Free Speech Round-Up 10 | June 23, 2020
Today in free speech news, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam tries to shut down anti-racist protesters and an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post condemns police censorship.
Using history to move forward the public dialogue on free speech and social justice.
Today in free speech news, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam tries to shut down anti-racist protesters and an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post condemns police censorship.
Matt Taibbi is a journalist covering politics for the Rolling Stone, a podcaster, and a columnist with his own self-published website. On June 12, Taibbi put out an editorial on his site the crux of which is to criticize “cancel culture” on the political Left.1
This week in free speech news we have Starbucks employees getting dress coded for supporting BLM, a pretty good op-ed in the Hill, violence against reporters during the recent protests, a case involving a controversial terrorist law in England, and the Trump administration continues to try and censor John Bolton's upcoming book.
In Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby argues strongly for a recognition of the long secular tradition in American politics and presents a call to action for freethinkers of all stripes to reclaim the public square dominated by right-wing religious fundamentalists.1
In free speech news this week, the Trump administration continues to threaten the free speech of protesters, while some protesters are encouraging public universities in Southwest Virginia to reject students solely on the grounds that they have made racist social media posts. In other words, it is business as usual.
The United States has always experienced government censorship, the First Amendment notwithstanding. The infamous Sedition Act during the presidency of John Adams at the beginning of the 19th century limited acceptable criticisms of the government. During much of the century, though, censorship efforts were largely local or state affairs (the first amendment would not apply to the actions of individual states until 1925).1 The Comstock Act at the end of the same century, though, expanded the ability and influence of the federal government by granting the Postmaster General the ability to seize obscene material transported through the mail. Yet, regular and consistent censorship did not really take off at the federal level until the First World War.
The John Peter Zenger Trial of 1735 is perhaps the most famous incident regarding free speech during the colonial period of American history. As the story is often told, a courageous printer, Zenger, was brought up on charges of seditious libel1 for insulting the colonial governor of New York. Andrew Hamilton eloquently and passionately defended Zenger on the grounds that he had the right to free speech, provided that what he said was true. Despite the law being clearly against Zenger – seditious libel was a crime regardless of the truth of the libel and he did commit it – the jury voted to acquit him. Thus, in a truly American moment, right took precedence over law, and free speech over government tyranny.
After a brief hiatus, I have returned! As always, there is a lot of news to cover. When I get more time over the next couple weeks, expect some more history articles!
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Dr. Sarah T. Roberts is the expert on online content moderation. As an assistant professor of information studies at University of California, Los Angeles, Roberts has worked to pull back the veil of how social media companies moderate content. Her work earned her the 2018 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award – even before she published her first book, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media, this June.1