PJNet

Some of you might have noticed that today I have taken a rather strong stand on protecting free speech. Here are the two headlines that reflect my feelings:

Let’s start first with my Op-Ed piece today that was published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Congress can’t muzzle free speech: Condemning Petraeus critics, lawmakers ignore Constitution

The second is my letter to Romenesko with the headline: Witt blasts NYT public editor’s column on MoveOn.org ad .

 My premise in the first is that the U.S. Senate has injured the First Amendment of the United States Constitution by voting to: “strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.” If we have to worry about one of the highest legal branches of the Federal government “condemning” our use of free speech, then how free is that speech.

In my open letter to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, I say he is too worried about decorum at the expense of free speech.  As you might notice from the tone of my letter, I am more worried about free speech than I am about decorum.

It is time that all of us to speak out now, and help to put the brakes on the trend to attack free speech via condemning its speakers when we don’t like what we hear.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 3:45 pm and is filed under 2nd Amendment, Censorship, Free speech, Journalism, Journalism Education, Media, Moveon.org, New York Times, Restoring the Trust, US Senate, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.