Freedom of Expression – Page 21

From today’s Bits Blog on the New York Times site:

Newspapers Argue for First Amendment Right to Snoop on Readers

Usually, when people talk about the trade offs between privacy and freedom of the press, the argument is about whether the public has the right to know some fact about an individual’s personal life.

The newspaper industry is now arguing that the First Amendment protects its right to follow users around the Internet so it can charge higher prices on advertising.

This argument was made in a filing by Newspaper Association of America commenting on the Federal Trade Commission’s proposal that the companies involved in advertising that uses what is called behavioral targeting create a self-regulatory code that limits their use of sensitive information.

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Legislating Truth

17 January, 20087 November, 2010

| 1 Comment

| Blasphemy, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications, prior restraint

I am a politics junkie – I will watch party conferences and conventions, and enjoy the experiences! And I still remember a Fianna Fáil Árd Fhéis (national party conference) in which Charlie Haughey began a key section of his leader’s speech by asserting: “The truth, as we in Fianna Fáil see it, is …”. I don’t remember what he said after that, because I was so flabbergasted at the audacity of making truth contingent upon a political point of view. Of course, this was only a small thing compared to the flabbergasting audacity of other aspects of Haughey’s career, but the attitude of subordinating truth to political power is not unique to him or to Fianna Fáil. A particularly egregious example is provided by reports this morning that the author of a book on anti-Semitism in Poland may face court action. According to Derek Scally in the Irish Times (sub req’d):

The public prosecutor in Krakow has launched a preliminary investigation into a US historian who says post-war Poland continued where the Nazis left off in persecuting Jews. Jan Tomasz Gross [home page at Princeton | wikipedia] could, under a law passed by the Kaczynski government, face a prison sentence if found guilty of “accusing the Polish nation of participating in communist or Nazi crimes”.

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BBC = FoE x 2

20 December, 2007

| 1 Comment

| Freedom of Expression

BBC = FoE, where BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation, FoE = Freedom of Expression, and x 2 = times two; because the BBC have two major freedom of expression events going on at the moment. First, Roy Greenslade (website | blog) is currently present an excellent four part radio series, Press for Freedom (article | news report | podcast) on the struggle for media freedom worldwide. It’s superb!

Second, as part of its celebrations for 75 years of the World Service, the free to speak initiative is an exciting blend of archives, radio, and interactivity (they encourage participation, especially via their blog: world have your say). In particular, today’s big link up, though a bit gimmicky, was a spectacular affirmation of the importance of radio (my favourite electronic medium) to and in the global conversation about and protection of freedom of expression. Wonderful stuff!

Do the sums. Follow the links.…

Recent Developments in Media Law and Regulation

7 December, 200716 January, 2009

| 3 Comments

| Defamation, Freedom of Expression

The School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, will host a conference on the above theme on Thursday, 17 January 2008 next. Full details here. This conference offers an excellent opportunity for legal practitioners, journalists, editors and anyone with an interest in the Irish media to keep up to date with the many significant developments that have occurred in the last 12 months. Many of the questions to be discussed on the day have already featured on this blog, and the speakers will include my colleagues Dr Eoin Carolan and Dr Neville Cox, Prof John Horgan (the recently-appointed Press Ombudsman), solicitors Karyn Harty and Paula Mullooly, and barrister Luá¡n Ó Braonáin SC.…

Seeing Green on Blaphemy

5 December, 20075 April, 2011

| 4 Comments

| Blasphemy, Cinema, television and theatre, Defamation Bill 2006, Freedom of Expression

Jerry Springer - The Opera, with a red line through it; from BBC website. On the day when the teacher convicted of blasphemy in the Sudan for allowing a class of young children to name a teddy bear Mohammed is pardoned and allowed to return home (BBC | Irish Times (sub req’d)) comes news of another relevant case. It has one of those very-legal looking, but uninformative, English case-name titles: R (on the application of Green) v The City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2007] EWHC 2785 (Admin) (05 December 2007), but for all that the title is uninformative, the judgment itself is significant. For the Green who made the application is Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice (their website sees A Nation in Pain and A Government in Rebellion, and therefore perceives A Need For Jesus, and A Need For Prayer); and the reason he was seeking judicial review of the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court was that a judge in that court refused to allow Green to commence a private prosecution for blasphemy arising out of the BBC’s broadcast of Jerry Springer – The Opera. The Daily Telegraph said of it at the time:

It’s filthy, it’s funny, it’s brilliantly original and, taken all in all, about as much fun as you are likely to have with your clothes on.

