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David French spoke about free speech on college campuses.

Owen Stidman/Daily Senior Staffer

David French spoke about free speech on college campuses.

Owen Stidman/Daily Senior Staffer

Owen Stidman/Daily Senior Staffer

David French spoke about free speech on college campuses.

David French spoke about the First Amendment clash on college campuses on Tuesday in Seabury Hall.

French was invited by Northwestern College Republicans. He is an attorney, an Iraq War veteran, and is currently the senior editor at the online political magazine, The Dispatch.

French spoke about the culture of enmity that is arising in the country, particularly on college campuses. He said people are clustering into like-minded enclaves, which leads to the growth of their common viewpoint.

I want people to understand that free speech is fundamentally part of our social compact, he said.

He added that the countrys population is becoming increasingly negatively polarized, as people join political parties due to hatred of the other side rather than support of their own. Despite the decrease in government censorship over the past 20 years, French said, people are more afraid to speak up than ever because the pressure to suppress ones views is coming from their peers as opposed to top-down censorship.

McCormick junior Zachary Kornbluth, secretary of public relations for College Republicans, created advertising for the event. He said in the wake of the Jeff Sessions event, the group thought it would be relevant to bring in a speaker who was knowledgeable on the topic of free speech.

(We hope students will gain) an appreciation of free speech, of hearing other peoples viewpoints, he said. He isnt a supporter of Trump and I know that can kind of be a lightning rod so that may help us get our message across.

In his talk, French said if people see someone being unjustly persecuted, they should stand with the person, even if they have different views. Acts of allyship will create bonds of fellowship that the country currently lacks. When people refuse to defend the rights of others, he said, free speech becomes a power, not a right.

Weinberg sophomore Elizabeth Sperti, a legal studies major, said she gained interesting legal perspectives on the First Amendment.

(I got) an interesting take on the political aspects of free speech and how it functioned on college campuses specifically, she said.

French welcomed questions from the audience and gave anecdotes from his experiences in college and law school, when he found himself in positions where others refused to hear his point of view.

He stressed that although lawyers have won many cases against censorship and speech codes at universities, people have lost a cultural appreciation for free speech.

Free speech has been indispensable in every positive social movement in the history of the United States, and remains indispensable to those who are interested in social change, French said. And that, very fundamentally its one way that a really diverse pluralistic society hangs together is by preserving our mutual civil liberties.

Email: ariannacarpati2023@u.northwestern.edu

Twitter: @ariannacarpati1

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David French gives a talk on free speech - Daily Northwestern

Getting it right is one reliable defense for a free press in todays media world against critics who often base objections and critiques more on political differences than factual error.

However, criticism for getting it wrong is fair game for press skeptics with wrong covering a multitude of alleged sins, as occurred following the Jan. 26 deaths of NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others in a helicopter crash.

Even though many times the news outlets themselves quickly corrected errors or apologized, those moves often fell short of placating many on social media.

The BBC apologized quickly Sunday for using video of NBA star LeBron James during a segment on Bryants death a mistake the harkened to an old racist saw that to whites, all black people look alike.

The BBCs quick apology: In tonights coverage of the death of Kobe Bryant on #BBCNewsTen, we mistakenly used pictures of LeBron James in one section of the report, BBC Editor Paul Royall tweeted hours later. We apologize for this human error, which fell below our usual standards.

A slew of online critics some starting an online petition calling for resignation have questioned the sincerity of an MSNBC anchors apology Sunday after she appeared to use the n-word when reporting on Bryants death. Alison Morris later posted on Twitter: Earlier today, while reporting on the tragic news of Kobe Bryants passing, I unfortunately stuttered on air, combining the names of the Knicks and the Lakers to say Nakers. Please know I did not & would NEVER use a racist term. I apologize for the confusion this caused.

Gossip site TMZ was the first to report Bryants death. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva later said, It would be extremely disrespectful to understand that your loved one perished and you learn about it from TMZ. Los Angeles County Undersheriff Tim Murakami tweeted that he understood the pressures related to getting the scoop, but please allow us time to make personal notifications to their loved ones. Its very cold to hear of the loss via media.

Less clear is why The Washington Post placed a national political reporter, Felicia Sonmez, on administrative leave Monday only to reverse the action Tuesday because of tweets that began with a link to a 2016 Daily Beast story titled, Kobe Bryants Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accusers Story and the Half-Confession.

It is unclear whether the Posts initial action was in response to many online critics who called the tweet insensitive some issuing death threats, Sonmez said or because one of her tweets on the subject included a screen shot of her work email inbox, showing the names of critics.

