Does freedom of speech entitle us to be offensive?

Freedom of speech is not a right we were born with from the beginning of time. Man used to fight battles and wage war over trivial things in the past such as territory, food, religion and so forth, we were never what you would describe as a peaceful bunch in order for freedom of speech to work. But fortunately all that has changed, today we only wage war over much bigger issues, like oil for example. We have evolved remarkably over the ages, democratic and multicultural societies are celebrated and revered and we owe that largely to our righteous morals and strong sense of human empathy. Today, freedom of speech is a right we earned, some societies haven’t quite earned it yet like China for example but here in Western countries freedom of speech is valued and respected within public discourse. To ensure the protection of speech within an open society, is to allow for the society to evolve. To violently curtail that liberty is to invite oppression and dictatorship, both characteristics do not allow for progression. However that being said it is important to recognize that the absolute existence of freedom of speech even within democratic societies is an ambition and not a reality. The largest open societies today, America for example still impose laws and punishments over instances where free speech should have been protected. Their strict views on national security from the imprisonment of Private Bradley Manning to banning books such as Operation Dark Heart, it still does not allow for the absolute freedom of speech. The UK is also one of the biggest democratic societies yet even here books are being banned and journalists are being arrested. France, following the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks, arrested one of its comedians for posting a comment on Facebook that suggested he was ‘inciting terrorism and hatred’.

The danger of not recognizing the limits on free speech means that the very principles liberal democratic societies are built on are endangered. When these societies fail to recognize these limits, they are failing to protect the vulnerable and minorities in society. When only powerful and rich people can object to freedom of speech through pricy lawyers and courts, the poor and vulnerable will be the only ones subjected to the thorns of freedom of speech. John Stewart Mill, a British philosopher, a liberal and a strong advocate for the Free Speech Principle argues strongly against censorship of the opinions but he also agrees that hate speech should not be protected by the principle as it causes unnecessary harm and is a form of instigation. Although many people would disagree with him and say words are just words and that we should separate them from action however history has proved numerous times that that is not the case. Didn’t Hitler’s propaganda incite hatred and encourage the brutal crimes against the Jewish community? How about the role radio propaganda played in the Rwandan genocide of 1994? Or the terrible Lynching postcards that spread in America glorifying slavery?

Mills draws a powerful example to illustrate his point “An opinion that corn dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard” What mills is saying is that what, when, where and to whom certain words are said can result in unpleasant consequences. Images and words in the media constantly associating Islam with terrorism for example can incite hatred and exclusion of Muslims in society. To take the Charlie Hebdo magazine for example which has constantly attacked many people and religions and races in the context of ‘satire’, the crimes committed against it earlier this year were horrific. However, the magazine’s ways of criticising has constantly framed the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, and this type of depiction leads one to believe the entire religion is built on terrorism and violence. That is not the case, there are almost 2 billion practising Muslims around the world today, it’s safe to say they are not all terrorists but the subliminal connotations of Islam with Terrorism under the context of freedom of speech will incite hatred towards those 2 billion people around the world. Ironically, although the magazine defended itself by saying free speech it had previously sacked one of its editors for anti-semetic writing, but that’s neither here nor there.

The Debate:

A debate was held at Middlesex University earlier this month discussing this very issue: what is freedom of speech? The panel consisted of four highly respectable journalists Kurt Barling, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Christina Patterson and Eric Heinze. What was interesting about this debate is how the meaning of freedom of speech meant something very different to each one of them individually. Their understanding and the importance of the principle varied depending on their personal experience.

