Oklahoma Joe: Freedom of speech is not limitless – Journal Record (subscription)

Joe Hight

Freedom of speech doesnt mean freedom from ramifications.

Ive often wondered that, especially considering recent events. Of the five some may even say six rights granted to us by the First Amendment, many may say speech is the most important. As my Media Ethics students have told me, Without freedom of speech, you wouldnt have the other freedoms.

Thats debatable, but the freedom to say or write or create is not limitless.

Examples are many, but here are a few recent ones:

Ten prospective Harvard students admissions were rescinded after they posted offensive messages and memes in the Facebook chat group Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens. The Boston Business Journal reported the teenagers mocked sexual assault, the Holocaust, child abuse, and ethnic and racial groups.

Comedian Kathy Griffin was fired as CNNs New Years Eve commentator after posing with a fake bloody Donald Trump head. Then, as Vanity Fair reported, she joked with photographer Tyler Shields, We have to move to Mexico today because were not surviving this, OK? She later tearfully apologized, while also attacking the Trumps for seeking to ruin her life.

Milo Yiannopoulos resigned as editor of Breitbart News, lost speaking engagements and a book contract for remarks endorsing sexual relations with boys as young as 13. He apologized but not before saying he was a victim of child abuse himself. Conservative radio personality Charlie Sykes reacted by telling The New York Times, Weve created a competition for being the most offensive and the most outrageous in order to stay relevant, and then we must rally around and defend you.

Has our need for attention proliferated to the point that Sykes is correct? Is social media behind it? Last week, I wrote about unacceptable snarky and attack tweets in the aftermath of the shootings of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others at a practice for the congressional baseball game.

Have we taken freedom of speech too far?

Oklahoma State University professor Joey Senat is among the experts I turned to on First Amendment and freedom of information issues. He wrote in response to my question that obscenity, deceptive advertising and child pornography do not receive First Amendment protection. He also pointed to the U.S. Supreme Courts Brandenburg Test that is used to determine the difference between speech advocating an abstract idea (which is protected by the First Amendment) and speech intended to incite imminent lawless action (which is not protected).

Even when speech is protected by the First Amendment, it can be punished, he wrote. Freedom of speech receives a great deal of protection in this country, i.e., a preferred position. To say that ramifications exist isnt to say that freedom of speech and government regulation of speech are co-equal. The scale balances in favor of speech.

But when does it go too far? Should colleges cancel a speakers planned speeches because they dont share the majority of students viewpoints? Otherwise, known as Hecklers Veto? Should people protesting at a site be escorted out and even banned because their remarks dont agree with our own?

As Joey writes, Political speech receives more protection than does commercial speech. Government must have a compelling reason to regulate political speech. The First Amendment applies only when the government is doing the censorship. Private entities may censor without violating the First Amendment.

In the end, freedom of speech doesnt give you absolute freedom. But it is a freedom we must continue to defend, along with our other First Amendment rights.

Joe Hight is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame editor who is the University of Central Oklahomas endowed chair of journalism ethics and president of his family-owned business Best of Books in Edmond.

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Oklahoma Joe: Freedom of speech is not limitless - Journal Record (subscription)