By Tuesday, newsroom colleagues were rallying around Sonmez and Post columnist Erik Wemple wrote that the newspapers concerns, per an email from management to Sonmez, were that they didnt pertain to the reporters coverage area and that your behavior on social media is making it harder for others to do their work as Washington Post journalists. In the same column, Sonmez was quoted as saying she was never told the suspension involved the screen grab of her work email box.

Wemple raised questions about the action, noting that if journalists at the Post are prone to suspension for tweeting stories off their beats, the entire newsroom should be on administrative leave.

On Tuesday evening, After conducting an internal review, we have determined that, while we consider Felicias tweets ill-timed, she was not in clear and direct violation of our social media policy, Tracy Grant, managing editor of the Post, said in a statement.

Several news outlets drew a line from an early Fox News report with the incorrect number of those who died to a President Trump tweet repeating the error. ABC News on Wednesday suspended correspondent Matt Gutman after he erroneously reported on Sunday that all four of Bryants daughters were on the helicopter that crashed. Gutman, who also reported strong criticism on social media, apologized: We are in the business of holding people accountable, and I hold myself accountable for a terrible mistake, which I deeply regret.

A common factor here is the desire for a speedy post, reaction or comment, seemingly based on an assumption that readers and viewers and listeners care most about hearing news and seeing reactions now. But what about the values of accuracy, deliberation and thoroughness in an era in which much of the nation considers the news media unreliable, if not deliberately manipulative and unduly provocative?

Yes, many major news operations got it right by waiting for information to be verified. The Los Angeles Times at least took the intermediate approach of acknowledging online the early accounts of Bryants death and advising its readers it still was investigating those reports.

Sonmezs incident is a more challenging call for the Post, for the public and for a free press generally. Certainly, there is the longstanding social pressure and even journalistic guidelines to avoid sensationalism and inflicting undue pain that seems to lean toward avoiding disparaging news of a person immediately after his/her death.

But then, to ignore a womans allegation and resulting legal action in the #MeToo era (or anytime) likely would have resulted in legitimate complaints that journalists were channeling gender bias and hero worship and sanitizing a life. For the record, criminal charges against Bryan were dropped and a civil lawsuit settled out of court.

There is not one perfect way to gather or report news. The tasks are too complex and dependent on facts of each instance to produce cookie-cutter rules. And to large degree, the First Amendment rules out the enforceable codes of conduct that govern professions such as law and medicine.

But having been a young reporter at one time whose on-deadline job all too often was to collect a photo and interview family members of a recently deceased newsworthy person, I know there is a better way, with sensitivity, honesty and an emphasis on getting things right the first time, even when giving audiences an accurate news account.

Those terms sensitivity, honesty, getting it right and accurate are not in the First Amendments 45 words, to be sure. But that doesnt mean those values arent as real or applicable to how a free press should operate.

Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.

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INSIDE THE FIRST AMENDMENT: 'Getting it right' - on Kobe Bryant and everything else - Meridian Star

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United unleashed a flood of corporate money into American politics, giving corporations and wealthy donors free rein to influence our elections. On February 6, 2020, the Democracy for All Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment that would change campaign finance laws and limit the amount of money that can be used to influence elections, will have a public hearing for the first time in the 116th Congress. Learn about the history of Citizens United, previous attempts at passing a constitutional amendment, and other effects of the 2010 ruling by exploring the resources below, all contributed over the years by Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md. 8), a former senior fellow at People For the American Way.

The only effect of Citizens United was to give CEOs of business corporations the power to take unlimited amounts of money from corporate treasuries and spend it advancing or defeating political candidates of their choosing. Its real-world consequence was thus not to expand the political freedom of citizens but to reduce the political power of citizens vis--vis huge corporations with vast fortunes. These corporations, endowed with limited shareholder liability, perpetual life, and other privileges, may now freely engage in motivated political spending to enrich themselves and their executives, leaving workers and other citizens behind.

Read more here.

On March 25, 2015, PFAW Foundation Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin previewed his upcoming report, The Supreme Court in the Citizens United Era, during a member telebriefing. Executive Vice President Marge Baker and Senior Legislative Counsel Paul Gordon also joined the call to answer questions from members and discuss PFAW efforts to promote fair and just courts. Drew Courtney, former director of communications for PFAW, moderated.

Read more here.

The [proposed] 28th Amendment would reaffirm and restore congressional and state power to regulate campaign finance, but nothing in it could interfere in any way with the First Amendment doctrines of viewpoint and content neutrality as they would apply to such regulations. The 28th Amendment would, for example, empower Congress to restore the aggregate candidate contribution limits that had been in place under FECA for decades and were just invalidated by the Supreme Court in the 5-4 McCutcheon decision.

