officials. China has long maintained a “Great Firewall,” blocking its
citizens from accessing critical content from foreign sources. But the Chinese government is also at pains to block internal criticism from its own citizens and media, as well. In any given year, China typically ranks in the world’s top
two or three countries in terms of how many journalists it im- prisons. 1 “There’s a certain level of very localized dissent al- lowed, but it can never be expressed directly at the regime,” says Padraig Reidy, news editor for Index on Censorship, a free-speech advocacy group. “You can say a local official is corrupt — maybe,” Reidy
says. “But you can’t say the party is corrupt. That’s the end of you.” Besides tracking journalists’ activities, China’s government
also monitors activists’ online postings. A recent study by com- puter scientist Dan Wallach of Rice University and several col-
leagues found that China could be employing more than 4,000 censors to monitor the 70,000 posts per minute uploaded to Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. 2
The censors tend to track known activists and use auto- mated programs to hunt for forbidden phrases. “Certain words you know are never going to get out of the gate,” Wallach says. “Falun Gong” — a spiritual practice China has sought to ban —“those three characters you can’t utter on any Chinese website anywhere in the country.” Weibo users are “incredibly clever” at coming up with mis-
spellings and neologisms to sneak past the censors, Wallach says. For instance, a colloquial phrase for China, the Celestial Temple, is sometimes rewritten as “celestial bastard,” using similar- looking characters. But once such usage becomes widespread, the censors are
quick to catch on and such terms also are quickly eradicated from websites. “China is definitely the market leader in tech- nical tools for clamping down on free expression,” says British journalist John Kampfner. Aside from imprisonment and hacking attacks, China uses
self-censorship to suppress criticism of the state, says Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Reporters and others constantly worry about what sort of statements could trigger a crackdown. “With self-censoring, journalists tend to be more conserva-
tive,” Mahoney says. Such sensitivity to what censors will think extends even to Hollywood movies. Given the growing im- portance of the Chinese film market, the country’s censors now review scripts and inspect sets of movies filmed in China to make sure that nothing offends their sensibilities.
China Opens Up — But Just a Crack Journalists’ and dissenters’ activities are still monitored.
April 26, 2013 391www.cqresearcher.com
out interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” 32
A series of lectures by American free- speech advocate Alexander Meiklejohn published in 1948 was hugely influen- tial as a defense of the notion that free speech and democracy are intertwined. “The phrase ‘Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,’ is unqualified,” Meiklejohn wrote. “It ad- mits of no exceptions. . . . That prohi- bition holds good in war and peace, in danger as in security.” 33
In the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court protected racist speech, as well as speech by advocates of integration. “A decision
protecting speech by a Ku Klux Klan member cited a decision that protected an African-American antiwar state legis- lator, and the case of the klansman was, in turn, cited [in 1989] to protect a rad- ical who burned the American flag as a political protest,” writes Wake Forest law professor Michael Kent Curtis. 34
In 1964, the Supreme Court limit- ed libel suits brought by public offi- cials, finding that the First Amendment required “actual malice” — that is, knowledge that information published was false. 35 Seven years later, a lower court blocked The New York Times from publish further portions of the Penta- gon Papers, a government history of
the Vietnam War — the first example in U.S. history of prior restraint. The Supreme Court lifted the in-
junction. Justice Hugo Black wrote, “In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the news- papers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.” 36
After a long period of expansion, press freedoms and other civil liber- ties were challenged following the ter- rorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Once again, free speech was seen as possi- bly undermining the government at a time when security concerns had be- come paramount. “Press freedoms are
“There were points where we were shooting with a crew of 500 people,” said Rob Cohen, director of “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” which kicked off a recent wave of co-productions between Chinese companies and Amer- ican studios. “I’m not sure who was who or what, but know- ing the way the system works, it’s completely clear that had we deviated from the script, it would not have gone unno- ticed.” 3 The Academy Award-winning “Django Unchained” was initially cut to delete scenes of extreme violence, but censors blocked its scheduled April 12 release due to shots of full-frontal nudity. In addition to carefully inspecting Western content coming
into the country, China is seeking to export its model for rigid media control to other countries. “It’s fascinating to look at Chi- nese investment in Africa,” says Anthony Mills, deputy director of the Austria-based International Press Institute. “They’ve bought into a variety of media outlets in Africa.” While China can’t impose censorship in Africa, its control
of media outlets there helps ensure favorable coverage. Bei- jing is actively promoting its image abroad through news- content deals with state-owned media in countries including Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cuba, Malaysia and Turkey, according to the South African Institute of International Affairs. “Countries that need Chinese trade, aid and recognition, and those with tense relations with the U.S., are more likely to be influ- enced by China’s soft power,” the institute concluded in a report last year. 4
“China has this model in which the economic welfare and the perceived welfare of the state as a whole trump individual freedoms,” Mills says.
Some Western observers, such as Reidy, believe China will eventually have to become more open, because capitalist in- vestment demands a free flow of information. But others wonder whether China’s more authoritarian ap-
proach represents a challenge to the transatlantic model that has been fairly dominant around the globe since World War II, with freedom of expression seen as essential to democracy and economic growth. Already, says former Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., residents of
countries such as Turkey complain less about individual freedoms while the economy is growing. “If you actually get to a point where China is associated with
economic prosperity more than Western countries are, then people look differently at democracy and human rights,” he says. “I wish they didn’t, but that’s part of the fear, that we can’t assume there’s this natural march toward more liberalism.”