From left: Kurt Barling, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Middlesex University Student, Christina Patterson, Eric Heinze

From a very early age Kurt Barling’s experience with Freedom of speech has encouraged him to aspire for a career in Journalism. “What I heard on BBC and Itv and other press outlets wasn’t true, most of the time it didn’t reflect my life, didn’t reflect my experience. For me that meant that freedom of speech wasn’t being exercised effectively, so I said to myself that I’ll become a journalist because maybe then I can exercise freedom of speech in a public space and perhaps bring some , in my view, balance to that speech. Because democracy of course requires that there is equal importance in exercising restraint and respect or others and I felt as a young man respect and restraint wasn’t being exercised by journalists when it came to talking about communities I was familiar with.” Kurt also believes that although we have the right to freedom of speech, we should understand that there comes responsibility with it. “If you were to say something negative about the Koran over and over again, you need to accept that responsibility” he explains “Certain things might sit badly with other people, the right of free speech has responsibilities too, as a journalist I was reminded constantly of those consequences and the limits on how I exercise those responsibilities”. To take the Charlie Hebdo incident as an example the brand of satire used which mocks people “you need to understand that there are responsibilities… that doesn’t mean they deserve to die, certainly not, or perhaps go to prison certainly not but you need to understand the responsibilities”.

Yasmin’s upbringing in Uganda meant that she only found free speech later in life. “Until I was 23 I did not have free speech because I grew up in the empire and I grew up in a family where there were horrible restriction on what you can say at the dinner table. Don’t speak up! Don’t talk to your elders! Just do as I tell you! You’re a child I’m the adult you can’t speak to me like that!”. This made her appreciate this new found freedom and she recognizes that although we do have the right to speak, we still teach our children to respect other people. “I don’t know any parent who would tell their child, yes sweetie, yes darling go say what you want darling. No, we don’t say that. We say go say sorry, you hurt that person. So I think it’s a wonderful and absolutely precious entitlement and art of being human but there are responsibilities and I agree the debates are sometimes quite foolish, we all have a line everybody has a line the real debate is where those lines are.” Yasmin also believes that our democratic societies are not ideal and that they do not do much to protect the minorities when it comes to free speech even though they take pride in this democracy, this as a consequence leads to a way of excluding and demeaning those who aren’t powerful. “To see what the public discourse says about the migrants and the refugees in the last 2-3 years, if people tell me then that is okay, I could not possibly agree with them. Because these are the voiceless people in our society they are not rich enough to sue us, they have no rights under the current press regulation to take cases to papers…I think that what we call political correctness and what I call civilised behaviour and speech in the public space is part of this civilised societies but not as much as it thinks it is”.

Christina Patterson’s unpleasant experience with people from other cultures led her to believe that freedom of speech, should and can insult other people. She was highly criticized for her controversial column about her ‘rude’ neighbours that did not accept the society’s values in The Independent but she believes that her right to free speech entitles her to make those comments. “I absolutely had the right to observe cultures that I have observed for many years around me and say what I thought about the ways in which those cultures departed from values that I believe are incredibly important in our society…Now Jewish households are twice as wealthy as the rest. Street grooming gangs come from Pakistani community, Romanians are far more likely to be pick pockets than other people. Most black murder victims are killed by black people. Most alcohol fumed crimes are committed by white people. These are facts and they are facts that have been mentioned by Trevor Phillips recently in a documentary he made. Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True. There is strong pressure not to say those facts because there is a strong sense of what is politically correct and what is not politically correct. And there are very strong arguments for what is political correctness not the least of which is manners.” She believes that the laws that go against incitement of hatred are balanced by the provisions that allow us to criticize other people’s religion and beliefs…etc. “So although you do not have the right to be grossly offensive and menacing you do have the right to criticize other religions and as we discovered in the after math of Charlie Hebdo, it is a very widely highly valued thing to criticize other people religions including symbols, people and books that other people consider to be sacred. It’s also I think the right to laugh at them and draw cartoons of them if we want to.”

