The Causes of Human Rights Violations (40): Polarization as a Novel Way of Violating the Right to Free Speech

The traditional ways of silencing people are still all too common: libel or blasphemy laws, threats, the physical targeting of journalists, censorship, book burning or indexing, political correctness, exaggerated respect for people’s sensibilities etc. However, the silencers have developed new and increasingly sophisticated means. And I’m not thinking about tactics like internet filtering – this is indeed a new and sophisticated technology, but in essence it’s just a new form of book burning.

I’m thinking more about things like polarization as one of those new ways of silencing. A commonly cited justification of free speech is that it can help people to influence each other and spread their beliefs. We hold strong beliefs, we think we have good reasons supporting those beliefs, and we want to express these beliefs and these reasons in an attempt to convince others. Free speech helps us to do so.

At least, that’s the case in theory. In real life, this “marketplace of ideas” is dysfunctional. Many groups in society are not arguing, convincing or engaging in public thinking. Instead, ideas are expressed as claims rather than argued for. Expression, if you like, is limited to “brute” expression. One of the reasons for this is that expression can be motivated, not by the willingness to persuade, but by the need to show one’s identity or belonging. In other words, expression is signaling rather than arguing. Another reason for the lack of argumentation is the fact that a lot of expression is about being controversial and outrageous, antagonizing other groups on the polarized spectrum, provoking a “media storm” and cashing in on the advertizing generated by the ensuing pageviews, clicks or whatever.

If ideas aren’t debated but expressed in a “brute” way only, for whatever reason, then polarization is inevitable. No one is convinced by the brute expression of an idea or opinion. And if no one is convinced, then people stay in their respective camps. These camps then drift further apart because absent an exchange of reasons for beliefs, people start to see other groups as increasingly strange, alien and incomprehensible.

Calvin and friend having an argument

Now, polarization is of course nothing new, but I can’t help thinking that nowadays some people in positions of power are actively encouraging polarization as a means to silence debate, consciously or not. People in positions of responsibility, people who could use their power in order to organize and protect debate, use it instead to promote brute expression and hence to stifle the exchange of arguments and to polarize society. Think of news network owners, politicians, many journalists etc. These people are interested in polarized expression rather than debate, particularly the type of polarized expression that is mildly upsetting to other groups because that brings in the readers, page views, ratings and the corresponding advertizing dollars. The silencing that occurs here is not the silencing of expression but the silencing of argumentation and debate. Opinions are still expressed but no longer argued because argumentation – compared to a blunt statement of a controversial opinion - doesn’t provoke and hence doesn’t produce income.

Why do people actively promote the brute expression of ideas and the silencing of debate? Because of the dollars, of course, but also because it diminishes some discomfort. When there’s only brute expression, we can avoid having to examine our beliefs, defend them and possibly change them. We all value consistency in our basic beliefs and we don’t always want to take the trouble arguing for them or responding to arguments against them. If we are shielded from arguments in the media, then we don’t have to take these argument into account. And that’s relaxing. However, the result is polarization because the flip-side of the relaxation offered by the absence of arguments is the increasing alienation from people holding other beliefs: we are also shielded from the arguments these people have (or could have) for their own beliefs, and hence these beliefs start to seem strange, bizarre and not something we want to be involved with.

More on polarization here.

Limiting Free Speech (45): Selling Violent Video Games to Children

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A recent US Supreme Court ruling invalidated a California law that banned the sale of certain violent video games to children on the grounds that the law violated freedom of speech. The controversy is an old one, and goes roughly as follows. Proponents of laws banning violent media – especially the sale of violent media to children – point to different studies arguing that violence in media promotes violence in real life and that children in particular are at risk of becoming violent adults. Since people have a right to be protected against violence and children have a right not to suffer the psychological harm that purportedly comes from the consumption of violent games, we have here a case of rights conflicting with each other: on the one hand the free speech rights of the makers and sellers of games, and on the other hand the security rights of the potential victims of violent behavior provoked by the consumption of violent games, as well as the mental health rights of the consumers of those games. Hence, one of those rights should give way to the other rights.

Proponents of restrictions of free speech in this case argue that a prohibition of the sale of violent games to children is the best option since the speech value of a violent video game is small, and since producers of such games still have the freedom of “artistic expression” because they can still sell to adults. The cost of limiting free speech in this case is small compared to the gains in terms of physical security and psychological health. And there are precedents such as movie ratings.

The opponents of limitations on free speech can also point to studies showing the absence of an effect on real life violence or even the opposite effect – the so-called “pressure valve theory“. They can also use the slippery slope argument and claim that the sale of many classical works of fiction should then also be prohibited on the same grounds, since they also contain scenes of violence.

The US Supreme court sided with the opponents, unsurprisingly given the near absolutism of free speech protection in the US (only a couple of exceptions to free speech are recognized in US jurisprudence, and expression of violence isn’t one of them).

While I personally find US free speech jurisprudence difficult to accept and generally hypocritical – why can obscene material be censored but not violent material? – I think in this case the SCOTUS decision is probably right. The psychological evidence does not, as far as I can tell, clearly show an effect of media violence on real life violence, and even if there is a small effect, a general prohibition on violence in media probably goes too far, as does a general prohibition on the sale of media containing violence. Even a prohibition on the sale of such material to children is probably too much, even given the fact that children are more impressionable. Violence has many causes, and the “pressure valve” theory has some intuitive appeal (also in the case of pornography by the way). A rating system, allowing parents to do their job, is probably better.

Bonus cartoon:

 

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More about media violence and free speech here. More posts in this series here.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (24): Political Rhetoric, Violence and Free Speech

editorial cartoon by Clay Bennett, about violence and political rhetoric

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My two cents about the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords:

• The attack was obviously politically inspired, even though the shooter may have been insane. An insane act isn’t necessarily apolitical. There may or may not be a direct causal link between the attack and the “heated political rhetoric” that has come to characterize American politics and that often borders on incitement. (Compared to other western democracies, the political language is indeed extreme in the US). If there is such a link, it will be very hard to establish, given what we know about the psychology of the attacker.
• In general, violent rhetoric can contribute to actual violence (see this paper for example). The case of the Rwanda genocide is well-known. And we don’t need to go and look at extremes in order to find cases of hate speech turning into hate crime. There are not a few pedophiles who have had there whereabouts shouted from the rooftops and who suffered the consequences. Given the omnipresence and ease-of-use of the media in developed societies, what is published and broadcast through these media may very well nurture or even provoke extremism and hate in society. It’s futile to deny this possibility.
• This general conclusion does not warrant the automatic linking of a case of violence to instances of political rhetoric that seem to be a possible inspiration. In other words, it’s not because Sarah Palin was silly enough to publish a map with cross-hairs “targeting” Giffords (among others) in a purely political and non-violent way, that her actions caused the attack. Maybe these actions contributed, maybe not. Most likely we’ll never know. And even if they did contribute in driving a sick person over the edge – which is not impossible – then they are most likely only one element in a large set of causal factors, including the perpetrator’s education, medical care (or lack thereof), the ease with which he could acquire a gun etc. That large set doesn’t drown individual causes but it does diminish the importance of each (possible) cause. Human motivation and the determinants of human action are almost always highly complex. (Something which is too often forgotten in criminal sentencing).