— Alan Greenblatt
1 Madeline Earp, “Disdain for Foreign Press Undercuts China’s Global Ambition,” Committee to Protect Journalists, March 11, 2013, www.cpj.org/2013/02/attacks- on-the-press-china-tightens-control.php. 2 “Computer Scientists Measure the Speed of Censorship on China’s Twitter,” The Physics arXiv Blog, March 6, 2013, www.technologyreview.com/view/ 512231/computer-scientists-measure-the-speed-of-censorship-on-chinas-twitter. 3 Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes, “To Get Movies Into China, Holly- wood Gives Censors a Preview,” The New York Times, Jan. 15, 2013, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/business/media/in-hollywood-movies-for-china- bureaucrats-want-a-say.html. 4 Yu-Shan Wu, “The Rise of China’s State-Led Media Dynasty in Africa,” South African Institute of International Affairs, June 2012, p. 11, www. saiia.org.za/images/stories/pubs/occasional_papers_above_100/saia_sop_%20117_ wu_20120618.pdf.
392 CQ Researcher
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
positively correlated with greater transna- tional terrorism,” write University of Chica- go law professor Posner and Harvard University law professor Adrian Ver- meule. “Nations with a free press are more likely to be targets of such ter- rorism.” 37
For example, they cited a 2005 New York Times story on the so-called war- rantless wiretapping program at the Na- tional Security Agency, which they argue alerted terror- ists that the United States was monitor- ing communications the terrorists believed were secure. 38 The Bush administration made similar argu- ments to The Times, which held the story until after the 2004 presidential election. Worried that the
administration would seek a federal court injunction to block publication, The Times first published the story on its website. “In the new digital world of publishing, there were no printing press- es to stop,” notes Samuel Walker, a Uni- versity of Nebraska law professor. 39
CURRENT SITUATION
Government Secrets
W ith so much speech, commerce— and terrorist activity — tak- ing place online, Congress is struggling to find an appropriate balance between security on the one hand and privacy and free-speech concerns on the other.
On April 18, the House passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Pro- tection Act, known by the acryonym CISPA. The bill would give military and security agencies greater access to Americans’ online activity by making
it easier for private companies to share cyberthreat information with the gov- ernment, allowing government and businesses to help each other out when they get hacked. The nation’s networks are already
under attack from countries such as Iran and Russia, Texas GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, told his colleagues during floor debate. 40
“I think if anything, the recent events in Boston demonstrate that we have to come together to get this done,” Mc- Caul said, referring to the bombs that exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon three days earlier. “In the case of Boston, they were real bombs. In this case, they’re digital bombs.” 41
But the bill’s opponents said it rep- resented a violation of privacy and free-speech rights, giving government agencies such as the FBI and CIA easy access to online accounts without war-
rants, chilling free expression. On April 16, the Obama administration threat- ened to veto the bill, if it were to reach the president’s desk. 42
The bill would allow Internet com- panies “to ship the whole kit and ca-
boodle” of personal in- formation to the government, including that which does not per- tain directly to cyberthreats and “is none of the gov- ernment’s business,” said California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader of the House. 43
“I am disappointed . . . we did not address the concerns of the White House about personal information,” Pelosi said. “It offers no policies and did not allow any amend- ments and no real solu- tions to uphold Ameri- cans’ right to privacy.” The measure now goes
to the U.S. Senate. A sim- ilar bill was unable to muster enough Sen- ate votes last year to overcome a filibuster, and this year’s outcome is uncertain.
Information Explosion
T he explosion of information onthe Internet and in online data- bases has made legal concerns about free speech more complicated, says Randall Bezanson, a law professor at the University of Iowa. For most of U.S. history, such concerns turned large- ly on the question of whether the gov- ernment had the power to censor speech. Now, he says, regulating speech involves the government not just quashing the speech of individuals but in protecting documents and databases — its own, and others — from disclosure. The Obama administration has
learned that lesson well, he says, and Continued on p. 394
Ku Klux Klan members in Pulaski, Tenn., participate in a march honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general who helped found the Klan, on July 11, 2009. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled
that even hate groups like the Klan have a constitutional right to express their racist views publicly.
G e tt y I m ag e s/ Sp e n ce r P la tt
no
April 26, 2013 393www.cqresearcher.com
At Issue: Should journalists be regulated?yes
yes STEVEN BARNETT PROFESSOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER, LONDON, ENGLAND
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, APRIL 2013
i n an ideal world, a free press should not be constrainedany more than free speech. Unfortunately, this is not anideal world. Would-be terrorists seek to recruit supporters, grossly offensive material can reap huge financial rewards and some publications try to boost circulation and scoop competitors using immoral and even downright malicious methods. Some methods, such as hacking into voicemails, are illegal in
Britain. Others are not. Public outrage was sparked by atro- cious behaviour that some British newspapers have sanctioned in the name of “journalism,” such as splashing on the front page the private and intimate diaries of Kate McCann after the disappearance of her daughter Madeleine. Although Mrs. McCann begged the News of the World not to publish the di- aries, the newspaper ignored her pleas. Such callous indiffer- ence to people’s feelings had become institutionalized in some of Britain’s best-selling newspapers. What is required is not state control or statutory regulation.
