The end of September is a pleasant time on the Northside. The Big Bake is over. The temperatures are a bit dryer and cooler. The gorgeous October, November and December weather approaches, followed by six quick weeks of winter and a new glorious spring. The next 30 weeks out of 36 will be pleasant and mild.
Congratulations to the Madison County board of supervisors for standing up for free speech.
During the Aug. 4 meeting, Board Attorney Mike Espy read aloud a proposed change that would ban employees from engaging “in official communication with the media, with the government…or with the public on behalf of the county.”
The board quickly pushed back against this policy change, stating that city employees should be free to speak with the media.
“It wasn’t the intention to keep employees from speaking to the media,” said Gerald Steen, president of the board. “It wasn’t about that at all.”
Over the years I have watched governmental entities such as schools, cities and counties try to prohibit employees from speaking to the media. This is a violation of the First Amendment rights of these employees.
It is the nature of institutions to try to control the flow of information. As a result, they make rules that only the officially designated public relations person can speak to the media.
Having a designated media person is a great service and creates positive efficiencies. Here at the Sun, we have good relationships with dozens of media professionals. But that shouldn’t be accompanied by a prohibition against U. S. citizens from talking openly to other citizens, including media professionals, about their work. It’s encouraging to see the Madison County supervisors understanding this distinction.
Local professional media is endangered. The United States has lost two-thirds of its local journalists over the last 20 years because of the rise of monopolistic Big Tech. We don’t need additional roadblocks preventing us from doing our job.
In reality, professional local journalists try to work cooperatively with the public entities that we cover. Ninety-nine percent of the time we work together as colleagues, not adversaries. Sometimes, good journalism requires us to talk to a variety of sources beyond the one professional PR person in charge. That’s just good journalism.
Free speech is critical to liberty. It is critical to democracy. It is a God-given natural right as our founding fathers knew. The First Amendment is one of the key components of our Constitution. It has helped to make our nation great.
With the rise of Big Tech, information is being controlled by a handful of companies in a way that has never happened before. On one hand, individuals are finding more opportunities than ever to express themselves on massive, dominant platforms such as Google, Facebook and X. But ultimately the platforms serve as censors, controlling what content is distributed and what content is repressed. This is a dangerous situation that threatens free speech.
The rise of bogus websites distributing fake news on the world wide web is now a massive problem and is linked to the decline of professional journalism with its centuries of ethics.
We all know the problems of unethical professional journalists. There have been many instances of ethical abuse. But we can’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. Professional journalism has an ethical code that the overwhelmingly majority of journalists try to follow. This is much better than amateur journalism or fake propaganda which has no ethical code at all.
A recent case on the coast is a good example of how defense of free speech is a never-ending battle.
Johnny Fuselier, a Vietnam veteran, retired from the Navy, living at the Gulfport Armed Forces Retirement Home says he’s been threatened with eviction if he wears his hat supporting President Donald Trump or affixes campaign signs to his orthopedic walker. He has sued the retirement home in federal court.
The retirement home policy states: “Signs and apparel of racial, sexual, political, or ethnic slogans are not permitted…. These provisions are not intended to interfere with residents’ First Amendment rights. The First Amendment limits the government’s ability to control speech and expression. Residents of AFRH-G served this country to protect our freedom, and they retain their right to engage in vigorous expression and debate.”
Huh? How can, with a straight face, the retirement home claim “these provisions are not intended to interfere with the residents’ First Amendment rights?” That’s exactly what they do: They interfere with the residents’ First Amendment rights.
Good for Johnny Fuselier for standing up for his rights and taking this to federal court. Now the federal court needs to do their job and enforce the First Amendment rights of U. S. citizens, especially retired veterans.
Our President is not doing his part in defending First Amendment rights. He has called for the ban of burning the American flag. This is an assault on the First Amendment.
Burning the American flag is considered protected speech under the First Amendment, following pivotal Supreme Court decisions in 1989 and 1990 that overturned state and federal bans on flag desecration as unconstitutional restrictions of symbolic expression.
The court found that flag burning is a form of political protest that falls squarely within First Amendment protection, and laws criminalizing flag desecration are unconstitutional unless the act directly incites imminent violence or lawless action, which is a narrow exception.
As the French philosopher Voltaire first said, later endorsed by founding father Patrick Henry, “I may not like what you say but I will defend you to my death for your right to say it.”