John Stuart Mill

• Given the general possibility of speech resulting in violence, is that possibility a sufficient reason to limit our freedom of speech, even before the actual violence occurs? Yes, but only in very specific cases, namely those cases in which the link between speech and (possible) violence is clear. John Stuart Mill used the example of an excited mob assembled in front of the house of a corn dealer accused of starving the poor. Hate speech in such a setting is likely to lead to violence, while the exact same words printed in an obscure magazine are not. The words in the magazine should be protected by freedom of speech; the words of the mob leaders probably not.
• Yet even when words should be left free by the law, morality requires of speakers that they consider the possible consequences of speech.
• Are the events we witnessed recently of the same nature as the words of the mob leaders? And what about similar recent events? I don’t think so. Which means that the people concerned have not abused their freedom of speech.
• Does that mean that they used their freedom in a good way? No, it doesn’t. Heated rhetoric is almost never the best way to talk, not even for the purposes of the speaker. It doesn’t tend to accomplish a lot or to further anyone’s interests (apart from the interest in getting attention). So those of us who insist on “turning it down a notch” have good reasons to do so. This insistence obviously doesn’t imply curtailment. It’s just a question, and it deals with form rather than content. People are generally too fast to claim their right to free speech when confronted with criticism of the way in which they use or abuse this right. Criticism of speech doesn’t automatically imply the will to prohibit speech, and freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from criticism. Quite the opposite.

More here and here.

Related Articles

• Extremist Rhetoric, Violence and American History (themoderatevoice.com)
• Violence, Language, Politics (secularshawshank.wordpress.com)
• Clinton warns against demonized rhetoric (thehill.com)

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (102): TV Censorship Priorities

More on violence on television here and here; something on violence and gaming is here; something on pornography and violence here; something on “naughty words” here and here; and on censorship in general here. More jokes here.

Limiting Free Speech (42): Reporting the Names of Suspects and Defendants

illustration by Matt Mahurin

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In many countries it’s quite common, and legal, to include some very specific information about suspects in crime reporting. Newspapers, television shows and websites publish the names, photographs and even addresses of people who are arrested on suspicion of a crime, even if it later turns out that these people were completely innocent. By that time, of course, their reputation, privacy, livelihood, social relationships and perhaps even family life may have been destroyed beyond repair. One can argue that this practice is unjust and an abuse of freedom of speech, even in the case of people who, after the trial is over, are deemed to have been guilty rather than merely a suspect. Criminal punishment should arguably not include such far-reaching consequences. A fortiori, the harm done by such publications to people who were wrongfully suspected is even more unjust because it amounts to punishment before conviction.

That is why some people – including myself – are in favor of limited restrictions on this type of news reporting, even if it means limiting journalists’ freedom of speech. The names, addresses or photographs of suspected criminals should not be made public until after a conviction, and in some cases not even then (there’s the example of the Bulger murder). That is obviously a limitation of the freedom of speech of the journalists engaged in such reporting, but a justified limitation (read the whole series of blog posts for other examples). Before I argue why it is justified, let me reiterate my strong support for free speech in general and open justice in particular. Justice must not only be done but also seen to be done. Open trials have many advantages and can help to avoid miscarriages of justice. They are necessary in order to avoid witness or expert fraud, they make it possible for new evidence to show up and they make it more likely that society accepts the outcome and retains confidence in the justice system as a whole. Evidently, the media play an important role in making trials truly public and open, and hence they should have access and freedom of speech. (Read more about why an open trial means a fair trial here).

Now, why do I think this access and speech shouldn’t necessarily or always include the identity of the suspects? Because there is, in most cases, no real need for that. It’s perfectly possible for the media to play their part in the openness of trials and therefore the fairness of trials without disclosing the identity of the suspects. Some exceptions may be necessary, for instance when a successful prosecution depends on “crowd sourcing” (e.g. to find out the whereabouts of a suspect), but those should remain exceptions. The default should be anonymity. Most of the time, when the media disclose the identity of a suspect, it’s not in order to assist the prosecution, but to pander to the most basic instincts of the public: hate and voyeurism. Unfortunately, newspapers sell and websites are visited when they have stories about gruesome crimes supposedly committed by someone belonging to a minority already covered in prejudice and when these stories contain all the fine detail, including names, places and pictures.

Obviously, amoral commercial exploitation of basic instincts isn’t a sufficient reason to limit freedom of speech (and neither is it a reason to defend it), but we do have other reasons. Why should the rights of one – the media in this case – automatically trump the rights of another – the privacy of suspects, their livelihood etc.? Rights need to be balanced against each other, and when there’s no strong reason to uphold one right – as is the case here (reporting can be done perfectly well without identification) – it should yield in order to protect the other right.

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Some would say that the role of the media in the openness of trials isn’t the only possible argument in favor of disclosing identities. Another argument goes as follows: if the media can’t disclose enough details, their stories will lose human interest and become vague and abstract treatises. No one wants to read that, and consequently the media will stop writing about the Courts altogether, and the social debate about criminal justice will suffer. I think that argument is mistaken. You can write real human interest stories about real people without printing the names, addresses and photographs of possible suspects.

Others would say that I exaggerate: the public is quite capable of distinguishing between suspects and convicted criminals. Maybe, but does anyone honestly think that excessively invasive crime reporting never harms suspects or never imposes disporportionate harm on convicted criminals? I think that would be an extremely naive position to take.

Now, as I said, there have to be exceptions: sometimes a successful prosecution requires the disclosure of a suspect. I can also be argued that people who hold a prominent position in society should also, in certain cases, not benefit from anonymity during prosecution. But that should be the exception and only in cases where there is some public good involved in knowing the suspect. We should not let hatred, voyeurism, Schadenfreude or the commercial interests feeding on these instincts, ruin people’s lives.

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Canada’s Supreme Court upholds right of defendants to seek ban on reporting of proceedings (foxnews.com)
• Anonymity plan for rape accused (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Supreme Court upholds blanket publication ban for bail hearings (theglobeandmail.com)

Measuring Human Rights (13): When More Means Less and Vice Versa

I’ve said it a few times before in this blog series: human rights violations can make it difficult to measure human rights violations, and can distort international comparisons of the levels of respect for human rights. Country A, which is generally open and accessible and on average respects basic rights such as speech, movement and press fairly well, may be more in the spotlight of human rights groups than country B which is borderline totalitarian. And not just more in the spotlight: attempts to quantify or measure respect for human rights may in fact yield a score that is worse for A than for B, or at least a score that isn’t much better for A than for B. The reason is of course the openness of A:

• Human rights groups, researchers and statisticians can move and speak relatively freely in A.
• The citizens of A aren’t scared shitless by their government and will speak to outsiders.
• Country A may even have fostered a culture of public discourse, to some extent. Perhaps its citizens are also better educated and better able to analyze political conditions.