Eric Heinze is a Professor of law and takes great interest in political theory which is why his opinion on the subject takes a more critical and theoretical approach. He explores key terms such as ‘democracy’ and what freedom of speech means for a legitimate democracy. And explains that it is the citizen’s prerogative of non- viewpoint punitive participation in public discourse that constitutes a democracy. To ban hate speech is to serve security but to ban public discourse and that is to punish or penalize or exclude people from public discourse or debate based on their bad philosophy is anti-democratic. “My argument is that is there a limit? Yes, there are certain limits on democracy to strengthen democracy every constitution has them that’s not unusual, every constitution, every democratic constitution has limits on democracy to strengthen democracy. That itself is not the Orwellian problem. The problem is when it becomes a limit on the citizen prerogative of non-viewpoint punitive participation in public discourse. As soon as that becomes limited, you are never serving democracy, you may again be serving security but never democracy.”

The experiences that one goes through and the way they are brought up within a society, the things that influence him and the things that bother him will eventually all come to shape his thinking and understanding of the world. Patterson’s bad experience with her neighbour led her to develop negative feelings towards certain ethnicities and religions. Yasmin’s childhood led her to appreciate that freedom very much but her upbringing taught her to respect other human beings and that what she calls “The social obligations and bonds we have with each other” are also very important. Everyone may have different opinions and they lawfully have every right to express them but as humans of civilised societies we should also exercise our mutual respect and kindness to one another. We must also understand that because we don’t live in a perfect and ideal world, because there is no absolute freedom of speech, at least for now, then we must accept that perhaps mutual respect, kindness and tolerance is more important for our community and that it can outweigh the need for free speech that only protects the interests of the rich.

Take us back to Ghedaffi: Libya today in a pointless war

I was in the car with my husband yesterday driving down the M1 to visit my in-laws. Unknowingly we started to sing the beautiful lyrics to our national anthem. The strong words which speaks about the love and sacrifice we have for our country, was now being sung in a less patriotic way. The deep sense of melancholy could be heard, despite singing the song with full pride less than two years ago. This deeply saddens me, as the pain envelopes my heart the more I think of what Libya has become today.

Have you ever wondered what happens after the happy ending of a fairy tale? Well, if you take the Libyan revolution of 2011 as an example, it’s not pretty. What was once the best thing that ever happened to the country, has now only brought us nothing but a sequel of civil war and chaos. The land of Libya has become a bloodbath, different known and unknown parties want a piece of their own for their personal political agendas. The kidnapping, the spread of weaponry, the constant battles between armed militias over different cities is not something a Libyan who sacrificed everything for freedom cares to admit. Libya today is definitely not Dubai nor will it be in the near future like Libyans used to say. I’m not a pessimist, I am a realist and the foreseeable future for Libya will only continue in turmoil.

There has been as many as five prime ministers in Libya since the 2012 elections; each one proving to be even more corrupt than the next. Back in 2012, almost 65% of eligible Libyan voters from across the land marched proudly to the polling stations. They all carried the heaviest hopes of democracy for the foreseeable future of the country. By 2014, that number saw a massive decline to less than half. Today Libya sees violent rivalries between two governments, the eastern House of Representatives and the western General National Congress. Although the house of representatives has been accepted as the internationally recognized existing government in Libya by the UN, many Libyans believe it was a haste decision taken by the organisation, who tried to secure immediate stability to the country. Libya has been pulled and tugged from many different sides in so many violent ways and all just to serve political interests that are certainly not in the interest of Libya nor its people. On one side you have an ex general Khalifa Haftar who worked side by side with the overthrown dictator Ghedaffi, leading the war on Chad in 1977 and now leading the Dignity movement in this civil war. From the other side you have the Dawn of Libya movement which consists of the many rebels who fought against the Ghedaffi regime and believes in the Sharia law, but pays no respect to the innocent civilians, take the attack on pro Haftar forces as an example. The situation is escalating and becoming more dangerous every day. Both sides are in armed clashes with one another leaving innocent civilian lives in constant danger and fear, making a normal life unable to resume in Libya and the rebuilding of its economy and the construction of a united democratic government a distant dream. This struggle has imposed many financial and political threats on the country with many embassies and foreign workers being forced to flee. This brought the economy and the progression of Libya as a democratic state to a halt.