But the press must be held accountable for egregious abuses of its own privileged position within a democracy. In the United Kingdom, Sir Brian Leveson, who chaired a
judicial inquiry into press practices and ethics as a result of the phone-hacking scandal, recommended the moderate solu- tion of voluntary self-regulation overseen by an autonomous body that would assess whether self-regulation was effective and independent. If so, news organizations choosing to belong would be entitled to financial incentives such as lower court costs and exemption from exemplary damages if sued. It is, I repeat, a voluntary incentive-based system, which is needed to protect ordinary people from amoral and sometimes vindictive practices that have no place in journalism. Such proposals might feel uncomfortable in the land of the
First Amendment, but it is exceptionally mild by European standards. In Finland, a Freedom of Expression Act mandates, among other things, that aggrieved parties have a right of reply or correction without undue delay. In Germany, news- papers are required to print corrections with the same promi- nence as the original report. Scandinavian countries have passed legislation on press ethics. These countries are not rampant dictatorships. But they all,
as will Britain, find a proper balance between unconstrained journalism and the rights of ordinary people not to have their misery peddled for corporate profit.no
ANTHONY MILLS DEPUTY DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL PRESS INSTITUTE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, APRIL 2013
i n any healthy democracy, the media play a watchdogrole, holding elected officials accountable and serving thepublic interest by satisfying citizens’ right to know what is being done in their name in the often not-so-transparent corridors of power. In the United States, for instance, the Watergate scandal was unearthed and covered, at not inconsiderable risk, by two young Washington Post reporters. Not surprisingly, there are those in office for whom such
media scrutiny is, to put it mildly, unwelcome. And, lo and behold, they become advocates for state regulation of the media. They may very well point to one or more examples of egregious, even criminal, journalist behavior as evidence of the need to exert greater control. No one suggests that journalists are above the law. But
when they engage in criminal behavior, they should be held accountable in criminal courts. The profession must not be overseen by the very elected officials whom it is supposed to hold to account. Surely, from the perspective of the politicians, that would be a conflict of interest. The answer is self-regulation. That could be accomplished
through independent regulatory bodies with the teeth to hold journalists ethically accountable or through ethical standards rigorously and systematically imposed by media outlets them- selves as is the case in the United States, where the First Amendment right to freedom of the press is fiercely guarded. Professional peers must lead by example. In the absence of self-regulation, or where it is not effectively
implemented, the path is easily paved for statutory regulation, whether direct, or roundabout, in form. The aftermath of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal in the U.K., and the ensuing inquiry by Lord Justice Leveson, have amply demonstrated this. The U.K. press is set to be bound by statu- tory legislation for the first time in hundreds of years. That cannot be healthy for democracy, and other countries tend to follow the lead of their democratic “peers.” So it is incumbent upon everyone in the profession to re-
sist any efforts to impose statutory regulation of the press by those upon whom the press is supposed to be keeping its watchful eye. But it falls upon the press to ensure that the standards it embraces are of the highest order of professional- ism and integrity. Anything less offers cannon fodder for those targeting a free media.
394 CQ Researcher
is doing its best to keep state secrets secret. “Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I- era Espionage Act than all his prede- cessors combined,” Bloomberg News reported last fall. 44
The administration was disturbed by the leak of thousands of diplomatic cables, which were published in 2010 by the whistleblower website Wiki- Leaks, founded by former Australian computer hacker Julian Assange. 45
“The Julian Assange episode and those disclosures of pretty well unfil- tered information, I think, scared peo- ple in government and raised a whole different specter of what could be done and what the consequences are, and that has probably triggered a more ag- gressive approach in the Justice De- partment,” Bezanson says. On Feb. 28, Army Pfc. Bradley Man-
ning, who leaked thousands of diplo- matic, military and intelligence cables to WikiLeaks, pleaded guilty to 10 charges of illegally acquiring and trans- ferring government secrets, agreeing to spend 20 years in prison. Manning pleaded not guilty, however, to 12 ad- ditional counts — including espionage — and faces a general court-martial in June. Manning’s case has made him a cause
célèbre among some on the left who see him as being unduly persecuted. A similar dynamic is playing out in memory of American online activist and pioneer Aaron Swartz, who com- mitted suicide in January while facing charges that could carry a 35-year prison sentence in a case involving his downloading of copyrighted aca- demic journals. In March, the entire editorial board
of the Journal of Library Administra- tion resigned over what one member described as “a crisis of conscience” over the 26-year-old Swartz’s death. 46
The librarians were concerned not
only about the Swartz case but the larger issue of access to journal arti- cles, feeling that publishers were be- coming entirely too restrictive in their terms of use. In general, Bezanson says, courts
are becoming less accepting of the idea that “information wants to be free,” as the Internet-era slogan has it. The courts are not only more supportive of copyright holders but seemingly more skeptical about free speech in general, with the Supreme Court in recent cases having curbed some of the free-speech rights it had afford- ed to students and hate groups in previous decisions. “The doctrine of the First Amend-
ment is going to be more forgiving of regulated speech,” Bezanson says.
Regulating the Press?