Alexis de Tocqueville

• As Tocqueville has famously argued, the more a society liberates itself from inequalities, the harder it becomes to bear the remaining inequalities. Conversely, people in country B may not know better or may have adapted their ambitions to the rule of oppression. So, citizens of A may have better access to human rights groups to voice their complaints, aren’t afraid to do so, can do so because they are relatively well educated, and will do so because their circumstances seem more outrageous to them even if they really aren’t. Another reason to overestimate rights violations in A and underestimate them in B.
• The government administration of A may also be more developed, which often means better data on living conditions. And better data allow for better human rights measurement. Data in country B may be secret or non-existent.

I called all this the catch 22 of human rights measurement: in order to measure whether countries respect human rights, you already need respect for human rights. Investigators or monitors must have some freedom to control, to engage in fact finding, to enter countries and move around, to investigate “in situ”, to denounce etc., and victims should have the freedom to speak out and to organize themselves in pressure groups. So we assume what we want to establish. (A side-effect of this is that authoritarian leaders may also be unaware of the extent of suffering among their citizens).

A recent example of this catch 22 is here. This is also the reason why people often talk about a new set of human rights, namely the rights of human rights defenders.

You can see the same problem in the common complaints that countries such as the U.S. and Israel get a raw deal from human rights groups:

[W]hy would the watchdogs neglect authoritarians? We asked both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, and received similar replies. In some cases, staffers said, access to human rights victims in authoritarian countries was impossible, since the country’s borders were sealed or the repression was too harsh (think North Korea or Uzbekistan). In other instances, neglected countries were simply too small, poor, or unnewsworthy to inspire much media interest. With few journalists urgently demanding information about Niger, it made little sense to invest substantial reporting and advocacy resources there. … The watchdogs can and do seek to stimulate demand for information on the forgotten crises, but this is an expensive and high risk endeavor. (source)

So there may also be a problem with the supply and demand curve in media: human rights groups want to influence public opinion, but can only do so with the help of the media. If the media neglect certain countries or problems because they are deemed “unnewsworthy”, then human rights groups will not have an incentive to monitor those countries or problems. They know that what they will be able to tell will fall on deaf ears anyway. So better focus on the things and the countries which will be easier to channel through the media (see also here and here).

Both the catch 22 problem and the problems caused by media supply and demand can be empirically tested by comparing the intensity of attention given by human rights monitoring organizations to certain countries/problems to the intensity of human rights violations (the latter data are assumed to be available, which is a big assumption, but one could use very general measures such as these). It seems that both effects are present but not much:

[W]e subjected the 1986-2000 Amnesty [International] data to a barrage of statistical tests. (Since Human Rights Watch’s early archival procedures seemed spotty, we did not include their data in our models.) Amnesty’s coverage, we found, was driven by multiple factors, but contrary to the dark rumors swirling through the blogosphere, we discovered no master variable at work. Most importantly, we found that the level of actual violations mattered. Statistically speaking, Amnesty reported more heavily on countries with greater levels of abuse. Size also mattered, but not as expected. Although population didn’t impact reporting much, bigger economies did receive more coverage, either because they carried more weight in global politics and economic affairs, or because their abundant social infrastructure produced more accounts of abuse. Finally, we found that countries already covered by the media also received more Amnesty attention. (source)

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Why Are the United States and Israel at the Top of Human Rights Hit Lists? (3quarksdaily.com)

The Causes of Wealth Inequality (8): Weak Unionization

Among the rich countries that are very unequal are also some which have very weak labor unions. It’s tempting to see a causal link in this correlation, since the purpose of a labor union is – among other things – to negotiate a better income of its members. Declining labor union membership and influence should then translate in declining wages (at least relatively speaking) and more income inequality. If most workers are members of labor union, most low incomes benefit from the influence of labor unions. It’s even likely that non-members also profit from wage increases negotiated by labor unions, since employers don’t like to differentiate between the wages for identical jobs.

[W]eak unions are a key cause of US inequality. The argument goes that weak unions have little political presence in policy debates, which tend to be dominated by business. The result is that policy debates in the US are systematically skewed in favor of business (which tends to favor policies that advantage, or at least do not hurt) rich people, with little in the way of countervailing voice, let alone power. …

In analyzing sources in [news] stories … the fundamental pattern is the same. Those in government, and especially Obama administration staffers, dominated the conversation. Representatives of business and industry came next, followed by academics and independent observers. … fully 61% of stories included a government representative of some kind, including those from state and local government. … Representatives of business, those identified as clearly speaking on behalf of the company or corporation, were the next most prominent sources, figuring in about 40% of the stories. … ordinary citizens and workers were well down the rung of sources. … One subset of the American workforce was virtually shut out of the coverage entirely. … Representatives of organized labor unions were sources in a mere 2% of all the economy stories studied. …

This measure is not the only index of strength in policy debate, obviously, but it is an important one. And on it, business representatives were twenty times as visible in public debate as union representatives. That’s a whopping disparity. (source)

More on unionization, labor rights and income inequality. And there’s an interesting attempt to quantify th impact on inequality of declining unionization here. More posts in this series.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (76): Prejudice in News Reporting

A classic from the time of the Katrina Hurricane disaster in the U.S.: when you’re white and in trouble, you find food; when you’re colored, you loot it:

A more thoughtful post on prejudice and stereotypes is here (including a discussion of the interesting Allport’s scale). More on looting is here. More political humor is here.

Human Rights Video (13): James Nachtwey on War Photography

Portrait of James Nachtwey, considered by many to be the greatest war photographer of recent decades.

More on James Nachtwey. His photos are here. More on war photography and war journalism. More human rights videos. And here are posts with human rights images.

Gender Discrimination (19): Violence Against Women On Television

The infamous rape scene from "A clockwork orange"

Prime time television shows in the U.S. are depicting significantly more scenes and stories including violence against women. The overall incidence of violence on television hasn’t increased.

(source, source, source)

The depiction of violence against women can be exploitative, but also educational. Impossible to say on the basis of these data if TV shows include depictions of violence against women in order to attract a particular kind of audience, or in order to educate the audience. In fact, this distinction is hard to make even for individual cases of depiction of violence.

TV may not have become more violent, but movies sure have:

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This graph includes all types of killing, not just the killing of women.

More on violence against women in general here, here and here. More on violence in the media in general is here.

Human Rights Cartoon (60): Violence and Gaming

(source, cartoon by Angel Boligan)

Read more on violence and the media.

Political Artist (28): Sue Coe

(source, more about the artist here)

More on the independence of the media.

Human Rights Nonsense (3): Disaster Pornography From Somalia

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From Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal:

Anyone who has watched a Western film crew in an African famine will know just how much effort it takes to compose the “right” image. Photogenic starving children are hard to find, even in Somalia.