The level of crime involving revenge from rebels on ex Gadhafi forces and vice versa is on the rise. Almost every household possesses at least one illegal weapon today. This imposes great danger on the lives of young men who have been through the psychological traumas of war and have witnessed very close people die on the hands of Ghedaffi forces. The number of cases of kidnapping is also a big threat to Libya’s security; many people go missing and are usually found in the back of cars abandoned in deserted areas across the country. So many different crimes are beginning to appear in Libya after the revolution which didn’t exist as much before. Gunshots heard in the background are something very normal when making phone calls to Libya and although they are used to it by now alongside power cuts and endless cues over petrol stations and the rise of living costs, this is definitely not what they deserve after all they sacrificed in the revolution. These repercussions of the Ghedaffi regime should come as no surprise. His worst crime against Libya have not been the endless homicides and mass murder of innocent people but the continuous oppression and supressing its people into a state of ignorance and power hungry criminals.

 

Alarming spread of weapons. Associated Press

The UN has created a new body called the United Nations Support Mission In Libya (UNSMIL), it is being led by Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Bernardino Leon. The mission’s main aim is to assist the country in its transitional progress and through its political dialogue is currently liaising between the two conflicting sides in order to ensure peace and bring an end to the pointless war that is bringing nothing but regret and sorrow to the Libyan public. However these peace talks can do very little when no efforts are being made to seize all weapons from unauthorized owners and young boys. This may not end all the problems, but it will definitely be a start. The numbers of voters last year are a sad testimonial to hopelessness of the people. Today, it is a common saying amongst the people ‘take us back to Ghedaffi’ although they dread saying or even thinking it but at the end of the day one enemy is a lot more tolerable than a thousand.

 

Big Brother Britain: The threat against journalism

We live in an era where our journalists’ are being constantly abused across social media networks, sued by the big powerful guys and (just so you don’t mistake me for being sexist) women. The ones with the big money and fancy lawyers that don’t always appreciate healthy criticism, attacked by ‘keyboard warriors’ who hide behind their keyboards typing death threats and abuse thinking they’re stronger than all Marvel super villains combined. We put our fate in journalists and appoint them as the watchdog over our society and our governments yet we react so ferociously when they do just that. This is not an issue concerning the faraway lands of the oppressed and undeveloped third world countries. No, this is happening right here at home in Great Britain. The country that prides itself in its democracy and transparency.

Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit freedom of information organisation that produces annual reports which list countries and determines their rank depending on how free they are, ranked the United Kingdom as number 34 in its world press freedom index. That’s 4 spots drop from 2013 and a whopping 19 levels plummet from the 2010 report. Considering how important democracy is to the UK and the British public these figures may seem rather shocking but they are true.

World Press Freedom Index of 2015. Report provided by the Reporters Without Borders organisation

According to the organisation the abuse of national security by applying mass surveillance systems and invading every individual’s privacy is the new ugly habit of democratic countries including the United States to fight terrorism. What’s even more shocking to hear is that France and the United Kingdome are, as described by the report, the “worst offenders” when it comes to these laws. The UK has constantly come under scrutiny for allowing police forces to abuse their power and spy on journalists. Just recently 6 journalists are suing the London Met Police following revelations that the department has been spying on these journalists for years. Jason Parkinson, one of the victims taking charges against the Met Police, discovered a file that contained every detail about him including a criminal check of his ex-partner. “The files make it very clear they have been monitoring my movements, with whom I associate and even what clothing I wear, in order for police intelligence units to build up a profile of me and my network of associates and contacts”.

One of the most shocking attacks on the freedom of press by the British government is when they asked the Guardian newspaper to destroy all the documents received by the American whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Snowden exposed to the world how national security agencies are attempting to combat terrorism by applying a mass surveillance system that would spy on every interaction we make via telecommunication. Every text, phone call and site we click is being saved as data that maybe used against you one day. This Orwellian Big Brother scheme attempts to tackle terrorism by treating us all like one. Surveillance is a draconian habit of oppressive societies and one that should not be tolerated in open and democratic societies whatsoever.

