Oh Helen

This week, long time White House correspondent Helen Thomas retired due to the backlash caused by comments she made in relation to Israel. While her comments were lamentable and emblematic of her political naivete, they should hardly surprise anyone familiar with this particular fixture of the press corps. In fact, her statement proves once again that we are all equally endowed with both the ability and the right to express our ignorance.

Ms. Thomas had a long career of providing agenda driven responses to the news of the day. While this is also lamentable, it is equally recognized as a Constitutional right. Free speech, as with free press, does not preclude anyone from lying, distorting, confusing or otherwise misstating facts. Speech is only an issue when it is being manipulated by those in power. While Ms. Thomas may have, at times, willingly endorsed political positions which closely aligned with her own agenda, she did so out of her own choice.

Her decision to step down was almost certainly influenced by her employers, people subjected to the cold reality of a capitalist system that would punish them financially for not achieving this feat. While this is the fairest possible system, putting into the hands of the people the ability to support as they see fit, it also has the consequence of muffling the unreasonable views to which she has a right. Fortunately, she still has the ability to express her ignorance as a private citizen.

Hate Speech is Double-Plus Ungood

On May 7th of this year, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (“NHMC”) wrote a letter to the FCC further emphasizing their desire for the agency to investigate and counteract “hate speech” in the media. In total, the phrase “hate speech” appeared over forty times in the eleven page letter.

In the spirit of transparency, I've altered their summary, replacing the term “hate speech” with “thought crime”, since that is a more accurate description of their ultimate goal with this effort:


NHMC et al. respectfully request that the Commission grant NHMC’s Petition for Inquiry on thought crime in media, filed in January of 2009. NHMC’s Petition urges the Commission to examine the extent and effects of thought crime in media, including the likely link between thought crime and hate crimes, and to explore non-regulatory ways to counteract its negative impacts. As NHMC has awaited Commission action, hate, extremism and misinformation have been on the rise, and even more so in the past week as the media has focused on Arizona’s passage of one of the harshest pieces of anti-Latino legislation in this country’s history, SB 1070.

As outlined in NHMC’s Petition, the current media landscape is a safe-haven for hate and extremism. Many communities and individuals do not have the information they want and need to intelligently engage in our democracy. This shortage of information is exacerbated by the vast media consolidation that has unfolded over the past two decades. Studies show that media consolidation diminishes ownership opportunities for people of color and leads to less diversity of voices; this yields a media in which people of color are under and misrepresented. As traditional media have become less diverse and less competitive, they have also grown less responsible and less responsive to the communities that they are supposed to serve. In this same atmosphere thought crime thrives, as hate has developed as a profit-model for syndicated radio and cable television programs masquerading as “news.”

The Internet gives the illusion that news sources have increased, but in fact there are fewer journalists employed now than before. Moreover, on the Internet, speakers can hide in the cloak of anonymity, emboldened to say things that they may not say in the public eye. Even worse, sometimes anonymous Internet speakers hold their information out as news, leaving the public with the difficult job of discerning fact from fiction.

For these reasons, as the Commission deliberates how the public interest will be served in the digital age, it should consider the extent of thought crime in media, and its effects.

While opportunities to tear into this argument abound, I will stick with the very simple point that attempts such as these have shown a propensity to turn on those in whose name the effort was made. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is explicit in its defense of speech and the press for a very simple reason: because citizens need to be able to speak out against the government if freedom is to persist. Allowing for a government agency, like the FCC, to circumvent the Constitution and abridge free speech is an affront to all American citizens, including those who seek to silence others through efforts such as this.

The Cost of Citizenship

Primaries will be held in North Carolina tomorrow to select the nominees for November's mid-term elections. As is usually the case, these primaries will likely involve limited participation by the voting public. Similarly common is the populist mantra which reappears around these events insisting that those who fail to vote have no right to complain about the situation.

It is with this last point that I take issue. While there is no doubt that people who fail to vote are less justified in vocalizing their displeasure with the outcome, their right to complain is in no way impacted by their lack of participation. While we as citizens have prescribed rights protected by the constitution, there are no limits to those rights based on our willingness, or lack thereof, to vote.

Of course, many might think I'm overreacting based on idle chatter. Perhaps I am, but I see ample instances of populist rhetoric growing teeth. This issue in particular has had a history of debate, such as is currently occurring in Colorado among other places. What we tend to forget is that rights are not requirements. While we might tire of non-voters complaints, their right to vote, much like their right to free speech, implicitly includes their right not to vote.

Shouting fire in a fire

Over this past weekend, I attended a few documentary screenings at the Full Frame Film Festival in Durham, N.C., the first of which was entitled “Shouting Fire”. As the film dealt with the topic of free speech, I was very interested to see its treatment of the subject. The film was made by Liz Garbus, the daughter of longtime free speech advocate Martin Garbus. I found the film to be a bit more liberal than I had hoped, particularly since, in my opinion, the assault on free speech comes from both sides of the political spectrum. If anything, I might concede that liberals tend to be stronger direct advocates of free speech than are conservatives, though their negative impact on this particular first amendment issue comes in more subtle ways such as through political correctness and advocacy of the “fairness doctrine”. In general, people are in support of free speech unless it runs counter to their own beliefs regardless of their political affiliation.

Following the presentation, the film maker and her father remained to answer questions. One of these came from someone obviously liberal, as was likely the makeup of the majority in the audience. His question concerned a segment of the film which dealt with an Arab woman who was publicly mistreated by the New York Post in order to advance a populist concern about her involvement in a public school. To paraphrase, he asked why it was wrong to abridge the freedom of speech of a media outlet run by a group of greedy individuals bent on pushing their agenda. My response would have been that such an abridgment would violate the constitution. Mr. Garbus’s response, instead, was to express concern that such an abridgment would likely lead to additional curtailments of speech, potentially leading to an impact on the freedoms of the individual. I suppose his approach provided more of a justification of the amendment rather than an obstacle to discussion. Perhaps there’s something to be learned from that.