I n other countries, concern is grow-ing that freedom of speech and of the press have been badly abused in recent years. A phone-hacking scan- dal involving the News of the World, a British tabloid, shocked the United Kingdom in 2011 and has led to more than 30 arrests, as well as a high- profile inquiry chaired by Sir Brian Leveson, then Britain’s senior appeals judge. Leveson’s report, released in November, called for a new, inde- pendent body to replace the Press Complaints Commission, the news in- dustry’s self-regulating agency. The recommendations triggered difficult ne- gotiations among leaders of the Unit- ed Kingdom’s coalition government, which announced a compromise deal in March. (See “At Issue,” p. 393.) “While Lord Leveson was quite cor-
rect to call for a regulator with more muscle that can impose substantial fines for future misconduct, [Prime Minister] David Cameron pledged that he would resist the clamor for such measures to be backed by law,” the Yorkshire Post editorialized. “Given that to do so would
be to take the first step on the slippery slope toward censorship of the press, a weapon that has been employed by many a corrupt dictatorship around the globe, he was right to do so.” 47
The U.K. is not the only country considering new media regulations. In March, Australia’s government proposed tighter regulation of media ownership and a new media overseer with statu- tory authority. “Australians want the press to be as accountable as they want politicians, sports people and business people,” said Stephen Conroy, Australia’s communications minister. 48
Media executives argued that the proposals were draconian and amount- ed to the government’s revenge for hos- tile coverage. “For the first time in Aus- tralian history outside wartime, there will be political oversight over the conduct of journalism in this country,” said Greg Hywood, the CEO of Fairfax Media. 49
In response to such criticisms, Aus- tralia’s government quickly withdrew the proposals.
Reporters Under Attack
I f journalists, commentators, artistsand writers are feeling embattled in the English-speaking world, they face worse fates elsewhere. According to the Committee to Protect Journal- ists, 232 journalists around the world were imprisoned as of Dec. 1 — the highest total since the group began its survey work in 1990. And 70 journal- ists were killed while doing their jobs in 2012 — a 43 percent increase from the year before. 50
According to the group, 49 jour- nalists were imprisoned in Turkey alone in 2012, a record high, and more than were in jail in either Iran or China. Francis J. Ricciardone, the U.S. am- bassador to Turkey, has been openly critical about the country’s approach to free speech. “The responsibility of Turkey’s friends and allies is to . . . to point out, with due respect, the
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
Continued from p. 392
April 26, 2013 395www.cqresearcher.com
importance of progress in the protec- tion of freedom of expression for jour- nalists and blog writers,” State Depart- ment spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a news conference in February. 51
In India freedom of expression is enshrined in the constitution, but with many provisos. And lately, India’s ju- diciary has appeared to show little concern when the government has ar- rested people over their Facebook posts and remarks made at literary festivals. “Writers and artists of all kinds are being harassed, sued and arrested for what they say or write or create,” writes Suketu Mehta, a journalism pro- fessor at New York University. “The government either stands by and does nothing to protect freedom of speech, or it actively abets its suppression.” 52
India — the world’s most populous democracy — has slipped below Qatar and Afghanistan in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index. 53
In emerging economic powerhous- es such as Turkey and India, along with Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Indonesia, governments are “kind of floating” between two different mod- els, says Kampfner, the Freedom for Sale author: the open-society approach favored by transatlantic democracies and a more authoritarian approach. “I slightly fear it’s going in the wrong
direction in all of them,” Kampfner says. But there also have been signs
recently that things may be improving in places for free-speech advocates. On April 1, for the first time in half a century, privately owned daily news- papers hit newsstands in Myanmar. 54
In Syria, new newspapers have emerged to cover the civil war, coun- tering bias from both government- controlled media and opposition- friendlysatellite channels based in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. “We need to get out of this Face-
book phase, where all we do is whine and complain about the regime,” said Absi Smesem, editor-in-chief of Sham, a new weekly newspaper. 55
OUTLOOK Shame, Not Laws?
I t’s always impossible to predict thefuture, but it’s especially difficult when discussing free speech, which is now inextricably bound up with con- stantly changing technologies. “I don’t know what’s next,” says
Reidy, the Index on Censorship news editor. “None of us five years ago thought we would be spending our lives on Twitter.” Still, Reidy says, the fact that so many people are con- versing online makes them likely to equate blocking the Internet with more venerable forms of censorship, such as book burning. “Within the next five years, you will
have a lot of adults in the Western world who literally don’t know what life is like without the Internet,” he says. “That is bound to change attitudes and cultures.” Information technology is penetrat-
ing deeper into the developing world, says Kampfner, the British journalist and author. For instance, thanks to mobile technology African farmers can access more information they need about crop yields and prices. And with cell phones, everyone has better access to information on disasters. However, “In terms of changing the
political discourse, the jury is out,” Kampfner says. “Every new technolo- gy, by its nature, is open to both use and abuse.” Activists wanting to use technology
to spread information and governments trying to stop them play an ongoing “cat and mouse game,” says Galperin, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Given how easily commercial appli-
