Fair-weather friends: when journalists desert from free speech battles

Reason, June, 2004 by Matt Welch

Since reporters probe the First Amendment's boundaries every day, checking their pulses on issues regarding the climate for free speech can be a good preliminary indicator of the patient's overall health. If that's true, then we have reason to be worried--while the Bush Administration erects wall after wall between the truth and the American people, and adopts policies specifically designed to limit Americans' freedom of expression, some journalists are responding not with howls of outrage, but requests for more.

When the public or the press gives bureaucrats an inch of regulatory authority over speech, the instinct is to take a mile. In March the Senate Commerce Committee came within a single vote of passing legislation that would have expanded limits on "indecency" to satellite and cable.

Much further off the radar screen, the Treasury Department's notorious Office for Foreign Assets Control has issued a series of rulings during the last several months prohibiting American publishers from editing so much as a single comma when printing works originating from Iran, Cuba, Libya, and Sudan, using the absurd argument that it will help "protect American citizens."

Yet some journalists keep egging the government on. In March, Patrick Goldstein, "Big Picture" columnist for the L.A. Times, actually urged Congress to hold annual hearings to grill entertainment executives on whether their product has "any artistic value." Like many critics who conflate the indecency debate with media consolidation, Goldstein expressed support for increasing FCC fines.

How threatening individual broadcasters with penalties of half a million dollars per incident will help "the little guy" is beyond my comprehension. But Goldstein is positively thrilled at the emergence of a coalition to trash the First Amendment: "It's not a pure liberal-versus-conservative issue anymore--and therein lies hope."

The real hope lies in refusing to let free speech battles be outsourced solely to journalists. In Sandra Tsing Loh's case, after dozens of regular KCRW subscribers wrote in to announce their withdrawal of financial support, General Manager Seymour caved and offered Loh her job back in a better time slot. Loh declined, then moved over to cross-town NPR rival KPCC.

"Unlike so [much] of my other work," Loh said at her victory party, "my firing has proven to be both a critical and popular success." In an ugly election year, one hopes the public support she received will set a precedent.

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Contributing Editor Matt Welch (mwelch@reason.com) writes about media and polities for Canada's National Post and blogs at mattwelch.com.