News for 09/10/2009- Free Speech in America

Posted on September 10, 2009. Filed under: Enemies of The State, General Info, Soapbox | Tags: American Thinker on Free Speech, Censorship Inc, Center For American Progress, Diversity in media, FCC, FCC Czar, FCC GENACHOWSKI, First Amendment, Free Speech in America, Freedom of Speech, Lawrence Soley, Media Research Hub, Muslim Legal Fund for America, Muslim Threat to Free Speech, Social Agenda, Social Change, Social Justice, Soros, Supreme Court Decisions on Free Speech |

Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech. Benjamin Franklin, writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, July 9, 1722  

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:  

 FCC Head:Chairman Julius Genachowski 

 In his government biography, appear the following highlights: Genachowski’s public service spanned broadly across government. His confirmation as FCC Chairman returns him to the agency where, from 1994 until 1997, he served as Chief Counsel to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, and, before that, as Special Counsel to then-FCC General Counsel (later Chairman) William Kennard. Previously, he was a law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice David Souter and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. (ret.), and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for Chief Judge Abner Mikva. Genachowski also worked in Congress for then-U.S. Representative (now Senator) Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), and on the staff of the House select committee investigating the Iran-Contra Affair. Genachowski has been active at the intersection of social responsibility and the marketplace. His acceptance speech follows:   http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-291834A1.doc

…Put simply, our communications infrastructure is the foundation upon which our economy and our society rest. And it has never been more important that we unleash its potential. Our nation is at a crossroads. We face a number of tremendous challenges: our economy, education, health care, and energy, to name a few. If we do our jobs right and harness the power of communications to confront these challenges, we will have chosen the right course, and we will make a real positive difference in the lives of our children and future generations…. 

As the country’s expert agency on communications, it is our job to pursue this vision of a more connected America, focusing on the following goals:

• Promoting universal broadband that’s robust, affordable and open.
• Pursuing policies that promote job creation, competition, innovation and investment.
• Protecting and empowering consumers and families.
• Helping deliver public safety communications networks with the best technology to serve our firefighters, police officers, and other first responders.
• Advancing a vibrant media landscape, in these challenging times, that serves the public interest in the 21st century.
• Seizing the opportunity for the United States to lead the world in mobile communications.

These are just some of the goals we will pursue in the days ahead. How we will work will be central to what we can achieve. We will be fair.

We will be open and transparent. Our policy decisions will be fact-based and data-driven. We will strive to be smart about technology; smart about economics and businesses; smart about law and history; and smart every day about how our actions affect the lives of consumers. We will use technology and new media to enhance the everyday worklives of FCC staff, green the agency, and improve overall operations of the FCC – running efficiently, communicating effectively, and opening the agency to participation from everyone affected by the FCC’s actions.  And, stay tuned, we will have a new FCC website. 

Why do we serve in government and why do we serve at the FCC? We serve because we believe our nation can always do better and that it must do better. We serve because, in our America, we are defined not by what we earn, but by what we give…. That’s never been more true than today.  Communications must play a role in solving many of our nation’s most pressing challenges.  It’s the FCC’s job – our job – to turn this aspiration into reality.  We will be judged by whether we find concrete, practical ways to improve the lives of all of our nation’s people.  

Past articles about FCC Chair: https://soldierforliberty.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/news-for-08252009-how-about-corruption-reform-and-a-look-at-cloward-and-piven/

FCC Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/08/06/new-fcc-chief-diversity-officer-co-wrote-liberal-groups-structural-imb

Here is the document he co-authored for Soros’ Center For American Progress, called “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio”.

Conservative Talk Radio- How Those at the FCC Want To Shut It Down- The Official Report – Does this sound Constitutional to You?

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/pdf/talk_radio.pdf 

From the Center for American Progress, the Soros Progressive Movement now in charge of our government, here is the report the new FCC head and FCC “Diversity” Czar are using to co-opt free speech in America. This is a 40 page pdf document co-authored by Mark Lloyd, the Diversity Czar, himself. Here is a peek:

“As this report will document in detail, conservative talk radio undeniably dominates the format:

Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.

Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk—10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.

A separate analysis of all of the news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets reveals that 76 percent of the programming in these markets is conservative and 24 percent is progressive, although programming is more balanced in markets such as New York and Chicago.

This dynamic is repeated over and over again no matter how the data is analyzed, whether one looks at the number of stations, number of hours, power of stations, or the number of programs. While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, conservative talk continues to be pushed out over the airwaves in greater multiples of hours than progressive talk is broadcast.

