07 May 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
Journalists of the TSN news programme have issued an open letter yesterday accusing the 1+1 TV station of censoring their bulletins. According to the 15 journalists who signed the letter, the “last straw” was the station’s decision to edit out footage of a fight between the opposition and ruling majority in parliament, during a broadcast on 2 May. Oleksandr Tkachenko, general director of 1+1 has denied the charges and accused the journalists of lacking “professionalism”.
06 May 10 | Uncategorized
Should the 1986 Public Order Act be used to curb homophobic speech by religious street preachers? A Baptist, Dale McAlpine, has been charged with causing intentional “harassment, alarm or distress” by describing same sex relationships as sinful. McAlpine was arrested after preaching from the top of a stepladder in Workington, Cumbria.
If you subscribe to the view that merely causing offence shouldn’t be deemed a genuine harm, as many defenders of free speech do, then this application of the 1986 law is morally indefensible. McAlpine’s sermon was certainly offensive to some, but it didn’t harm them. Hate speech, in contrast, is speech designed to cause its hearers real psychological pain. In some cases it can be more damaging than physical violence. If the law were used to curb this, there would be a better justification, though that would involve sensitivity to the details of each case. But there is little evidence that McAlpine was intending psychological damage to passersby. If anything, his intentions, though misguided, were benevolent.
There is a further problem with this case. The principle on which the arrest was made could be applied to just about any expressed view that listeners find offensive. Consistent application would result in the arrest of the Pope if he pronounces on homosexuality during his visit to the United Kingdom, but also of Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins if they speak out publicly against the Pope’s immoral behaviour in relation to paedophilic priests.
Moral, political or religious disagreement shouldn’t be re-defined as “harassment” — that’s the sort of shift of meaning that George Orwell warned us about long ago. Greater toleration of divergent viewpoints is the answer here, not censorship. False and offensive speech should be met with counter-speech, not a gag.
Nigel Warburton is the author of Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction, He will be blogging regularly for Index on the philosopical aspects of free speech contoversies
05 May 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
On 3 May the central propaganda department issued new media guidelines designed to downplay coverage of the Qinghai earthquake and recent school attacks in order to promote the Shanghai Expo. After four violent attacks on schoolchildren in a month, reports of the incidents began to be withdrawn. The guidelines also specify that reports on the expo use only official state-endorsed Xinhua sources. Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily has confirmed it was denied accreditation to cover the Expo, and the home of activist Feng Zhenghu was raided on 19 April, after he attempted to launch his own online expo of judicial injustice.
28 Apr 10 | Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
The Saudi Arabian government broke the Arabic record for the fastest time to block a new website, clocking in at just 15 hours. On 25 April, they blocked a US- based site created by Egyptian activists The Egyptian Association for Change, eacusa.org, only 15 hours after it launched. Tunisia was the previous record holder, blocking www.yezzi.org in 18 hours after it went live in 2005.