Somali doctors and nurses have expressed shock at the conduct of film crews in hospitals. They rush through crowded corridors, leaping over stretchers, dashing to film the agony before it passes. They hold bedside vigils to record the moment of death. When the Italian actress Sophia Loren visited Somalia, the paparazzi trampled on children as they scrambled to film her feeding a little girl – three times. This is disaster pornography.

In Support of Freedom in Iran

(source, click on the image to enlarge)

I don’t have anything to add to the outstanding reporting on the events unfolding in Iran (see for example here). I just wanted to highlight the importance of these events for freedom of speech and political freedom in Iran, and this picture speaks louder than words. It evokes the way in which the protesters try to organize themselves, using the internet and mobile communications (such as Twitter), as well as the way in which the government tries to suppress freedom (by blocking websites, satellite TV, SMS, and limiting bandwidth).

Read more here, here and here on the role modern technology and media play in the protection/violation of human rights.

Terrorism and Human Rights (18): Right-Wing Terrorism in the U.S., and the Shared Responsibility of Conservative Media

Only days after the attack on Dr. Tiller, the U.S. is shocked by yet another terrorist attack by a right-wing extremist, this time at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Some have questioned the role of the media in all this. It’s true that parts of the U.S. media, especially on the conservative side, are not characterized by nuanced analysis and balanced reporting. There’s a lot of hate speech, stereotyping and shouting on cable news, on the radio and on the internet. So it’s fair to say that there may be a risk that the media are fanning and nurturing extremism and hate in society, and that they may be responsible for pushing sick people over the edge. (See also here).

I personally regret the lack of quality in the media, and I do believe that journalists and pundits should be more careful in what they say and how they say it. But I also believe that critics of the media should be careful when deciding responsibilities and causal relationships. Society is complex, and people are driven by many factors. Still, most people are ultimately responsible for their own acts (I don’t know enough about the two cases at hand to conclude that the mental condition of the perpetrators at the time of the crime was such that they could be held criminally responsible).

We run the risk that these terrorist events will lead to calls for a more restrictive interpretation of the freedom of speech of the media. Let’s hope that this risk incites the media to question their behavior and to abandon the language of hate.

Read more.

Human Rights Cartoon (52): Human Rights Depend on the Media

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The war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebels seems to be at an end now. While the war itself was probably and to some extent a just war, given the atrocities committed by the rebels, the way in which it was fought certainly wasn’t very just. The government forces caused many unnecessary civilian casualties, especially in the latter stages of the war. Given the outcome of the war, it is now up to the Sri Lankan government to win the peace, and do something about some of the legitimate concerns of the Tamil people:

And now the hardest part: can the Sinhalese majority bring itself to treat the defeated Tamil minority charitably after a quarter century of brutal war and nearly 100,000 deaths? Stay tuned. Kevin Drum (source)

For example, will it be possible to grant the region some kind of autonomy?

In all wars, it’s extremely difficult to find out what is happening, but in this case the government seems to have done all it could to make it as difficult as possible (including murdering journalists). Satellite pictures had to come to the rescue.

In general, it’s important to be able to monitor rights violations and to get as much information as possible in the press. Read more about how human rights depend on the media here and here. And more on the problematic relationship between the media and human rights violations is here.

Limiting Free Speech (17): Media Attention and the Chilling Effect

Our right to free speech doesn’t imply a duty of other people to listen to us. However, speech in general requires listeners. People speak because they want to be heard. They want to convince other people of their point of view, they want to build communities around issues and causes, and ultimately many acts of speech are intended to change the world. Most people don’t speak because they like the sound of their voice. They want people to listen.

The lack of an obligation to listen doesn’t, in itself, limit free speech. My freedom of speech isn’t limited by the fact that no one listens. However, a lack of an audience or a public, a lack of attention and recognition does make people want to stop speaking. Speaking to a wall gets boring after a while. So we can say that a lack of attention has a chilling effect on speech.

As such, this isn’t a problem. There are good reasons why many utterances don’t receive attention. They are uninteresting and the world isn’t any the poorer without them. So let them chill. But we all know that attention isn’t just. People lack attention for both the good and the bad. Many good things don’t get any attention, and many bad things do. A lack of attention can and does silence people who have truly interesting things to say, and the world is less without them.

Attention would be more just if people were not manipulated towards and away from certain types of speech. And here the culprit is the media. The media are essential in bringing sources of speech to a public. Book publishers make books from someone’s speech, and take these books to people who are willing to pay some attention to them. Television programs, internet sites, magazines etc. basically do the same.

But the media make a choice. Some cases of speech are “mediated”, others aren’t. They would create a just type of attention for cases of speech, if they would make this choice solely on the basis of the value (“the interestingness”) of the cases, but of course they don’t. The media have various reasons to select the speakers that are given an audience. The most important reason isn’t quality but profit. What will create the biggest profit? As a result, the most outrageous and controversial (e.g. Ann Coulter), the most sexually appealing (e.g. Paris Hilton), the most violent (e.g. Bin Laden), the most spectacular (e.g. Harry Potter) etc. receive the most attention.

This is often enough for moderate, thoughtful and nuanced seekers of the truth to simply give up. No one can say that their right to free speech was actually violated by some ominous power. They were simply discouraged to speak by “anonymous market forces” that are just as efficient as the most brutal dictator. And no one knows what the world has lost.

Here’s one of my little poems from my younger days. I thought it was funny and appropriate:

Don’t read this, by Filip Spagnoli

It’s true: I’m being
completely ignored.
Can’t even manage
to get people bored.

Day in and day out,
I pour out my stuff.
Obliv’ion, it seems,
has never enough.

Whatever I give,
it hungers for more.
My entire self
it wants to devour.

But nevertheless
I will not give up.
Persistence, perhaps,
will earn me a Cup.

And then, when it does,
and the trophy glows
just try to make sure
that nobody knows.

Limiting Free Speech (8): The Fairness Doctrine, Limiting or Improving Speech?

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The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – currently no longer applicable – that required television stations to deal with issues in a fair and balanced way, and to present contrasting viewpoints and give them all some air time (but not necessarily equal air time). The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine.

Self-censorship

The FCC, when headed by Reagan appointees, abolished the policy because

the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters

and hence “chills speech” and violates the First Amendment. In order to avoid to go out and find contrasting viewpoints on every story, some journalists will supposedly refrain from covering some stories. Hence you have a de facto, not de jure, limit on free speech resulting from self-censorship.

What scarcity?

Another reason given for abolishing the doctrine was that the “scarcity argument” is no longer valid. In the old days, when the number of media outlets was limited, the public couldn’t go elsewhere to find other viewpoints, and the Fairness Doctrine could be justified. Today, however, with the internet, blogosphere, cable and satellite television, this is no longer the case. If anything, there’s too much punditry.