cations can track individuals’ specific in- terests and movements online, it’s not difficult to imagine that political speech will be tracked as well, Belarus-born
writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor at The New Re- public and a columnist for Slate, con- tends in his 2011 book The Net Delu- sion. It’s not the case, as some have argued, he says, that the need to keep the Internet open for commercial pur- poses will prevent regimes from stamp- ing out other forms of online discourse. “In the not so distant future, a banker
perusing nothing but Reuters and Fi- nancial Times, and with other bankers as her online friends, would be left alone to do anything she wants, even browse Wikipedia pages about human- rights violations,” he writes. “In con- trast, a person of unknown occupa- tion, who is occasionally reading Fi- nancial Times but is also connected to five well-known political activists through Facebook and who has writ- ten blog comments that included words like ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom,’ would only be allowed to visit government- run websites, or . . . to surf but be carefully monitored.” 56
In democratic nations, concerns about security and offending reli- gious believers could lead to more restrictions — although not neces- sarily in terms of new laws, says Arch Puddington, vice president for research at Freedom House, but through shaming and “other infor- mal methods” of disciplining un- popular ways of speaking. “What you could have over the next
10 years in the U.S. and abroad is a distinction between rights and norms,” says former Rep. Perriello, at the Cen- ter for American Progress Action Fund. “Having a legal right to say certain things does not actually mean one should say certain things.” Anthony Mills, the deputy director
of the International Press Institute in Austria, suggests that the more things change, the more they will stay rec- ognizably the same. “Unfortunately, in 10 years we’ll still be having similar conversations about efforts by every- one from criminals to militants and
396 CQ Researcher
government operatives to target the media and silence them,” Mills says. “But at the same time, . . . a vari-
ety of media platforms — of journal- ists and of media practitioners — will continue to defy that trend,” he says. “I have no doubt that in the grand scheme of things, the truth will always come out. The dynamic of the flow of information is unstoppable.” Wallach, the Rice University com-
puter scientist, is equally certain that de- spite all legal, political and technologi- cal ferment, the basic underlying tension between free expression and repressive tendencies will remain firmly in place. “There will always be people with
something to say and ways for them to say it,” Wallach says. Likewise, “There will also always be people who want to stop them.”
Notes
1 Jonathan Turley, “Shut Up and Play Nice,” The Washington Post, Oct. 14, 2012, p. B1, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10- 12/opinions/35499274_1_free-speech-defeat- jihad-muslim-man. 2 For background, see Peter Katel, “Protecting Whistleblowers,” CQ Researcher, March 31,2006, pp. 265-288. 3 “Memorandum to the European Union on Media Freedom in Hungary,” Human Rights Watch, Feb. 16, 2012, www.hrw.org/node/105200. 4 For background, see Kenneth Jost, “Unrest in the Arab World,” CQ Researcher, Feb. 1,
2013, pp. 105-132; and Roland Flamini, “Tur- moil in the Arab World,” CQ Global Researcher, May 3, 2011, pp. 209-236. 5 Tom Gjelten, “Shutdowns Counter the Idea of a World-Wide Web,” NPR, Dec. 1, 2012, www. npr.org/2012/12/01/166286596/shutdowns- raise-issue-of-who-controls-the-internet. 6 Jessica Chasmar, “French Jewish Group Sues Twitter Over Racist, Anti-Semitic Tweets,” The Washington Times, March 24, 2013, www.wash ingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/24/french- jewish-group-sues-twitter-over-racist-anti-. 7 Jean-Paul Marthoz, “Extremists Are Censor- ing the Story of Religion,” Committee to Pro- tect Journalists, Feb. 14, 2013, www.cpj.org/ 2013/02/attacks-on-the-press-journalism-and- religion.php. See also, Frank Greve, “Combat Journalism,” CQ Researcher, April 12, 2013, pp. 329-352. 8 Chris York, “Pussy Riot Member Yekaterina Samutsevich Freed on Probation by Moscow Court,” The Huffington Post UK, Oct. 10, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/10/pussy- riot-member-yekaterina-samutsevich-frees-pro bation-moscow-court_n_1953725.html. 9 Ethan Zuckerman, “The First Twitter Revo- lution?” Foreign Policy, Jan. 14, 2011, www.for eignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/14/the_first_ twitter_revolution. 10 Thomas Fuller, “E-mails of Reporters in Myanmar Are Hacked,” The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/ world/asia/journalists-e-mail-accounts-targeted- in-myanmar.html. 11Yves Alexandre de Mountjoye, et al., “Unique in the Crowd: The Privacy Bounds of Human Mobility,” Nature, March 25, 2013, www.nature. com/srep/2013/130325/srep01376/full/srep013 76.html. 12 Thomas Erdbrink, “Iran Blocks Way to By- pass Internet Filtering System,” The New York Times, March 11, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/
03/12/world/middleeast/iran-blocks-software- used-to-bypass-internet-filtering-system.html. 13 Andrew Higgins, “Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak,” The New York Times, Feb. 28, 2013, p. A8, www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/world/ europe/lars-hedegaard-anti-islamic-provocateur- receives-support-from-danish-muslims.html. 14 Kenan Malik and Nada Shabout, “Should Religious or Cultural Sensibilities Ever Limit Free Expression?” Index on Censorship, March 25, 2013, www.indexoncensorship.org/ 2013/03/should-religious-or-cultural-sensibili ties-ever-limit-free-expression/. 15 “Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Re- port on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists and the Nonreligious,” International Humanist and Ethical Union, Dec. 10, 2012, p. 11, http://iheu.org/files/IHEU%20Freedom% 20of%20Thought%202012.pdf. 16 Asim Tanveer, “Pakistani Man Accuses Am- bassador to U.S. of Blasphemy,” Reuters, Feb. 21, 2013, http://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-accuses- ambassador-u-blasphemy-124213305.html. 17 Huma Yusuf, “The Censors’ Salon,” Latitude, March 14, 2013, http://latitude.blogs.nytimes. com/2013/03/14/in-lahore-pakistan-the-censors- salon/. 