Internet stretches freedom of speech
A high school government class is about all anyone needs to recognize that freedom of speech is among our fundamental rights as Americans.
Historically, the illustration to explain the freedom involved yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. If there was a fire, you were a hero. If there wasn’t and it created mass chaos, that freedom offered no protection.
Similarly, the freedom doesn’t protect you if you knowingly perpetrate lies about someone — though opinions are perfectly acceptable. You can call someone a scoundrel, and it’s fine. If you call him a thieving, wife-beating scoundrel, you might be called upon to prove that or face civil charges of slander.
Though laws vary from state to state, slander is generally thought of as the spoken defamation, whereas libel refers to written statements.
In both cases, truth is a defense. In some cases, such as libel of a public figure, the absence of malicious intent, which basically means someone misrepresented the truth, also is a defense.
Though this might sound like a twisted interpretation, freedom of speech is the reason we have pornography and hate groups. Our country is such that we believe everyone has a right to their opinions, regardless of how we, as individuals, might feel about it.
Ask cities or communities that have tried to prevent marches or protests by groups that represented less popular causes. Unless those cities want to decimate their municipal budgets through legal fees and damage payouts, they must allow such activities to take place regardless of public opinion.
Free speech means free speech even if nobody wants to listen.
Though all those rules remain in place, and continue to be upheld by court decisions, defining what constitutes free speech has become much more difficult in the Internet age.
The Internet has become an open forum of not only bloggers and Internet-only “news” sites, but comments about everything from anybody who has access to a computer.
Readers, who can create IDs that can be anything from their actual names to nicknames to “anonymous” can pretty much say anything they want to say. We have, unfortunately, even had people post comments under the names of other people.
Comments go through an approval process, but because of the timeliness of the medium and its comments, it’s not always possible to read every comment on every story carefully before allowing posting.
When a reader calls a potentially inappropriate comment to our attention, we take a closer look and sometimes, though rarely, remove it from our Web site. Those instances would be when it uses foul language, accuses someone of a crime or attacks someone based on their race, religion or gender.
Beyond that, we generally do allow comments, regardless of how mean they might seem, to stand as they are submitted.
But we also encourage those who object to them to include their comments on the same site.
After all, freedom of speech isn’t limited to those who want to focus on the negative.
* * *
This past Friday The Enterprise contained an unusual Money and Markets page.
To everyone’s embarrassment, a note explaining how to create the page was published in the middle of the page on top of the stock report.
Nobody was more concerned and apologetic than the very new copy editor who made that error or the other members of the copy desk who didn’t catch the mistake before it printed.
We apologize to all our readers, but especially to the one caller who asked, in complete seriousness, if that was a one-time occurrence, or something we intended to start doing every day.
We certainly hope not.
Historically, the illustration to explain the freedom involved yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. If there was a fire, you were a hero. If there wasn’t and it created mass chaos, that freedom offered no protection.
Similarly, the freedom doesn’t protect you if you knowingly perpetrate lies about someone — though opinions are perfectly acceptable. You can call someone a scoundrel, and it’s fine. If you call him a thieving, wife-beating scoundrel, you might be called upon to prove that or face civil charges of slander.
Though laws vary from state to state, slander is generally thought of as the spoken defamation, whereas libel refers to written statements.
In both cases, truth is a defense. In some cases, such as libel of a public figure, the absence of malicious intent, which basically means someone misrepresented the truth, also is a defense.
Though this might sound like a twisted interpretation, freedom of speech is the reason we have pornography and hate groups. Our country is such that we believe everyone has a right to their opinions, regardless of how we, as individuals, might feel about it.
Ask cities or communities that have tried to prevent marches or protests by groups that represented less popular causes. Unless those cities want to decimate their municipal budgets through legal fees and damage payouts, they must allow such activities to take place regardless of public opinion.
Free speech means free speech even if nobody wants to listen.
Though all those rules remain in place, and continue to be upheld by court decisions, defining what constitutes free speech has become much more difficult in the Internet age.
The Internet has become an open forum of not only bloggers and Internet-only “news” sites, but comments about everything from anybody who has access to a computer.
Readers, who can create IDs that can be anything from their actual names to nicknames to “anonymous” can pretty much say anything they want to say. We have, unfortunately, even had people post comments under the names of other people.
Comments go through an approval process, but because of the timeliness of the medium and its comments, it’s not always possible to read every comment on every story carefully before allowing posting.
When a reader calls a potentially inappropriate comment to our attention, we take a closer look and sometimes, though rarely, remove it from our Web site. Those instances would be when it uses foul language, accuses someone of a crime or attacks someone based on their race, religion or gender.
Beyond that, we generally do allow comments, regardless of how mean they might seem, to stand as they are submitted.
But we also encourage those who object to them to include their comments on the same site.
After all, freedom of speech isn’t limited to those who want to focus on the negative.
* * *
This past Friday The Enterprise contained an unusual Money and Markets page.
To everyone’s embarrassment, a note explaining how to create the page was published in the middle of the page on top of the stock report.
Nobody was more concerned and apologetic than the very new copy editor who made that error or the other members of the copy desk who didn’t catch the mistake before it printed.
We apologize to all our readers, but especially to the one caller who asked, in complete seriousness, if that was a one-time occurrence, or something we intended to start doing every day.
We certainly hope not.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 1:00 PM
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