Public support

There’s some truth in all of this, but still I think there are good reasons for reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

• First of all, the claim that it limits free speech is somewhat awkward. How can a rule that multiplies the number of views and arguments that are represented in the media, be called a limit on the freedom of speech? If journalists will not cover a topic in order to avoid having to go and find opposing views, than this is either because there are no opposing views (if there are, they will quickly assert themselves) or because the journalists are lazy. After all, why do we have Google?
• Secondly, there’s public support for the Fairness Doctrine. A recent poll by Scott Rasmussen asked whether the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of liberal and conservative political commentary. 47 percent said “yes”, 39 percent were opposed.
• Thirdly, the scarcity argument is still valid, albeit in another way. Sophisticated audiences, tech savvy, with knowledge of where to find information and enough spare time to do so, will not benefit from a reinstated Fairness Doctrine. They will make sure that they get their balanced information from different sources if one source isn’t balanced. But other people will benefit, in particular those who rely on one or a few media-outlets for their information. Some of these people may be burdened by low levels of education and poverty, and hence are especially vulnerable to the effects of one-sided reporting.
• And finally, it is common knowledge that the quality of public debate and information in the U.S. is not what it could be. What we hear and see on television, radio and the internet is often no more than shrill partisan shouting. The issues are oversimplified, nuances get lost, sound bites rule, and much of the time the really important issues are pushed back by sensational trivia or personal attacks. A requirement to air opposing views would temper this and would improve the quality of political debate.

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There’s a great clip of Jon Stewart appearing on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004 and denouncing the current state of political debate (the program was dumped by CNN following Stewart’s criticism).  Check it out on Youtube here; it’s worth your time if you haven’t seen it yet. Here’s a transcript:

TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST: Welcome to CROSSFIRE. Less than three weeks before the election [of 2004, FS], we’re going to take a break from campaign politics, sort of. Joining us will be Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central and co-author of a new best-seller entitled “America (The Book).”

PAUL BEGALA, CO-HOST: We will spend the next half-hour with the most trusted man in fake news. As both of our loyal viewers, of course, know, our show is about all left vs. white, black vs. white, paper vs. plastic, Red Sox against the Yankees. That’s why every day, we have two guests with their own unique perspective on the news. But today, CROSSFIRE is very difficult. We have just one guest.

JON STEWART: Thank you. Can I say something very quickly? Why do we have to fight? … I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.

BEGALA: We have noticed.

STEWART: And I wanted to — I felt that that wasn’t fair and I should come here and tell you that I don’t — it’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America. … So I wanted to come here today and say… Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. … See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we’re too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks. … You’re doing theater, when you should be doing debate, which would be great. … It’s not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. … You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.

STEWART: You need to go to one. …

Democracy rests on opinions: opinions of candidates on policies, opinions of the people on candidates and policies, opinions on proposed policies and on executed policies. It’s therefore of the utmost importance that these opinions have some kind of value and aren’t knee-jerk impulses, prejudices, intuitions based on personal attacks, etc. Only well-considered opinions are good opinions and well-considered opinions are those that are tested in discussion and that survive as many counter-arguments as possible (see here).

Clearly, the media have a responsibility in this respect and have to present the struggle between arguments. They shouldn’t just be the mouthpiece of one side of the argument. They are indeed the “fourth estate” and are necessary for the functioning of a democracy.

We shouldn’t forget that opinions are not readily available. They are the result of thinking, studying, deliberation and discussion. If we want the people to have opinions, and preferably well-considered opinions, then we have to create frameworks for debate. We shouldn’t allow democratic elections – or even opinion polls and referenda – to be a simple system for tapping opinions that aren’t based on debate, or that often don’t even exist as opinions when they have to be tapped.

More on the media here.

Limiting Free Speech (7): Violence in the Media and Real Life Violence

(Ric Stultz, source)

Conventional wisdom says that violent films, violent video games, violent song lyrics or even news stories about violence, lead to an increase in violent crime. On the basis of this causal link, some argue that the right to free speech of movie makers and others should be limited and they should be forced to show restraint when depicting violence. And if they don’t, some measure of benevolent censorship should be applied. The use of movie ratings, which do not limit freedom of speech, isn’t enough. It’s useful to protect children – probably the most impressionable part of humanity – but if violence in movies incites real violence, there’s no reason to think that this is only the case for children.

Is this conventional wisdom true? It probably is, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that limiting free speech is the right kind of remedy. Many studies have pointed out that media violence exposure increases aggressive behavior because

• it renders viewers insensitive,
• excites them,
• changes their moral compass (especially in the case of young viewers),
• and gives them ideas (people, also adults, learn through imitation).

Here’s an example of such a study:

(source)

However, another study claimed that movie violence might temper the real thing:

On days with a high audience for violent movies, violent crime is lower. And crime is not merely delayed until after the credits run. In the hours after theatres close — from midnight to 6 a.m. the next day — violent crimes dropped. Violent films prevent violent crime by attracting would-be assailants and keeping them cloistered in darkened, alcohol-free environs. Instead of fueling up at bars and then roaming around looking for trouble, potential criminals pass the prime hours for mayhem eating popcorn and watching celluloid villains slay in their stead. “You’re taking a lot of violent people off the streets and putting them inside movie theaters,” said one of the authors of the study, Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. “In the short run, if you take away violent movies, you’re going to increase violent crime.” Over the last decade the showing of violent films in the United States has decreased assaults by an average of about 1,000 a weekend, or 52,000 a year. (source)

(source)

Such things are difficult to prove. Who can say that a movie is the cause of a particular crime? And who can redo the events to see what would have happened had the criminal not seen the movie? Or the other way around: if you claim that moviegoers forgo activities that have a greater tendency to encourage mayhem, like drinking and drug use, how can you prove that they would have been more likely to have committed a crime had they not visited the cinema?

Any act of violence has multiple and complex causes. One person can sit through hours of violent movies and remain his own calm self. Another person turns violent because of one wrong word. He or she may be burdened by low self-esteem as a result of years of childhood negligence, poverty etc. The problems is: if there have to be limits on the freedom of expression of artists, these have to be the same for all viewers. You can’t check at the ticket stand of a cinema if a person has violent tendencies that may be aggravated by a violent movie. You just have to cut away the violent scenes from the movie. And then you’ll always be overshooting (pardon the expression) because you’re protecting many viewers who don’t need protection since they will not be incited to violence.

But better safe than sorry and cut the violence anyway? I don’t think so. Freedom of expression and artistic expression are extremely important. It’s likely that other measures, short of censorship, and intervention earlier in the causal chain of violence will be more successful in stopping or limiting violence. E.g. education and poverty reduction.

One should also take into account the slippery slope: once it is allowed to cut up works of art because they contain violence, then where does it end? Why not cut offensive speech, blasphemous speech, derogatory speech?

Here’s an interesting infographic:

(source, click image to enlarge)

More on violence.

War Journalism

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[This post is by guest-writer Line Løvåsen].