Speaking to journalists from the UK, I discovered that the government is not their only problem, what they also dread when doing their job is the pricy legal fees of law suits, the paperwork and sadly numerous death threats. Yasmin Ali-Bhai brown an outspoken columnist from the Independant tells me how she is constantly being asked from her editors to change or sometime even remove certain text from her pieces “In one of my columns, I wrote how this was a very corrupt country, and I was asked by my editors to change the entire column to ‘may be a corrupt country’ all the way through”. These small and often hardly notable ways of disrupting free speech can change a lot of meanings, they happen regularly to journalists but are hardly noticed by readers. I asked Dominic Ponsford editor at the Press Gazette how they deal with these lawsuits and does it affect the way they do their job? He says it depends on how big the publication you’re working for is and how much it is willing to pay the legal fees otherwise you may end producing important material for the public interest but forbidden from publishing it. What this means for investigative journalists especially, is that these law suits will serve as a means of deterrence and intimidation for one of the most respected fields in the industry. As for freelance journalists working independently on the field and submitting their work to different publications they face different problems. Lynda Bowyer, a freelance journalist with 25 years of experience has always worked independently. The reason she tells me, is “so that I can create news as I see it and dispatch news packages to news agencies as I see it without it being bias by editorial”. Is that something that happens often? I ask. “Oh yes massively… there are certain mainstream news titles in the industry that have very clear cut political persuasion and I fear that that clouts the reality of the news story. When someone automatically reads a news story, instead of reading a factual account, you will find it being editorially rendered down so it suits the political persuasions of the newspaper or the stakeholders in the committee”.

Now the press has not always been innocent in the UK. Following the phone hacking scandal in 2011, many corrupt journalists were found guilty of hacking celebrities’ and important figure’s phones. Perhaps the worst crime they committed which breached all sorts of NUJ guidelines was the interference with the missing teenager Milly Dowler’s voicemail which gave her family hope that she may be alive only to feel completely betrayed and heartbroken to realize the press were behind deleting the contents of the voicemail. This sort of behaviour is unacceptable for a practising journalists. Fortunately all those involved were brought to justice and this led to the dissemination of the Leveson report in 2012. The report had a massive impact on the press and will perhaps come to change the future of journalism in Britain for years to come. The report states that an independent figure will be formed to regulate the press from this sort of activity. This means that the press will be regulated in the UK which wasn’t the case in the past (well not officially). Leveson acknowledges the importance of the free press and describes it as the ‘safeguard of our democracy’ but that there had been many instances in the past where the press has simply ignored the guidelines and acted out of the public’s interest and caused distress to the ordinary members of the public. As a result the regulating body will take into account first and foremost the public’s interest at heart before prosecuting. It seems that this is slowly being implemented such as the acquittal of the sun journalists who were released after being charged for paying public officials for information. That information revealed stories that were within the public’s interest and fortunately the jury accepted their innocence.

Graham Brough, one of The Sun journailsts being interviewed after his release. Photo provided by Washington Post via Photographer: John Stillwell from the Associated Press

It is a relief to see these journalists set free. Perhaps the public have not lost complete fate in journalism and will continue to support journalists after all. Journalists are our only hope to achieve justice and an open society and they should be granted security to their job without fear of harassment, death threats or placing them with criminals on our anti-terrorism databases not just in the UK but everywhere around the world. And by us giving them that right they should not abuse it to create stories they cannot tell us through via traditional, legal and ethical ways.

A democratic country that allows the absolute freedom for press should not be a distant dream. We live in the 21 century we have evolved and overcome many obstacles to reach the civilised place where we are now and we shouldn’t take that for granted. All the sad and terrible things that are happening in the world today, every sad story waiting to be told, every voiceless victim that needs to speak. They all dream of their stories to be told, to find justice. Journalism has for a long time served for this purpose, they tell stories that other can’t tell they face bullets others can’t face and if we surround them with the pressure to only tell the stories we want to hear, who’s to say what stories demand to be told and which don’t.