18 See “Speech to the United Nations Gen- eral Assembly —“Practical progress towards realising those ideals in the world,” Sept. 26, 2012, www.pm.gov.au/press-office/speech- united-nations-general-assembly-%E2%80%9 Cpractical-progress-towards-realising-those-idea. 19 Turley, op. cit. 20 Aryeh Neier, “Freedom, Blasphemy and Violence,” Project Syndicate, Sept. 16, 2012, www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/free dom--blasphemy--and-violence-by-aryeh-neier. 21 C. W. Nevius, “Free Speech Protects Offen- sive Ads on Muni,” The San Francisco Chron- icle, March 14, 2013, p. D1, www.sfgate.com/ bayarea/nevius/article/Offensive-ads-on-Muni- protected-speech-4352829.php. 22 Clinton’s remarks are available at www.state. gov/secretary/rm/2011/12/178511.htm. 23 Obama’s remarks are available at www. whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/25/ remarks-president-un-general-assembly. 24 Anthea Butler, “Opposing View: Why ’Sam Bacile’ Deserves Arrest,” USA Today, Sept. 13, 2012, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/ opinion/story/2012-09-12/Sam-Bacile-Anthea- Butler/57769732/1. 25 Eric Posner, “The World Doesn’t Love the First Amendment,” Slate, Sept. 25, 2012, www. slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurispru
FREE SPEECH AT RISK
About the Author Alan Greenblatt covers foreign affairs for National Public Radio. He was previously a staff writer at Governing mag- azine and CQ Weekly, where he won the National Press Club’s Sandy Hume Award for political journalism. He graduated from San Francisco State University in 1986 and received a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Virginia in 1988. For the CQ Researcher, he wrote “Confronting Warming,” “Future of the GOP” and “Im- migration Debate.” His most recent CQ Global Researcher re- ports were “Rewriting History” and “International Adoption.”
April 26, 2013 397www.cqresearcher.com
dence/2012/09/the_vile_anti_muslim_video_and_ the_first_amendment_does_the_u_s_overvalue_ free_speech_.single.html. 26 Eyder Peralta, “John Kerry to German Stu- dents: Americans Have ’Right to Be Stupid,’ ” NPR, Feb. 26, 2013, www.npr.org/blogs/the two-way/2013/02/26/172980860/john-kerry-to-ger man-students-americans-have-right-to-be-stupid. 27 Rodney A. Smolla, Free Speech in an Open Society (1992), p. 4. 28 Robert Hargreaves, The First Freedom (2002), p. 5. 29 Ibid., p. 51. 30 Ibid., p. 95. 31 Richard W. Steele, Free Speech in the Good War (1999), p. 1. 32 See “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” United Nations, www.un.org/en/docu ments/udhr/index.shtml#a19. 33 Alexander Meiklejohn, Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government (1948), p. 17. 34 Michael Kent Curtis, Free Speech, ’The People’s Darling Privilege’: Struggles for Freedom of Ex- pression in American History (2000), p. 406. 35 David W. Rabban, Free Speech in Its For- gotten Years (1997), p. 372. 36 “Supreme Court, 6-3, Upholds Newspapers on Publication of Pentagon Report,” The New York Times, July 1, 1971, www.nytimes.com/ books/97/04/13/reviews/papers-final.html. 37 Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty and the Courts (2007), p. 26. 38 James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2005, www.nytimes.com/ 2005/12/16/politics/16program.html. 39 Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Lib- erties From Wilson to Obama: A Story of Poor Custodians (2012), p. 468. 40 For background, see Roland Flamini, “Im- proving Cybersecurity,” CQ Researcher, Feb. 15, 2013, pp. 157-180. 41 Karen McVeigh and Dominic Rushe, “House Passes CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Despite Warn- ings From White House,” The Guardian, April 18, 2013, www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ 2013/apr/18/house-representatives-cispa-cyber- security-white-house-warning. 42 See the “Statement of Administration Policy” at www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ omb/legislative/sap/113/saphr624r_20130416.pdf. 43 McVeigh and Rushe, op. cit. 44 Phil Mattingly and Hans Nichols, “Obama Pursuing Leakers Sends Warning to Whistle- Blowers,” Bloomberg News, Oct. 17, 2012, www. bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-
pursuing-leakers-sends-warning-to-whistle- blowers.html. 45 For background, see Alex Kingsbury, “Gov- ernment Secrecy,” CQ Researcher, Feb. 11, 2011, pp. 121-144. 46 Russell Brandom, “Entire Library Journal Editorial Board Resigns,” The Verge, March 26, 2013, www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/41497 52/library-journal-resigns-for-open-access- citing-aaron-swartz. 47 “A Vital Test for Democracy,” Yorkshire Press, March 19, 2013, www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/ news/debate/yp-comment/a-vital-test-for-our- democracy-1-5505331. 48 Sabra Lane, “Stephen Conroy Defends Media Change Package,” Australian Broadcasting Company, March 13, 2013, www.abc.net.au/ am/content/2013/s3714163.htm. 49 Nick Bryant, “Storm Over Australia’s Press Reform Proposals,” BBC, March 19, 2013, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21840076. 50 Rick Gladstone, “Report Sees Journalists Increasingly Under Attack,” The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2013, p. A10, www.nytimes. com/2013/02/15/world/attacks-on-journalists-
rose-in-2012-group-finds.html. 51 “U.S.: American Ambassador to Turkey Re- iterating What Clinton Previously Said,” Today’s Zaman, Feb. 7, 2013, www.todayszaman.com/ news-306435-us-american-ambassador-to-turkey- reiterating-what-clinton-previously-said.html. 52 Suketu Mehta, “India’s Speech Impedi- ments,” The New York Times, Feb. 6, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/opinion/indias- limited-freedom-of-speech.html. 53 “Press Freedom Index 2013,” Reporters Without Borders, fr.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/classe- ment_2013_gb-bd.pdf. 54 Aye Aye Win, “Privately Owned Daily News- papers Return to Myanmar,” The Associated Press, April 1, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/ huff-wires/20130401/as-myanmar-new-news papers/. 55Neil MacFarquhar, “Syrian Newspapers Emerge to Fill Out War Reporting,” The New York Times, April 2, 2013, p. A4, www.nytimes.com/2013/ 04/02/world/middleeast/syrian-newspapers- emerge-to-fill-out-war-reporting.html. 56 Eugeny Morozov, The Net Delusion (2011), p. 97.