Living in an “information age”, journalism and media have become major resources. The information revolution was due partly to media activity. Also known as the fourth state power, media in many ways steer the informational component of the world. The media can either strengthen democracy, but in the case of war journalism we see that they can also undermine democracy. And this is no denial of the courage, professionalism and objectivity of many individual war journalists.

War journalism can undermine democracy and can even perpetuate war because it can act as a justification of violence. The way conflict and violence are presented and justified in the media – justified explicitly, but more often implicitly through fear-mongering, double speak, euphemisms and taking sides - can have an effect on a war, on a violent situation and its outcome.

War journalism therefore often favors the agenda of the ruling elites. But acts of war and violence carried out by governments also favor the media, because violence sells. There is a double-sided influence and dependence between journalism on the one hand, and politics and war on the other.

Johan Galtung

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Johan Galtung, the founder of peace studies, discusses the following points regarding war journalism:

• A focus on violence as its own cause-thus decontextualizing violence, not looking at the reasons
• Dualism, always reduces to two parts, and hereof winners-losers, which ignores the possibility of non-violent outcomes
• Manicheanism; the two parts consist of the contradictions good-evil
• Armageddon, violence is inevitable
• Focus on the individual, avoiding structural causes
• Focus on the battlefield and visible effects, not on underlying forces
• Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus never explaining why there are actions of revenge and spirals of violence
• Failure to explore the causes of escalation and the impact of media coverage itself
• Failure to explore the goals of outside interventionists
• Failure to explore peace proposals, and offer images of peaceful outcomes
• Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with actual peace, peace is defined as victory plus ceasefire
• Omitting reconciliation; and conflicts tend to re-emerge if wounds are not healed (Galtung 1992).

Consider the war on terror. The underlying causes of terror have not been given attention. After 9/11, U.S. president George W. Bush ignored the causes (the reasons stated by Al Qaida, such as disrespect, the Palestionan issue etc.), and claimed that the attack on the U.S. was because Al Qaida hates the western values of peace, freedom and democracy; one international crime became a global war. This had a massive psychological impact, and politicians use this fear and its representation in the media to gain advantage in elections and justification for a range of policies. The masses can be convinced that they are not sufficiently safe in peace or war, and thus are dependent of the guidance and protection of the leaders.

Responses to so-called terrorism may threaten nations more than actual acts of terror committed. Rather than the “terrorists”, it is politicians, through their counter-actions, who define the severity and the impact that acts of terror have on a country. War, as part of the national psyche, is responsible for a higher scale of damage than terror. Moreover, it sows mistrust and reduces the ability of people to come together or unite in order to bring about change.

Clausewitz

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War is prolonged political business, in the words of Clausewitz. And information is the currency of the current age. Tactics for justification and consciousness formation are widely used in this special market place. The influence of power structures on the masses in the Western society has been widely portrayed, in everything from science fiction (The Matrix etc.) to literature. In his book “1984″, George Orwell described how politicians apply a mutation of the English language (called “Newspeak”) in order to shape and mold our consciousness and acceptance, allowing them to justify violence and oppression.

George Orwell

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For example, in Newspeak, words such as torture are referred to as “deep interrogation”. Mercenaries as “security people”. In addition to the misuse of words, you have the double language and manipulation of the mind as tools to force people to accept contradictions. An example of double thinking is the use of projection; where you project your own subconscious unacceptable, malicious desires on to others. Projection helps justify unacceptable behavior, distancing ourselves from our own dysfunction. One example is how “we” have weapons for purely defensive purposes, while “they” have expansionist motives and offensive weapons.

Orwell notes that, instead of exercising the purpose of their profession (that is “the publishing of unbiased information” and hence constraining the ruling elite by informing the public), the media accept the influence of the ruling elite and have in fact joined their ranks, assist them and live in almost . One example of media manipulation and propaganda is the media empire of Rupert Murdoch and his support to different politicians he favors, for example in England. After being supportive of Thatcher and Major, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party, and his secret meetings with Tony Blair came to be a political issue in Britain.

Murdoch owns the “News Corporation”, based in New York. Aside from newspapers, magazines and television stations, he also has become a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry, and the Internet. His corporate owned TV-station Fox News has a strong conservative bias, and both Fox News and all of Murdoch’s 175 newspapers favored the Iraqi war.

How the media present, justify or even shape conflicts is one problem. The next is when conflicts are not presented at all. Why are some event shighlighted while others are not? What kind of criteria causes one news item to supersede another? Occidental deep culture is reflected and reinforced by the media in the concepts of hero, victory-defeat and linear time. Nothing attracts more attention than direct, uncensored violence. It is this violence that is a major criterion for determining the airing of the actual event. Rather than focus on the underlying contradictions, the media focus on attitudes and behaviors because they are more newsworthy, and thus psychologize conflict. At the end of it all stands a win-lose-discourse that leaves us unable to explore the root of the situation or to use dialogue to solve it.

War is more profitable (in monetary terms) than peace. Peace is more profitable for long term investments, while war benefits the short term investment of specific factions/stake holders such as arms producers, politicians, and the media. Manipulation by politicians and media is not the only important factor in the continuation of war and power structures. Power structures cannot be maintained without people acting them out (Nietzsche’s “performance of the masses”). War reporting is profitable, it fascinates, but it also instills a sense of fear, keeping the “plebs” docile. The forces that have reshaped the U.S. constitution since 9/11 can be mentioned in relation to this. The legitimacy provided by constituent power allowed President Bush to expand the power of the presidency far beyond its normal limits. Constitutional change can occur through either a legal (formal) or non-legal (informal) political process. Constitutional change in the United States has not typically happened in the former way. After 9/11, president George W. Bush’s administration asserted that the world had changed and the old rules no longer applied. He was able to do so because he enjoyed the immediate support of the American people, a support which was to a large extent nourished by the media.

Violence sells. In a typology of the goals of violence, Galtung mentions different purposes for violence, among them the purpose of entertainment. Here, profit through violence is not a modern phenomenon: Historically speaking, this can be traced as far back as Roman rule, where violence meant revenue in relation to for example gladiators. A more contemporary example is that of the fight between the Spanish bullfighter and Toro. Both are examples of deep cultural values.

So in a sense, the media act as a double-edged sword; profiteering through enacting control. As a result, in a battlefield, journalists can compete with each other in finding the most dramatic story. But not only find them; they cherish them, nurture them, focus on the sensational aspects, and even modify and justify them, all in order to profit. And as a result of this financial profit, politicians earn political profit. And war continues.

References

Galtung, J. & Vincent, R. C. (1992) Global glasnost: Toward a new world information and communication order? Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press
Galtung, J. unpublished manuscript: “The TRANSCEND Approach to Simple Conflicts, C=1″

Terrorism and Human Rights (6): The War on Terror

9/11, burning Twin Towers

The War on Terror, started by the U.S. government as a response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and later joined by other governments, has had and continues to have grave consequences for the human rights of their citizens and of citizens of other countries. This is a high price for an uncertain gain.