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Article XIX

2 December, 2007

| 2 Comments

| Freedom of Expression

According to this page, the image on the left

is an exact copy of the cover of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was placed in the Cornerstone of the United Nations Headquarters Building by Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the time of the Cornerstone Ceremony which was held at 12 noon, October 24th, 1949, at a special meeting of the Fourth Regular Session of the General Assembly, at the Headquarters site on 42d Street, New York.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its 183rd meeting, held in Paris on 10 December, 1948 (and that date has ever since been Human Rights Day). Article 19 of the Declaration provides:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.

Taking its name from this text, ARTICLE 19 is an international human rights organisation which defends and promotes freedom of expression and freedom of information all over the world. ARTICLE 19 believes that the full enjoyment of this right is the most potent force to achieve individual freedoms, strengthen democracy, and pre-empt repression, conflict, war and genocide.…

Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom

28 November, 200722 June, 2009

| 2 Comments

| Academic Freedom, Freedom of Expression, Universities

A little while ago, Brian Tamanaha on Balkinization raised the question of what is the right response where professors insult in class; his post began as follows [with some added links]:

The November issue of National Jurist has an article about a recent spate of law professors getting into trouble for comments inside or outside of the classroom that apparently offended students. According to the article, a Wisconsin professor made comments about Hmong men [IHT] in the context of discussing cultural practices that might be invoked as a defense against criminal charges. A Quinnipiac professor sent an email to students on his distribution list that â€œderidedâ€? them â€œfor their concepts of how poor people and ethnic minorities are represented within the American legal systemâ€? [Quinnipiac Chronicle]. A John Marshall professor was reprimanded for asking a Jewish student â€œwhether his religious training contributed to Jews passing the bar at higher rates than African Americansâ€? [De Paul]. The article did not mention the most recent example of such controversy, involving a professor at Connecticut who showed a film in class, pausing at a scene that offended a few of the students [Law.com].

I was reminded of this as I listened last night to Dean Rod Smolla‘s Inaugural Lecture at WLU (poster above) on

Freedom of Expression and Religion on the Modern Campus: Academic Freedom at Public and private Universities

His basic theme was that First Amendment doctrine is capable of explaining and guiding the development of the principles of academic freedom in the modern American university.…

Give speech a chance

26 November, 20077 August, 2009

| 8 Comments

| Blasphemy, Censorship, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

Three free speech stories in the BBC News and Guardian websites caught my eye this morning. Indeed, the first two were almost side by side on both sites. In the first, there is widespread dismay at the arrest of a British school teacher in the Sudan accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad (BBC | Guardian). In the second, protests are expected later outside the Oxford Union (see also wikipedia) when Nick Griffin (see also wikipedia), Chairman of the British National Party, and David Irving (see also BBC | Holocaust History | Kizkor | wikipedia), Holocaust denier, arrive for a forum on The Limits of Free Speech (BBC | Guardian).

There is an inconsistency here; and the incongruous but serendipitous placement of these two stories side by side demonstrates it: we cannot be outraged both at the arrest of the teacher and at the speech of Nick Griffin and David Irving. Society cannot have it both ways, it is not free to pick and choose which speech to support. Those in favour of speech must afford it both to the teacher and to Griffin and Irving.…

cearta.ie

Category: Freedom of Expression

Say, what?

Legislating Truth

BBC = FoE x 2

Recent Developments in Media Law and Regulation

Seeing Green on Blaphemy

Article XIX

Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom

Give speech a chance