Tag: Attacks on the First Amendment

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The Campaign Against Free Speech

There is a specific and clear message that many elite journalists, internet giants, academics, and politicians are delivering to the American people: “You are too stupid to understand objective reporting or use free speech the right way, so we will decide for you what can and cannot be reported or said. The First Amendment no longer applies to you!”

The message comes from a variety of sources. On CNN, which has become infamous for slanting its reporting in so extreme a manner during the past several years and especially during the 2016 presidential campaign that detractors have nicknamed it the “Clinton News Network,” celebrated reporter Carl Bernstein, reports RealClearPolitics, stated that President Trump was a “Malignant” president and that “reporters needed to change the way they cover him…It calls on our journalists to do a different kind of reporting, a different kind of dealing with this presidency and the president of the United States.”

CNN has also reported that it “outed” the Reddit user that put together the “gif” of Trump wrestling that network’s image, who subsequently “apologized” for his exercise in free speech not approved by the media elites. CNN has apparently taken lessons from totalitarian states that gleefully force dissenters to recant.

Perhaps CNN derives its contempt for free speech from the nation’s academic institutions, where American history is barely taught, perhaps because the concepts enshrined in the Bill of Rights are just too dangerous for elites who wish to rule without interference.

That contempt is leading to lawsuits, Campus Reform reports. Three students at Kellogg Community College in Michigan were arrested for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution. “The manager of Student Life, Drew Hutchinson, asked them to stop because they might “obstruct the student’s ability to get an education…this was…too much for school administrators who insisted the three were in violation of the school’s draconian solicitation policies. They called the Kalamazoo police and the Chief of Police himself came to arrest the activists for trespassing. Now, Brandon Withers… who was with the activists that afternoon, is suing the college. A press release from his lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom says: ‘The problem is that KCC’s speech policy, what they call a ‘Solicitation Policy,’ regulates a wide variety of student expression. Things such as leafleting, assemblies, speeches, and circulating petitions are all greatly restricted, but they also happen to be protected by the First Amendment.”

Kellogg University’s actions are not an isolated incident within higher education. The University of California is being sued for First Amendment violations for its actions in blocking conservative-minded speakers from appearing on campus. There are numerous other examples throughout academia—and not only at the university level.

The growing opposition to free speech on the part of the Progressive left is increasingly organized and well-funded.

The Washington Examiner reports that “The former chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, [FEC] who famously eyed regulating the politics of conservative outlets like the Drudge Report, has joined an advocacy group funded by George Soros and run by his son. Ann Ravel is the first fellow listed with the California advocacy group New America. Her fellowship began in March and pays a $30,000 stipend…Since leaving the FEC, Ravel has continued to speak out for more election regulation, especially on the internet where she sees political advertising shifting to in the next presidential contest. She has applauded calls for regulating political speech and spending on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and this week endorsed tracing the funding of online ads and regulating individual Twitter accounts.”

During President Obama’s tenure in office, there were numerous attempts to use the FEC and various campaign regulatory statutes as a stealth attack on free speech.  Many of the moves were brazen, such as that by New York Senator Charles Schumer’s proposed legislation that would begin the process of weakening First Amendment protections regarding paid political speech.  Democrat members of the FEC have also sought to bring certain web sites under its jurisdiction.

During the prior eight years, significant attacks on free speech included:

  • The Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to place federal monitors in newsrooms;
  • openly considered criminal prosecution of anyone disagreeing with Obama’s views on climate change;
  • placing the internet under international control (which would permit censorship,);
  • Using Internal Revenue Service has been used a bludgeon against groups opposing White House policies; and
  • The Justice Department seized telephone records of Fox news reporters.

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In 2014, the Society of Professional Journalists  protested in a letter to the Obama White House about “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. Recent research has indicated the problem is getting worse throughout the nation, particularly at the federal level. Journalists are reporting that most federal agencies prohibit their employees from communicating with the press unless the bosses have public relations staffers sitting in on the conversations…Reporters seeking interviews are expected to seek permission, often providing questions in advance. Delays can stretch for days, longer than most deadlines allow… Agencies hold on-background press conferences with unnamed officials, on a not-for-attribution basis. In many cases, this is clearly being done to control what information journalists – and the audience they serve – have access to. A survey found 40 percent of public affairs officers admitted they blocked certain reporters because they did not like what they wrote.”

The attack on free speech also occurs in more subtle ways, especially in that increasingly vital marketplace of ideas, the internet. Search engines giants have tailored their search results to omit results or obscure or delete comments that do not conform to leftist orthodoxy.  The internet research organization Can I Rank found that  “top search results were almost 40% more likely to contain pages with a “Left” or “Far Left” slant than they were pages from the right. Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results. Our analysis of the algorithmic metrics underpinning those rankings suggests that factors within the Google algorithm itself may make it easier for sites with a left-leaning or centrist viewpoint to rank higher in Google search results compared to sites with a politically conservative viewpoint.” The study found that 16% of political keyword searches yielded no conservative-oriented pages within the initial search results.

The U.S. nearing a dangerous turning point, in which not only is free speech endangered, but also the very means to generate free speech is endangered. From academia’s relentless drive to indoctrinate students against the nation’s founding principles, to the establishment media’s actions in warping its reporting, to the actions by bureaucrats and elected officials alike to regulate and intimidate against the exercise of First Amendment rights, America’s most cherished freedom has become an endangered species.