These empirical findings may not be surprising given general impressions about the format, but they are stark and raise serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.

There are many potential explanations for why this gap exists. The two most frequently cited reasons are the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and simple consumer demand. As this report will detail, neither of these reasons adequately explains why conservative talk radio dominates the airwaves.

Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management.”

Past Articles about Mark Lloyd:

https://soldierforliberty.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/news-for-0815-08162009-fcc-czar-more-hc-discussion-food-safety-act/  https://soldierforliberty.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/news-for-08172009-special-edition-a-new-and-brewing-crisis/               https://soldierforliberty.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/news-for-08282009-next-stepsingle-payer-retirement-plans-fcc-czar-regulatory-czar-we-the-people-have-the-power/  https://soldierforliberty.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/news-for-09072009-cant-get-to-dc-join-the-virtual-march-on-washington-fcc-smoking-gun-a-little-holiday-video-fun/

In the Fight For Social Change

http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/news/conference-on-communication-and-social-change-theory-icts-media-and-francophone-spheres-may-22-2008/ One of the leading organizations working for social change using media. Devoted to Inclusion, Localism, Social Movement.   http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/data-consortium-1

Understanding the public sphere–and developing good public policy to support it–requires access to data about media and the public sphere: data on industry structure, audiences, programming, internet traffic, and other basic measures of our increasingly convergent media environment.  In the U.S., much of this data is privately collected, and priced for large corporations.  Independent researchers, public interest groups, and policymakers operate at a major disadvantage in this environment. For many reasons, unequal access to data is a recipe for poor public policy.  Notably, it makes the examination of policy proposals and evaluation of policy outcomes difficult at best.  As this situation becomes the norm, media policymaking moves away from basic principles of public accountability. The consortium is a vehicle for expressing the data-related concerns and collective bargaining power of scholarly and public-interest communities in this area.

Six Steps Toward a Stronger, More Transparent, More Accountable FCC in the Obama Era  (yeah, right)

http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/news/six-steps-toward-a-stronger-more-transparent-more-accountable-fcc-in-the-obama-era  

American Thinker on Obama Threat to Free Speech in America (pre-election warning) http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/obama_to_critics_just_shut_up.html …What makes Obama’s affinity for suppressing dissent even worse is that mainstream newspapers and television networks, the very institutions expected to act as watchdogs and to be a forum for the expression of free speech of all persuasions, have failed the American people during this election not only through biased reporting but also by their shocking failure (refusal?) to dig beyond the surface into Obama’s questionable background. As a result, in this election, the American people have been stripped of the protections normally provided by a vibrant and critical press, one of the most important weapons a free nation has against its leaders (or leaders-to-be) and against the tyranny of power.
Should Obama be elected to the presidency, Americans should expect such ugly aggressive tactics to continue, and Americans who disagree with President Obama should expect to be silenced. Whether it is through Obama’s use of the mainstream press as a government mouthpiece, the imposition of the Fairness Doctrine to suppress (and in many cases eliminate) radio and television programs or print media outlets critical of an Obama administration, or, the sicking of the press and surrogates on citizens who dare question those in power, Americans are about to experience on a national scale what dissenting students and faculty on American campuses have experienced for years….  

 The New Social Change Agenda is Not The Only Threat to Free Speech

Book: Censorship, Inc.: The Corporate Threat to Free Speech in the United States by Lawrence Soley -Amazon.com notes:
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a landmark in the defense of free speech against government interference and suppression. In this book we come to see how it also acts as a smokescreen behind which a more dangerous and insidious threat to free speech can operate.  Soley shows how as corporate power has grown and come to influence the issues on which ordinary Americans should be able to speak out, so new strategies have developed to restrict free speech on issues in which corporations and property-owners have an interest. Censorship, Inc. is a comprehensive examination of the vast array of corporate practices which restrict free speech in the United States today in fields as diverse as advertsing and the media, the workplace, community life, and the environment. Soley also shows how these threats to free speech have been resisted by activism, legal argument, and through legislation. Grounded in extensive research into actual cases, this book is at the same time a challenge to conventional thinking about the nature of censorship and free speech. 