FOR MORE INFORMATION Access, P.O. Box 115, New York, NY 10113; 888-414-0100; www.accessnow.org. A digital-rights group, founded after protests against Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election, that fosters open communications.
Article 19, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1R 3GA; +44 20 7324 2500; www.article19.org. A group named for a section of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that designs laws and policies promot- ing freedom of expression.
Committee to Protect Journalists, 330 7th Ave., 11th Floor, New York, NY 10001; 212-465-1004; www.cpj.org. Documents attacks on journalists; publishes its findings and works to promote press freedom.
Freedom House, 1301 Connecticut Ave., N.W., 6th Floor, Washington, DC 20036; 202-296-5101; www.freedomhouse.org. An independent watchdog group founded in 1941 that advocates greater political and civil liberties.
Index on Censorship, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Rd., London, United Kingdom, EC1R 3GA; +44 20 7324 2522; www.indexoncensorship.org. Founded in 1972 to publish stories of communist dissidents in Eastern Europe; promotes global free speech through journalistic reports and advocacy.
International Press Institute, Spielgasse 2, A-1010, Vienna, Austria; +43 1 412 90 11; www.freemedia.at. A global network of media executives and journalists founded in 1950, dedicated to promoting and safeguarding press freedoms.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1100, Arlington, VA 22209; 703-807-2100; www.rcfp.org. Provides free legal advice and other resources to journalists on First Amendment issues.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
398 CQ Researcher
Selected Sources
Bibliography Books
Ghonim, Wael, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. A Google employee who became a leader in using social media to organize protests against the government in Egypt during the so-called Arab Spring of 2011 writes a memoir about those tumultuous times.
Hargreaves, Robert, The First Freedom: A History of Free Speech, Sutton Publishing, 2002. The late British broadcaster surveys the long history of speech, from Socrates to modern times, highlighting the personalities and legal cases that eventually led to greater liberties.
Kampfner, John, Freedom for Sale: Why the World Is Trading Democracy for Security, Basic Books, 2010. Visiting countries such as Russia, China, Italy and the United States, a British journalist examines how citizens in recent years have been willing to sacrifice personal freedoms in exchange for promises of prosperity and security.
Articles
Erdbrink, Thomas, “Iran Blocks Way to Bypass Internet Filtering System,” The New York Times, March 11, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/world/middleeast/iran-blocks- software-used-to-bypass-internet-filtering-system.html. Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications Tech- nology has begun blocking the most popular software used by millions of Iranians to bypass the official Internet cen- soring system.
Malik, Kenan, and Nada Shabout, “Should Religious or Cultural Sensibilities Ever Limit Free Expression?” Index on Censorship, March 25, 2013, www.indexoncensorship. org/2013/03/should-religious-or-cultural-sensibilities-ever- limit-free-expression/. An Indian-born British broadcaster (Malik) and an Iraqi art historian debate whether even the most offensive and blas- phemous speech should be protected.
Mattingly, Phil, and Hans Nichols, “Obama Pursuing Leakers Sends Warning to Whistle-Blowers,” Bloomberg News, Oct. 17, 2012, www.bloomberg.com/news/2012- 10-18/obama-pursuing-leakers-sends-warning-to-whistle- blowers.html. Attorney General Eric Holder has prosecuted more gov- ernment officials for leaking documents than all his prede- cessors combined.
Posner, Eric, “The World Doesn’t Love the First Amend- ment,” Slate, Sept. 25, 2012, www.slate.com/articles/
news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/09/the_vile_anti_ muslim_video_and_the_first_amendment_does_the_u_s_ overvalue_free_speech_.single.html. In the wake of violent protests across the globe triggered by an anti-Muslim video that was produced in the United States, a University of Chicago law professor argues that freedom of expression must give way at times to other values.
Turley, Jonathan, “Shut Up and Play Nice,” The Washing- ton Post, Oct. 14, 2012, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/ 2012-10-12/opinions/35499274_1_free-speech-defeat- jihad-muslim-man. A George Washington University law professor argues that freedom of speech is being eroded around the world as ef- forts to protect various groups against being offended become enshrined in law.