However, before I list these consequences, I would like to make it clear that I believe, as any rational human being, that terrorism is evil, that it has to be destroyed and that democracies have a right to defend themselves against violent, anti-democratic fanatics (see this post).

I also believe that democratic governments should be especially vigilant because the freedoms that they are elected to protect, offer opportunities for those who hate freedom, opportunities that do not exist in other political systems. Potential terrorists find it relatively easy to enter a democracy and operate in it. A democracy is a very vulnerable form of government because of the freedom it gives to everyone, even those who don’t mean well.

(source)

The freedoms of a democracy can be and are abused, but this, it seems, has frightened democratic governments to such an extent that they have decided to limit these freedoms up to the point that they are in danger of abandoning their values, and hence doing the work of the terrorists for them. It can be acceptable to limit certain rights for the protection of other rights (see also this post), but the right to security has taken on an absolute priority, at the expense of all other rights. There is no reasonable balance anymore. Some have called the war on terror a “war on freedom” (source).

1. Civil liberties

Governments try to defend their countries against terrorist attacks by limiting civil liberties in their territories.

• The right to privacy has been limited: CCTV has become ubiquitous, DNA databases have been created, eavesdropping and wiretapping have been legalized etc.
• “No-fly-lists” have come into force, limiting the freedom of movement of even those who have written critically of the government or attended peace-protests.
• Hate speech laws have been voted to silence jihadist hate preachers, silencing others at the same time.
• “Racial profiling” by the police has turned innocent people into possible suspects, often inverting the burden of proof.
• Habeas corpus has been limited, periods of detention without charge extended, sometimes indefinitely (for “enemy combatants”).

However, in spite of all this, the constraints on a government’s actions within its territory are sometimes still considered to be inhibiting:

• “Extraordinary rendition” has been covertly practiced, allowing suspects to be tortured outside of the territory by professional torturers in other countries.
• Extra-territorial prisons have been created, in Guantanamo, but probably elsewhere as well, where suspects can be tortured or held indefinitely and where the Geneva Conventions supposedly don’t apply.

(source)

2. Mentalities

The war on terror has also changed people’s minds and attitudes.

• The media have started to censor themselves. Solidarity with the government at war and the commander-in-chief, or the fear of being perceived as unpatriotic, appeasers, “useful idiots” or even open allies of the enemy has turned them into uncritical supporters of the war.
• Citizens have turned on Islam and Muslims. Xenophobia and more specifically islamophobia have undermined the ideals of tolerance and multiculturalism, and have in certain cases even led to hate crimes against Muslims.
• A ”culture of fear” has been created by the terrorist but also nurtured by irresponsible western politicians. This fear has damaged democracy. Not only have the media relinquished their traditional role as watchdogs. Politicians as well, and especially incumbents, have abused the fear of terrorism to harness support. Alert levels seem to go up just before elections.

3. Preemptive war

The US government has elaborated and implemented the strategy of preemptive war, a war

waged in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war. (source)

The Iraq war was deemed a preemptive war because Iraq was allegedly about to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction, or supply these weapons to terrorists. Whatever the merits of the case against Iraq – and with the passing of time these seem to become weaker and weaker – the war has been framed, correctly or not, as a necessary stage in the ongoing war on terror. It has, however, resulted in massive numbers of casualties on both sides. The human rights violations caused by the war stand in no relation to the violations caused by terrorism or the violations that could have been caused by Saddam.

In any case, you can’t solve the problem of terrorism by violent means only. Terrorism has causes, and there will be terrorism as long as these causes exist. (Mind you, I don’t want to excuse or justify terrorism).

(source)

4. Counter-productive

It is now widely believed, even in US government circles, that the war on terror is counter-productive. Especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture in Abu Ghraib and the detentions in Guantanamo have produced a backlash and have increased rather than reduced the terror threat. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate issued the following among its “key judgments”:

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. (source)

The war on terror has created and exacerbated resentment, hatred of the West and anti-americanism. And with anti-americanism often comes hatred of democracy and freedom and Islamic radicalization. Apart from the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, there is no evidence that any of the strategies in the war on terror has done any good (source).

5. Misnomer

There is something fishy about the concept of a “war on terrorism”. This “war” is in fact no such thing. It is in essence crime prevention and law enforcement. There is no well-defined enemy. Anyone can at any time become an enemy. For this reason, there is no conceivable end to the war. And if you claim to wage a war on terrorism, you might as well claim to wage a war on carpet bombing. Both are tactics or strategies, not something you wage war against.

If you insist on calling anti-terrorist actions a war, then you give too much credit to the riffraff you’re opposing. Rather than deranged criminals they can call themselves soldiers. And soldiers defend something. You legitimize them. You turn a crime into a two-sided struggle in which each side defends its positions. This in turn leads to the view that the war on terror is a war of the West against the rest, bringing back images of colonialism, imperialism and the crusades, again legitimizing the terrorists, helping to consolidate their often internally opposed forces, and making them honorable in the eyes of ordinary citizens outside of the West.

war on terror graffiti

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I can understand that the concept of a “war on terrorism” is useful for the executives in the West, because an executive that is at war has more powers, less oversight, more popular support and less criticism, but it’s a meaningless and dangerous concept. Let’s give it up.

Human Rights Facts (5): Free Press

I discussed the freedom of the press before on this blog. There’s a post on the importance of the press for a democracy, there’s one on the importance for the struggle against poverty, and finally one on the importance for a well-functioning economy.

Definition of press freedom

The post you’re reading now contains some factual information on press freedom in the world. First, though, a word on the definition of freedom of the press. This freedom is a subset of the more general freedom of expression. Freedom of the press doesn’t only include the freedom of journalists (and, increasingly, bloggers) to publish information without fear of repercussions. It also includes the freedom to gather the information, as well as the freedom of the public to have access to the published information. This is explicit in article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

(Article 19 of the Universal Declaration entails a similar message). The freedom of the press is closely linked to the freedom of movement. Without free movement, information gathering and investigative journalism is very difficult. Freedom of movement also includes free access for foreign media. Foreign media are often necessary for global exposure of a problem because the local media may be under the sway of the government.

Country ranking

Here’s the Reporters Without Borders 2007 Press Freedom Ranking:

And this is the ranking of Freedom House (green = free, yellow = partly free and blue = not free):

Freedom House estimates that 1 billion of the worlds population of 6 billion lives in a country with a free press, and another 2.5 billion have a partly free press.

Means of limiting press freedom

Governments use an increasingly large array of weapons to limit the freedom of the press and to apply some sort of overt or covert CENSORSHIP:

1. Intimidation of journalists

Journalists are often intimidated by way of death threats, kidnapping, torture etc. This is a graph shows the jailing of critical journalists:

(source)

Sometimes this isn’t enough, as is shown by the number of outright murders of journalists:

(source)

The killing of Anna Politkovskaia in 2006 in retaliation for her writing on Chechnya, or the killing of Hrant Dink because of his writing on the Armenian genocide, are perhaps the best known examples.

