On a day when dog-stomping videos get Constitutional protection, questions arise about how First Amendment freedoms may be exacerbating today's political polarization.
Americans have come a long way from 1923 when Time Magazine first appeared to save them from being confused by "the million little chaoses of raw news" with a Voice from Above to explain what it all means. Back then, A. J. Liebling could rightly conclude that freedom of the press was limited to those who own one.
Now in a 24/7 flood of ideas and images, David Brooks tries to make the case that "the Internet is actually more ideologically integrated than old-fashioned forms of face-to-face association...You’re more likely to overlap with political opponents online than in your own neighborhood."
His evidence is flimsy after citing stronger arguments that the Internet "may be harming the public square" by allowing us to personalize our news, visit only Web sites that confirm our prejudices and live in "information cocoons" that strengthen them.
The Supreme Court's decision on the loathsome videos suggests how hard it is to draw a line between free expression and behavior that damages the society.
In shielding the videos, eight out of nine members declined to limit First Amendment freedoms, with only Justice Alito dissenting with the opinion that they are linked with "violent criminal acts, and it appears that these crimes are committed for the sole purpose of creating the videos.”
Nobody is killing dogs on cable TV or YouTube--yet--but rabid ravings are degrading public discourse everywhere (pace Tom Tancredo) and the only permissible American response is not to suppress them but express a cathartic disgust, as Time's Joe Klein did this week.
The founding father, Henry Luce, would have approved.
Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Return of Rumsfeld
He's back, with all his contempt for the media intact. Now Donald Rumsfeld is proposing a “21st-century agency for global communications” that would use blogs, social networks and talk radio to visit verbal shock and awe on Muslim extremists.
Addressing an "information warfare conference" co-sponsored by such defenders of free speech as Boeing, Lockheed and Curtiss Wright, Rumsfeld said the US is “sitting on the sidelines” in a global battle of ideas and "barely competing.”
When Sharon Weinberger of Wired asked what his new agency would do, the former Secretary Defense referred nostalgically to the good old days when the Army paid locals to plant stories in the Iraq press until American media spoiled the fun by reporting about it.
Rumsfeld insisted that his new propaganda ministry would not interfere with traditional journalism.
“It doesn’t mean we have to infringe on the role of the free press, they can go do what they do, and that’s fine,” he said. “Well, it’s not fine, but it’s what it is, let’s put it that way.”
What the architect of the Iraq war wants to do now is “tell the story of a nation that was carved from the wilderness and conceived in freedom” to those benighted souls who live under regimes that don't respect our First Amendment, as he does.
Addressing an "information warfare conference" co-sponsored by such defenders of free speech as Boeing, Lockheed and Curtiss Wright, Rumsfeld said the US is “sitting on the sidelines” in a global battle of ideas and "barely competing.”
When Sharon Weinberger of Wired asked what his new agency would do, the former Secretary Defense referred nostalgically to the good old days when the Army paid locals to plant stories in the Iraq press until American media spoiled the fun by reporting about it.
Rumsfeld insisted that his new propaganda ministry would not interfere with traditional journalism.
“It doesn’t mean we have to infringe on the role of the free press, they can go do what they do, and that’s fine,” he said. “Well, it’s not fine, but it’s what it is, let’s put it that way.”
What the architect of the Iraq war wants to do now is “tell the story of a nation that was carved from the wilderness and conceived in freedom” to those benighted souls who live under regimes that don't respect our First Amendment, as he does.
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