Read more here.

Thus, if the justification being offered forCitizens United is to allow individual citizens to associate and combine resources in the corporate for to participate more effectively in the political process, as the question posits, then this justification is hollow and specious because all Americans already had that right. Without a rationale for the decision that explains specifically why the managers of for-profit business corporations must have the power to spend corporate treasury resources on political campaigningthe power, that is, to convert economic wealth amassed in business by a corporation into political finance capitalwe are left with the implication that five justices on the Court overturned multiple constitutional precedents [] and struck down dozens of federal and state laws, all simply in order to increase the political power of corporate executives and the candidates they may choose to fund.

Read more here.

Four years ago, in Citizens United v. FEC, the Roberts Court majority bulldozed an essential block of the wall, the one that kept trillions of dollars in corporate treasury wealth from flowing into federal campaigns. In Arizona Free Enterprise Clubs Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett (2011), the Court stifled public debate and destroyed vast new opportunities for political speech by striking down public financing programs that use matching funds to amplify the voices of less affluent candidates competing to be heard over the roar of big wealth. In McCutcheon v. FEC (2014), the Court took a sledgehammer to the aggregate contribution limits, empowering political tycoons and shrewd business investors to max out to every Member of Congress and all their opponents. All of these assaults on political equality and free speech were justified in the name of the First Amendment.

Read more here.

If right-wing America had set out to design a Supreme Court case that combined all of its political fetishes, it could not have done better than to come up with Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. v. Sebelius, a devilishly complex assault on Obamacare, womens health care rights in the workplace, and the embattled idea that the Bill of Rights is for people, not corporations. The outlandish claims of the company involved would not have a prayer except for Citizens United, the miracle gift of 2010 that just keeps giving.

Read more here.

Now, in the bitterly divided Citizens United decision (2010), five Justices on the Roberts Court have held that corporations have the right to spend unlimited sums of money promoting or disparaging political candidates. This decision built on the dangerous fallacy that state-chartered corporations enjoy the same political free speech rights as the people strikes another dangerous blow against popular democracy. It is a blueprint for government of the big corporations, by the big corporations and for the big corporations.

Read more here.

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Former PFAW Senior Fellow and Then-Maryland State Senator Jamie Raskin on a Constitutional Amendment to Citizens United - People For the American Way

A lawsuit stemming from the highly publicized expulsion of a Kansas City library patron from a public event nearly four years ago has drawn to an end after the judge ruled in favor of the lone remaining defendant.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips found for an off-duty police detective who arrested Jeremy Rothe-Kushel, a documentary filmmaker from Lawrence who sued the detective and 13 other defendants over the incident, which drew national headlines.

Rothe-Kushel claimed his First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated after he was physically restrained on May 9, 2016, following a lecture at the librarys Plaza branch by American diplomat and former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross.

The lecture, about President Harry Truman's recognition of the state of Israel, was organized by the Jewish Community Foundation and the Truman Library Institute. Following the April 2014 shootings that left three people dead at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom in Overland Park, there was heightened security at the event.

During a planned question-and-answer session after the lecture, Rothe-Kushel stepped up to the microphone and asked Ross a long, rambling question alluding to what he said was a history of state-sponsored terrorism by Israel and the United States.

Ross responded and Rothe-Kushel began arguing with him. At that point, the man in charge of security for the event, Blair Hawkins, began to physically remove Rothe-Kushel from the microphone. Hawkins was director of security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, which had hired him following the 2014 shootings.

Video of the incident shows Hawkins grabbing Rothe-Kushels arm, telling him Youre done and attempting to remove him from the mic. Rothe-Kushel is seen yelling even as a second person approaches the mic to ask a question.

Rothe-Kushel was later arrested in the lobby after an off-duty officer hired for the event asked for his identification and he refused to give it. The librarys director of programming and marketing, Steven Woolfolk, was also arrested after he sought to intervene and prevent Rothe-Kushels removal.

Woolfolk was later charged with obstruction, interfering with an arrest and assaulting a police officer. After a day-long trial in September 2017, a Kansas City Municipal Court judge acquitted him of all three charges.

The actions taken by the officers sparked outrage among civil libertarians and were condemned by the librarys then-executive director, R. Crosby Kemper III, who said the officers had overreacted.

Rothe-Kushels lawsuit named 14 defendants, including officials of the Jewish Community Foundation and the Truman Library Institute; the off-duty policemen involved in the incident; Kansas City Chief of Police Rick Smith; and members of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, including then-Kansas City Mayor Sly James.