Categories
Quick Analysis

Assaulting Free Speech

First Amendment rights have always been among the most zealously guarded prerogatives of Americans citizens and organizations. This unmatched adherence to freedom has set the United States apart from the rest of the world, including other democracies.

But over the past several years, this keystone right has come under significant attack. It can be seen in President Obama’s influencing of the Federal Communications Commission to attempt to place monitors in news rooms, and his transfer of control of the internet to an international body not devoted to free speech. It can be observed in his rather embarrassing attacks on news outlets that disagree with his policies.

A description of the President’s initial reaction to contrary opinion was described in 2009 by Spectator magazine:

“The Obama Administration declared war on the minority of media outlets that do not worship the political left’s newest false idol immediately after Obama was sworn in. Three days into his presidency Obama warned Congressional Republicans against listening to radio host Rush Limbaugh…Then the White House launched a jihad against Fox News Channel and its hosts by first boycotting appearances on the cable channel and then second, by engaging in name-calling and leveling baseless allegations.

“More recently, the White House brazenly attempted to marginalize Fox News Channel by enlisting the support of the heretofore compliant news media. Fortunately, competing news outlets found the backbone — if only temporarily — to put the kibosh on Obama’s attempts to blacklist FNC from the White House press pool.”

The Washington Post has reported that FCC member Ajit Pai revealed that the National Science Foundation underwrote a project, dubbed “Truthy” which sought to focus on people using Twitter to express non-left wing ideas.

The Obama White House continued in its anti-free speech viewpoint. In 2012, Jonathon Turley  described an unusual executive order:

“President Obama has issued an alarming executive order that would allow the government to crackdown of U.S. citizens and other individuals who ‘indirectly’ oppose U.S.-backed Yemeni President, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi was the right-hand man to the prior  dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh and won an ‘election’ composed only of himself.  We, of course, immediately embraced Hadi and the Obama Administration is now threatening anyone who opposes him, including our own citizens…The executive order…gives the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who ‘obstructs’ the political transition in Yemen, including U.S. citizens who are ‘engaged in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Yemen, such as acts that obstruct the implementation of the Nov. 23, 2011, agreement between the Government of Yemen and those in opposition to it, which provides for a peaceful transition of power . . . or that obstruct the political process in Yemen.’ One Obama official is quoted as saying that the order is meant to deter people opposing the regime to ‘make clear to those who are even thinking of spoiling the transition’ to think again. . . .That would be called a chilling effect designed to deter opponents of the regime.
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“One of the greatest threats posed by this order is that it places such actions in the the administrative law process on the agency level. Citizens are given fewer protections in that process and agencies given absurd levels of deference by federal courts. Various organizations have complained about that process in being detailed as aiders or abettors of terrorism. Glenn Greenwald has an article below discussing the new order.”

The President is not alone in his actions.  As  Hans A. von Spakovsky and Elizabeth Slattery wrote in a Heritage article, “Frustrated with the Supreme Court’s consistent defense of political speech protected by the First Amendment, the Left is driving a movement to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to limit fundraising and spending on political speech. Supporters of this amendment claim that restricting the amount of money that may be spent on political speech and activity is not the same as limiting speech, but as the Supreme Court has recognized, bans on spending are indeed bans on speech. Limiting spending on political communication necessarily affects the quantity and quality of that speech. Rather than ‘level the playing field,’this constitutional amendment would protect incumbents and violate a fundamental right of Americans.”

 “Progressive” Local governments have gotten into the act, as well, as described by Reason magazine In Houston, when religious leaders protested what they perceived to be an overbroad ordinance concerning gays and local businesses, they protested. In response, Mayor Aniise Parker subpoenaed five local pastors, demanding they turn over their sermons.

College campuses have been the most direct in their assault on free speech. Non-left wing students are ostracized and intimidated. Non-leftist guest lecturers requested by students are pressured to back out of speaking engagements. Student political speech activity has been restricted to so-called “free speech zones.” Reason describes these acts as “a seething hostility to out-group ideas that greets even mild heterodoxy with histrionic outrage and demands that invited speakers be dis-invited posthaste.”

Journalist Caroline Glick  echoes that.  “The fact is that the attempts of leftist activists on campuses to silence non-leftist dissenters regarding Israel and a host of other issues is simply an extreme version of what is increasingly becoming standard operating procedure for leftist activists throughout the US. Rather than participating in a battle of ideas with their ideological opponents on the Right, increasingly, leftist activists, groups and policy-makers seek to silence their opponents through slander, intimidation and misrepresentation of their own agenda.”

Perhaps the most important analysis of the attempt to silence non-leftist speech comes not from a conservative, but from a journalist closely associated with liberal politics. Kirsten Powers served in the Clinton Administration and was a fixture in Democrat politics in New York.  In her new book, “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech,” she provides one the most bluntly honest and hard-hitting analyses of this problem to date.

“This intolerance,” she writes, “is not a passive matter of opinion. It’s an aggressive, illiberal impulse to silence people.  This conduct has become an existential threat to those who hold orthodox religious beliefs… increasingly I hear from people across the political spectrum who are fearful not only of expressing their views, but also as to where all of this is heading.  I’ve followed this trend closely as a columnist with growing concern.  It’s become clear that the attempts—too often successful—to silence dissent from the liberal worldview isn’t isolated outbursts. They are part of a bigger story.”