Punishing Speech
THIS WEEK: Punishing Speech
Free Speech is on the chopping block. Likely, on your beat. Some speech stories look like other stories. They hide. But The First Amendment is no joke.
Reporting Right has gathered a series of speech violation stories below. We know that speech infringement builds tolerance for more speech infringement. It can start to feel normal. Our job is to remind our audiences that curbing a person’s right to speech is often a political tool. Here’s how:
Name names: Who is responsible?
Name motives: Why? Is this part of a larger effort/movement?
Name Outcomes: What does this mean for people’s rights?
Name scope: Where else is this happening?
Some Speech Violation Stories
VIOLATION: Posting a flyer about a protest
PUNISHMENT: Sent to disciplinary academy that feels like jail
VIOLATION: Teaching Plato, who is Greek and wrote about sex
PUNISHMENT: No more Plato in college courses
VIOLATION: Rainbow cross walks
PUNISHMENT: Not allowed
VIOLATION: Dissenting at a college founded for dissenters
PUNISHMENT: You’re fired
Resources
Doc about downing the New College of Florida
Also in the News:
Your salary is too low? Blame AI
What it really looks like when libertarians take over
ICE detainees dying by suicide at an alarmingly high rate
We’re Reading:
The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind and Changed the History of Free Speech in America
by Thomas Healy
Comic Relief:
If You Like What You Are Reading:
Reach out for help at ReportingRight@googlegroups.com.
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See You Next Week!
Our Staff
Executive Editor Kyle Spencer
Issue Editor You-Yan Wang
Our Board of Advisors
Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability
David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy
Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations
Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.
Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
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