 Another Threat To Free Speech: Pressure from Foreign Concerns

 http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102989 

 When Internet journalist Joe Kaufman wrote an article exposing terrorist connections in two American Muslim groups, he was sued by a swarm of Islamic organizations, none of which he had mentioned in his online article. The technique is called by some “legal jihad” or “Islamist lawfare,” and the Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Kaufman in the lawsuit, claims Muslim advocates are using the strategy to bully online journalists into silence. “The lawsuit against Kaufman was funded by the Muslim Legal Fund for America. The head of that organization, Khalil Meek, admitted on a Muslim radio show that lawsuits were being filed against Kaufman and others to set an example,” claims a Thomas More statement on the case. “Indeed, for the last several years, Muslim groups in the U.S. have engaged in the tactic of filing meritless lawsuits to silence any public discussion of Islamic terrorist threats.”  

http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2009/05/20/free_speech_under_threat  After feeling pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Sen. Arlen Specter cancelled his appearance at a conference Tuesday on free speech protections, bringing attention to some of the of the very issues the conference was designed to highlight. “Libel Lawfare: Silencing Criticism of Radical Islam” focused on the prosecution of American citizens under foreign libel laws, which are typically much looser than First Amendment speech protections in the U.S. Foreign laws are commonly targeted at Americans who publish or speak about controversial issues such as Islamic terrorism; if an American criticizes a foreign national and the foreign national doesn’t like it, lawsuits can loom.

 DO NOT TAKE FOR GRANTED THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES WILL GUARANTEE YOUR RIGHT TO SPEAK  

The Courts Have Not Always Backed Free Speech– here is an excerpt from Wikipedia on the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Freedom of speech

Sedition

The Supreme Court never ruled on the constitutionality of any federal law regarding the Free Speech Clause until the 20th century. The Supreme Court never ruled on the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, whose speech provisions expired in 1801. The leading critics of the law, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, argued for the Acts’ unconstitutionality on the basis of the First Amendment, among other Constitutional provisions (e.g. Tenth Amendment). In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), the Supreme Court said, “[a]lthough the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history.”

After World War I, several cases involving laws limiting speech came before the Supreme Court. The Espionage Act of 1917 imposed a maximum sentence of twenty years for anyone who caused or attempted to cause “insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States.” Under the Act, there were over two thousand prosecutions. For instance, one filmmaker was sentenced to ten years imprisonment because his portrayal of British soldiers in a movie about the American Revolution impugned the good faith of an American ally, the United Kingdom. The Sedition Act of 1918 went even further, criminalizing “disloyal,” “scurrilous” or “abusive” language against the government.

In Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), the Supreme Court was first requested to strike down a law violating the Free Speech Clause. The case involved Charles Schenck, who had, during the war, published leaflets challenging the conscription system then in effect. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld Schenck’s conviction for violating the Espionage Act. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for the Court, suggested that “the question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

The “clear and present danger” test of Schenck was extended in Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919), again by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. The case involved a speech made by Eugene V. Debs, a political activist. Debs had not spoken any words that posed a “clear and present danger” to the conscription system, but a speech in which he denounced militarism was nonetheless found to be sufficient grounds for his conviction. Justice Holmes suggested that the speech had a “natural tendency” to occlude the draft.

Thus, the Supreme Court effectively shaped the First Amendment in such a manner as to permit a multitude of restrictions on speech. Further restrictions on speech were accepted by the Supreme Court when it decided Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925). Writing for the majority, Justice Edward Sanford  suggested that states could punish words that “by their very nature, involve danger to the public peace and to the security of the state.” Lawmakers were given the freedom to decide which speech would constitute a danger.

Freedom of speech was influenced by anti-communism during the Cold War. In 1940, the Congress enacted the Smith Act. The Smith Act made punishable the advocacy of “the propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force and violence.” The law was mainly used as a weapon against Communist leaders. The constitutionality of the Act was questioned in Dennis v. United States 341 U.S. 494 (1951). The Court upheld the law in 1951 by a 6-2 vote (Justice Tom C. Clark did not participate because he had previously ordered the prosecutions when he was Attorney General). Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson relied on Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “clear and present danger” test when he wrote for the majority. Vinson suggested that the doctrine did not require the government to “wait until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited”, thereby broadly defining the words “clear and present danger.” Thus, even though there was no immediate danger posed by the Communist Party’s ideas, the Court allowed the Congress to restrict the Communist Party’s speech.

Dennis has never been explicitly overruled by the Court, but subsequent decisions have greatly narrowed its place within First Amendment jurisprudence. In 1957, the Court changed its interpretation of the Smith Act in deciding Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957). The Supreme Court ruled that the Act was aimed at “the advocacy of action, not ideas”. Thus, the advocacy of abstract doctrine remains protected under the First Amendment. Only speech explicitly inciting the forcible overthrow of the government remains punishable under the Smith Act.