Re: What you can do.
Posted by
Sarbajit Roy (testing) on
May 15, 2010; 3:45am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/What-you-can-do-tp5046283p5058115.html
Thanks
The way I understand it (and this is common in both our democracies) is
1) Citizens have a Fundamental ( "inalienable") right to freedom of Speech and Expression.
2) It is trite to say (and legally well settled) that this right is predicate upon the right to Freedom of Information. ie. a citizen cannot speak unless he is fully informed. Similarly in legal proceedings both parties must have information symmetry - this is ensured by inspection / discovery etc.
3) The reality today is that the media (TV, newspapers / Internet etc) is almost exclusively controlled by corporations or govt. The "voice of the citizen" people are defending / fighting for is a myth. Individual citizens have been reduced to twitting and blogging. So the 5:4 decision was actually a judgement for upholding the freedom of the press and deserves to be respected if it has achieved finality.
4) There is a much larger issue involved (of which this is an aspect) concerning the nature of the society the US has shaped itself into. If today you live in a media controlled society driven by breaking news, spin doctors and manipulated "popular opinion" you should seriously research the extreme opposite end of the social spectrum - where communication is by carrier pigeons and personal couriers - and the publication of images is banned.
5) My US friends should also examine their First Amendment Rights in the context of the Second Amendment (which most civilised democracies reject).
Sarbajit
On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 3:05 AM, Chris Feola
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Actually, Sarbajit is quite on point. If you read the decision you will see
that one reason the law was struck down was it tried to get around its
obvious violation of the 1st Amendment by carving out an exemption for
"media" since the press is, largely, corporate. Overturning this decision
therefore leaves two largely unpalatable choices:
1. The government decides what Fox News can broadcast and The New York Times
can print, since corporations do not have a 1st Amendment rights.
2. The government decides who and what are "media" and therefore get 1st
Amendment rights.
Both seem to be somewhat outside the spirit of "Congress shall make no
law..."
But don't take my word for it. Here's noted 1st Amendment lawyer Floyd
Abrams, who won the Pentagon Papers case for The New York Times:
"And my reaction is sort of a John McEnroe: You cannot be serious! We're
talking about the First Amendment here, and we're being told that an
extremely vituperative expression of disdain for a candidate for president
is criminal in America?"
"I think that two things are at work," Mr. Abrams says. "One is that there
are an awful lot of journalists that do not recognize that they work for
corporations. . . .
"A second is an ideological one. I think that there is a way of viewing this
decision which . . . looks not at whether the First Amendment was vindicated
but whether what is simply referred to as, quote, democracy, unquote, was
vindicated. My view is, we live in a world in which the word 'democracy' is
debatable . . . It is not a word which should determine interpretation of a
constitution and a Bill of Rights, which is at its core a legal document as
well as an affirming statement of individual freedom," he says. "Justice
Potter Stewart . . . warned against giving up the protections of the First
Amendment in the name of its values. . . . The values matter, the values are
real, but we protect the values by protecting the First Amendment."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029791336276632.ht
ml
cjf, recovering journalist
Christopher J. Feola
President, nextPression
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cjfeola
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