[Rhodes22-list] Political - Free Speech

Mon Jun 9 06:10:08 EDT 2008

As you know, I was in China for the last two weeks and kept-up on what was
happening around the world via the internet, but felt constrained on
responses because either I was (1) using a formally policed network access,
or, (2) a private individuals access who didn't need to be bothered with
issues I created (ie, draw attention). We take this for granted here, except
perhaps when a new member tries to "police" the list, but if it ever goes
away, you'll sorely miss it!  Here's a timely article on the subject.

Brad

-----------------------------------

The Fight for Free Speech: Will *We* Be the Greatest Generation?

June 8, 2008 - by Steve Boriss

In many ways, there was more free speech before the printing press was
invented than at any time since. Yes, we have more rights today to criticize
government, but strangely, until recently technology has reduced each
individual's ability to effectively do it. The Internet offers the promise
to advance free speech to unprecedented levels — but it won't happen unless
some of us shut up and the rest of us speak up.

Before the printing press was invented more than 500 years ago, we may not
have been free peoples, but we did have relatively free speech as
individuals. News was spread by word-of-mouth, and everyone could contribute
to what was in the news. Even governments had to compete to be heard like
everyone else, which they did for instance by hiring
colorfully-garbed minstrels who sang their version of the news.

While the printing press may have been a great leap forward for the spread
of information, it also represented two steps backwards for free speech.
First, these large, hard-to-conceal machines now allowed governments to
stifle criticism, by identifying those responsible for spreading information
to the masses, and subjecting them to prior restraint, licensing,
censorship, and punishment.

Second, the printing press pulled the masses out of the center arena, and
transformed news from a participant sport to a spectator sport.

News no longer consisted of our individual voices, but those of elites often
from remote places, or as NYU Professor Mitchell Stephens put it, "As the
news we receive has begun to abandon our streets and communities in favor of
momentarily more exciting locales across town or even overseas, our ability
to participate in news has diminished … the bulk of humanity appears to have
been pulled from the stage and seated in the balcony, our opportunities to
make news on our own reduced to the occasional chance to wave should a
television camera deign to pan our crowd."

Technological advances in printing that came later further reduced the
number of voices, and so were even harder on free speech. When the steam
engine was harnessed to the printing press, newspapers suddenly engaged in
stiff competition to bring their price per copy down to a penny. Only papers
with the highest circulations could achieve this while paying for the
expensive new equipment, putting many papers with alternative voices out of
business. A similar phenomenon happened in the mid-20th century when the
superior offset printing process was introduced.

The introduction of broadcasting not only eroded the number of voices, it
actually reversed free speech, placing government back in control of news.
European governments co-opted television and ran their own
government-friendly broadcasts. In the U.S., government control of news
became just as real, but it happened differently. Our government
seized control of the broadcast spectrum, declaring frequencies a precious
resource that must only be used by responsible corporate citizens.
Accordingly, networks were required to reapply for licenses every few years,
with renewals contingent upon satisfied politicians and their appointees.

Such was the unfortunate environment in which CBS founder William Paley
invented network TV news — it would deliver programming that highlighted
government issues, giving it the importance politicians felt it deserved.
Paley thereby found a way to prove his network was a responsible corporate
citizen, reducing the risk that the government would revoke his highly
valuable license to broadcast his highly profitable entertainment
programming. It was clear from the outset that CBS launched TV news for
politicians and not profit. It would be another 20-30 years before the
program made money, which news head[1] Dick Salant
<http://books.google.com/books?id=vOrLY-HXnzYC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=%22give+us+the+good+news+first%22&source=web&ots=NpqDfpUtXv&sig=fDeGOvKYmdwqvoRkELaPsc6EoXk#PPA98,M1>famously
announced to his staff as both good news and bad news.

Why bad news? Because after that, management would actually start caring
whether his news department even made a profit. Now you know why broadcast
news remains plain vanilla, establishment-friendly fare, a
free-speech-embarrassment when compared to politically hotter, unregulated
cable TV news.

With radio, the negative impact of government regulation on free speech is
even more well-proven. In 1949, the FCC introduced the "Fairness Doctrine"
that forced radio stations to air contrasting views whenever political
opinions were expressed. To avoid trouble, radio stations avoided political
talk. The extent to which this squelched free speech was not fully
understood until the rule lapsed in 1987, immediately launching the new era
of politically-charged talk radio.

Which brings us to the Internet — a new platform that allows everyone to
have a voice — much like the old days when news was spread by word-of-mouth.
To date, the Internet has remained blissfully free of government regulation.
Its backbone rests in the private sector, it requires no licensing for use,
and it is seemingly beyond the reach of those who would like government to
regulate online behavior such as hate speech, obscenity, and too much
control by a few corporations.

So everybody is thrilled that the Internet can deliver historically
unprecedented levels of free speech, right?

If that's true, you would never know it by following the news. In a recent
editorial, the [2] *NY Times*
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/opinion/19mon2.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>welcomed
federal regulation of the Internet under the benign-sounding cause "net
neutrality," warning us that Internet service providers might suppress ideas
they do not like. The *Times* ignores the fact that the First Amendment is
designed to protect us
against suppression of ideas by the government, not the private sector,
which has neither the power nor the motive to suppress ideas.

Moreover, as the *[3] Las Vegas
Review-Journal<http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/19169189.html>
* tells us, "Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem." It has
not been given a chance to surface, much less an opportunity for the
marketplace to fix this hypothetical problem. It is a weak reason to allow
the irreversible step of government regulation.

Another party that is uncomfortable with free speech on the Internet is the
Orwellianly-named group "[4] Free Press <http://www.freepress.net/>." They
are pushing for the FCC to regulate the Internet similar to the way it
regulates broadcast TV, calling for a national (read "government") broadband
policy to regulate price, speed, and availability. They also want the
government to provide municipal broadband service to everybody, even though
this model has already collapsed in the marketplace.

And of course, the U.N. and its many dictatorships is no fan of free speech
on the Internet. Last November, the United Nations' [5] Internet Governance
Forum <http://www.intgovforum.org/> (IGF) held its second annual meeting
with a not-so-hidden agenda for a U.N. takeover of the U.S.' private sector
control of core Internet systems.

It is a sad commentary that the loudest voice against Internet regulation so
far seems to be a group called[6] Hands Off the
Internet<http://handsoff.org/blog/>.
The group is made-up of special interests — whose special interests happen
to coincide with what we should all be fighting for.
 ------------------------------

Article printed from Pajamas Media: *http://pajamasmedia.com*

URL to article: *
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-fight-for-free-speech-will-we-be-the-greatest-generation/
*

URLs in this post:
[1] Dick Salant : *
http://books.google.com/books?id=vOrLY-HXnzYC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=%22give+us+the+good+ne
ws+first%22&source=web&ots=NpqDfpUtXv&sig=fDeGOvKYmdwqvoRkELaPsc6EoXk#PPA98,M1
*
[2] *NY Times* : *
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/opinion/19mon2.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted
=all
*
[3] Las Vegas Review-Journal: *http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/19169189.html*
[4] Free Press: *http://www.freepress.net*
[5] Internet Governance Forum: *http://www.intgovforum.org*
[6] Hands Off the Internet: *http://handsoff.org/blog/*