Reports and Studies
“Attacks on the Press: Journalism on the Front Lines in 2012,” Committee to Protect Journalists, February 2013, www.cpj.org/2013/02/attacks-on-the-press-in-2012.php. The latest edition of this annual report documents how more journalists are disappearing or being imprisoned in countries ranging from Mexico to Russia.
“Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrim- ination Against Humanists, Atheists and the Nonreligious,” International Humanist and Ethical Union, Dec. 10, 2012, http://iheu.org/files/IHEU%20Freedom%20of%20Thought% 202012.pdf. The number of prosecutions for blasphemy is sharply on the rise, according to a global survey of laws regulating re- ligious beliefs and expression.
Leveson, Lord Justice Brian, “An Inquiry Into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press,” The Stationary Office, Nov. 29, 2012, www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/ hc1213/hc07/0780/0780.asp. A judge appointed by the British prime minister to exam- ine press abuses calls for greater regulation. “There is no or- ganized profession, trade or industry in which the serious failings of the few are overlooked because of the good done by the many,” Leveson writes.
Zhu, Tao, et al., “The Velocity of Censorship: High-Fidelity Detection of Microblog Post Deletions,” March 4, 2013, http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0597. A team of computer scientists examined the accounts of 3,500 users of Weibo, China’s microblogging site, to see if it was being censored. The scientists found that thousands of Weibo employees were deleting forbidden phrases and characters.
April 19, 2013 399www.cqresearcher.com
China
Bradsher, Keith, “In China, Veneer of Consensus Is Break- ing Down,” The New York Times, Jan. 23, 2013, p. B10, dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/appearance-of-con sensus-is-breaking-down-in-china/. China is more tolerant of free speech than it was during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, says a columnist.
Jennings, Ralph, “Sale of Media Group Worries Taiwan,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30, 2012, p. A8, articles.latimes. com/2012/nov/29/world/la-fg-taiwan-china-media-2012 1130. Taiwanese residents are worried that the proposed sale of one of the country’s media empires to a consortium heavi- ly invested in China will lead to limitations on free speech.
Richburg, Keith B., “Chinese Activists’ Microblogging Accounts Are Shut Down,” The Washington Post, Jan. 4, 2013, p. A7, articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-03/world/ 36211710_1_sina-weibo-chinese-internet-users-internet- crackdown. Several influential Chinese bloggers have had their accounts shut down by Chinese officials.
Religion
Braun, Stuart, “Europe Faces Fight Over Free Speech,” USA Today, Oct. 5, 2012, p. A8, www.usatoday.com/story/ news/world/2012/10/05/europe-blasphemy-laws/1613057/. Many Europeans are calling for stricter blasphemy laws after videos and cartoons mocking the Muslim prophet Muhammad ignited violent protests.
Clyne, Reginald J., “Making a Case for Limiting Our Right to Free Speech,” The Miami Times, Sept. 19, 2012, p. A3, miamitimesonline.com/making-a-case-for-limiting- our-right-to-free-speech/. Limitations should be made to free speech if it attacks a reli- gion or has far-reaching negative consequences, says a columnist.
Richter, Paul, “Egypt’s Morsi Urges Free Speech Curbs,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27, 2012, p. A9, articles.la- times.com/2012/sep/26/world/la-fg-un-morsi-20120927. Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi says his country em- braces freedom of expression except when insults are direct- ed toward a specific religion or cult.
Technology
Sengupta, Somini, “Twitter’s Free Speech Defender,” The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2012, p. B1, www.nytimes.com/ 2012/09/03/technology/twitter-chief-lawyer-alexander- macgillivray-defender-free-speech.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Twitter’s chief attorney says allowing users to speak freely is what gives the company a competitive advantage.
Temple, James, “Technology Can Amplify or Inhibit Free Speech,” The San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 2012, p. D1, www.sfgate.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/ Web-a-double-edged-sword-for-free-speech-3725033.php. Websites such as YouTube can give exposure to voices of dissent, but they can also put speakers at risk.
United States
Cohen, Roger, “Our Man in Benghazi,” The New York Times, Sept. 14, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/ opinion/roger-cohen-chris-stevens-in-benghazi.html. Efforts by American politicians to defend religious hatred in the name of free speech are misguided, says a columnist.
Gurwitz, Jonathan, “Team Obama Fails to Defend Free Speech,”San Antonio (Texas) Express-News, Sept. 23, 2012, p. A19, www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/jona than_gurwitz/article/Tolerance-is-a-two-way-street-38838 90.php. The Obama administration refused to defend the right to free speech when it condemned a video mocking the Mus- lim prophet Muhammad, says a columnist.
Wilson, Scott, and Anne Gearan, “At U.N., Obama Issues a Challenge,” The Washington Post, Sept. 26, 2012, p. A1, articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-25/politics/354966 19_1_nuclear-weapon-world-leaders-nuclear-program. Arab countries should not sacrifice values such as free speech despite the challenges being faced in the information age, says President Obama.
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MLA STYLE Jost, Kenneth. “Remembering 9/11.” CQ Researcher 2 Sept.
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APA STYLE Jost, K. (2011, September 2). Remembering 9/11. CQ Re-
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CHICAGO STYLE Jost, Kenneth. “Remembering 9/11.” CQ Researcher, September
2, 2011, 701-732.
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