2. Banning of foreign media

Currently, and for some time to come, the most grotesque examples are Burma and North-Korea.

3. Legislation limiting free speech

While I admit that freedom of expression is not absolute and can come into conflict with other human rights (for example the right to privacy) – in which case it can be necessary to put legal limits on the freedom of expression – it still is an extremely important important value and instrument and deserves better protection. Some examples of the way in which legislation is misused to limit the freedom of the press:

• Laws that make hate speech or “glorification” or “apology” of terrorism a crime. Incitement to commit a crime is normally, and justifiably, regarded as a crime in itself. But prosecutors have to show that a speaker intended to directly encourage someone to commit a crime, and that there is either a causal relation between the incitement and the crime itself, or the likelihood that incitement will cause an imminent crime. In reality, both the laws and the prosecution of “crimes” are intentionally vague, most likely because the state wants to use these laws, not for security, but to silence opponents.
• Laws which make insults, defamation or libel a crime. Such laws do not simply criminalize speech that may cause imminent violence, discrimination etc. but rather speech that merely insults. Freedom of expression exists to protect offensive speech. Inoffensive speech really doesn’t need protection. The archetypal example is the case of the Danish Muhammad cartoons leading to calls for the reinstatment or “activation” of blasphemy laws which, in the West, were either repealed or dormant. It is difficult to see how insults or offensive speech, even when done in bad taste, can harm the rights of anyone. Such laws would spell the end of freedom and would catapult us back from the age of rights to the age of honor.
• Something similar can be said of the crime of genocide denial, although in this case one can make the point that this kind of denial is part of the construction of a radical ideology which, when it is allowed to flourish and perhaps take over power, would surely try to reproduce the genocides it denies.

4. Legislation limiting access to government information

Although many governments are subject to so-called “sunshine laws” or freedom of information laws, the same governments often enact “official secrecy acts” preventing journalist from accessing certain government documents. Governments often point to the need for secrecy regarding anti-terrorism or “homeland security” programs. Journalists publishing information on such topics are told that they endanger national security. This can be justified (one shouldn’t allow an “embedded” journalist for example to publish information on troop movements in a time of war; that would be aiding the enemy), but in many cases governments misuse these laws to cover up inconvenient facts. Moreover, the fear of being labeled “unpatriotic” can lead to self-censorship on the part of journalists.

5. State control of mass media and television chains

Russia is a prime example of a state where the government has gradually taken over the different media and squeezed out the rest. The media only propagate the government’s point of view. Policy debate or investigative journalism all but disappears. A telling example of state control is the limits some governments impose on internet access for publishers and readers. In China, some 50.000 internet police are constructing the so-called Great Firewall of China, shutting down sites or blocking access to foreign sites, closing down internet-cafés on dubious grounds such as pornography etc. But China isn’t the only country engaging in this kind of censorship. Here’s a map of the internet usage around the world:

This is an indicator of the freedom of the press in the sense of the freedom of the public to access the press. Two caveats, however. This map should of course be correlated with the map of the population concentration. The fact that few people in Siberia have internet access is not necessarily a violation of the right to freedom of information or an indicator of censorship. It’s just an indicator of the fact that there are few people in Siberia.

Secondly, this map may just point out that the infrastructure necessary for internet access is not available everywhere. So it’s not always an indicator of active censorship of the internet but rather an indicator of government inability to provide access. This inability, however, even if it doesn’t amount to censorship, does limit the freedom of the press.

Blocking access to satellite television is a similar kind of censorship.

6. Inadequate protection of sources

This is especially important for investigative journalism, a kind of journalism necessary for good governance (it uncovers corruption or other illegal activity by government officials or other individuals).

Besides these active government policies, there are of course other elements limiting the freedom of the press. Many journalists are under economic pressure. They find it hard to “bite the hand that feeds them”. Running investigative stories on companies that sponsor them with advertising is difficult. Armed conflict, poverty etc. also hamper the press.

What is Democracy? (22): Free Media

Ideally, the free press in a democracy should do the following:

• Allow the different points of view in political debate to appear and to debate each other (different political parties and different candidates each with their own ideas qbout how best to govern the country)
• Facilitate the accountability of elected officials: elected officials have to present their achievements before the next elections, and opposition candidates have to criticize these achievements
• Expose wrong doing by elected officials and their appointees (investigative journalism in the style of “Watergate”)
• Reflect public opinion in general, especially new public concerns which haven’t yet made it into the political debate.

A prerequisite for all this kind is pluralism in the media and the absence of information monopolies; the absence of government control on the media or control by wealthy groups which want to push their own agenda; critical and unbiased journalists; protection of sources in the case of investigative journalism; airtime for political debate; restrictions on political publicity in order to guarantee equal airtime for less wealthy groups…

More on the freedom of the press.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (2): Distance

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It’s amazing how the terrible situation in many parts of Africa just doesn’t get the attention it deserves. From the many data on rights violations available on this blog, it is clear that Africa, and especially sub-Saharan Africa, is in a particularly difficult situation. See some of these posts.

The thousands killed on 9-11, the beheadings and explosions in Iraq, the Katrina floods, the Kosovo war, etc. were all horrible examples of man’s unlimited ability to hurt. But similar things happen in Africa every day. The attention given to some event seems to be diminishing with the increase in the distance to the place where it occurs.

attention = (gravity/distance)

So imagine you have a very grave situation, say a famine. It has a value of 1000 on some scale of gravity. If it happens in your country it has perhaps a distance of 100 (km). The attention it is likely to get is therefore 10. The same famine happening in Africa, at a distance of 20.000 (km), has a level of attention of 0.05. 200 less than the first famine. Say it is mentioned 200 times less in the media for instance.

You could expect this kind of correlation in the old days when the lack of technology made it very difficult to even be aware of what was going on elsewhere. So the formula could go like this:

attention = [gravity/(distance*technology)]

Someone must have done some research on this, but I’m still looking. More on media and rights violations.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (1): Lack of Publicity

Translation: Stoning in Nigeria: another woman in danger. Shari'a law remains in force only for adulterous, divorced women with a low media profile

(don’t remember the source or the author; sorry)

The media often play a very beneficial role in exposing human rights abuses. The media spotlight can mean the difference between life and death, as has been the case for some victims of stoning sentences. Many rights violators are sensitive to shame, they care about their international image, negative consequences for their regime or economy, retaliation etc.

The problem is, of course, the uneven attention by the media. Some victims get more attention than others

• because they are lucky, or skilful
• because they have some friends in the media
• because their particular suffering is photogenic and makes a good story (for example there’s a popular youtube video about it), or
• because they happen to suffer in between and not simultaneous with other interesting stories.

I always wonder how many similar victims go unnoticed. More on the inverse correlation between media attention and distance.

In some countries, rights are abused to such an extent that it is impossible to shine the media light on anything. We rarely hear of any specific rights violations in North-Korea for instance, although there must be thousands every day. Paradoxically, when you don’t see anything, there must be a lot going on. More on this paradox.