Rothe-Kushel later voluntarily dismissed his claims against the members of the police board and the off-duty officers, except for the detective who arrested him, Brent Parsons.

The claims against officials of the Jewish Community Foundation and Truman Library Institute had been dismissed earlier in the case although its not clear if they were dismissed because the organizations reached settlements with Rothe-Kushel or because of the merits of their legal defenses.

I can say that matters as to other defendants were concluded, said Arthur Benson, one of Rothe-Kushels attorneys. Thats all I can say.

Officials of the Jewish Community Foundation and Truman Library declined to comment or could not be reached for comment.

In her 12-page ruling Thursday in favor of Parsons, Judge Phillips found that Parsons had probable cause to arrest Rothe-Kushel for trespassing and for refusing to provide his identification.

She also found that while Rothe-Kushel had a First Amendment right to ask Ross questions, that right was not limitless: (H)e could not ask so many questions that other audience members were deprived of the opportunity, and he had no right to argue with Ambassador Ross (and no right to expect Ambassador Ross to engage in such an argument).

Finally, Phillips found against Rothe-Kushel on his claims of conspiracy to violate his civil rights, false arrest and conspiracy under state law.

Rothe-Kushel, reached by email, declined to say whether he had reached settlements with any of the defendants.

Fred Slough, another attorney representing Rothe-Kushel, said it was a serious wrong for Rothe-Kushel to have been removed and arrested. He said Rothe-Kushel would have complied with a request to leave the library.

Instead he was grabbed and manhandled in the middle of an exchange with the Ambassador that was not a disturbance, except in the sense that some in the audience audibly disagreed with its content, Slough said via email. The law does not allow such a heckler's veto of free speech.

Editor's note: This story was updated with Rothe-Kushel's comment.

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor at KCUR. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.

Originally posted here:
Free-Speech Case Over Patron's Arrest At The Kansas City Public Library Finally Comes To An End - KCUR

Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks to the media in Washington, D.C., January 23, 2020. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Elizabeth Warren has proposed repealing the First Amendment. (Again.) Per CNBC:

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday released a plan to fight disinformation to hold tech companies accountable for their actions in light of the 2016 election.

Thats one way of putting it, certainly. Another would be: Having bought into the conspiracy theory that the 2016 election was meaningfully affected by people arguing stupidly online, Elizabeth Warren has released a plan for the federal government to regulate the press, the publishing industry, and the Internet.

Why? To save democracy, naturally:

Disinformation and online foreign interference erode our democracy, and Donald Trump has invited both, Warren said in a Tweet Wednesday. Anyone who seeks to challenge and defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election must be fully prepared to take this on and Ive got a plan to do it.

Warren proposed to combat disinformation by holding big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google responsible for spreading misinformation designed to suppress voters from turning out.

I will push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating this kind of information, which has the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote, Warren said in a press release.

It is difficult to know where to start here. No such democracy exemption exists within the First Amendment, and no such exemption should exist within the First Amendment. The merits of my doing so aside, if I wish to say or write that particular people should not vote, or that immigrants such as myself should be disenfranchised or that the 19th Amendment was a mistake, that is my right. Were this not the case were it the case, that is, that the First Amendment could be regulated in such cases as it were being used to attack other parts of the Constitution then Elizabeth Warren herself would be liable for prosecution. (Or, at the very least, for being held accountable by the president, whatever that means.)

Ironically enough, Warrens proposal would represent a boon to precisely the sort of corruption and entrenchment of power that she insists she wishes to fight. In the vast majority of cases it would be wholly impossible for the government to determine what sort of speech served to undermine the basic right to vote or to to polarize and disenfranchise particular groups or to disempower voters, such that any concerted attempt to do so would necessarily be driven by partisan interest and little else besides. Warren complains that the same tactics employed by the Russian government are just as easily accessible to domestic groups seeking to promote or oppose candidates and political or social issues. Those tactics, lest we forget, were . . . arguing about politics. There is simply no way for the federal government to superintend domestic groups seeking to promote or oppose candidates and political or social issues without the federal government controlling political speech.

It was recently proposed that it should be unconstitutional to vote Republican. Warrens idea is merely that scheme applied to the First Amendment. In effect, Warren is seeking the power to decide what is true and what is not and what may be disseminated and what may not and to apply this power to the elections in which she herself takes part. That she is chasing this authority while accusing the incumbent president of seeking to use his office for personal political gain (which he did) is startling.

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Elizabeth Warren Would Like to Be Appointed as the Arbiter of Truth - National Review