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Conference Looks at Modern Threats to First Amendment
Are technology and the new economy threatening the First Amendment? That was the underlying question at “Intellectual Workers and Essential Freedoms: Journalists and Academics in the 21st Century,” a conference in Washington, D.C. in June, cosponsored by The Newspaper Guild-CWA and the American Association of University Professors.
“Nothing involving technology is ever simple,” CWA President Morton Bahr said in a keynote address. “From the printing press to the digitalization of information, we have constantly reinvented what we call intellectual property rights.”
Today, anyone with a computer has instant access to a world of information and entertainment that was scarcely dreamed of a decade ago. But should it all be so widely, so publicly available? Should anyone be able to download movies and music for free, taking royalties away from artists and actors? Should access to websites with any mention of sex be restricted in schools and public libraries, even if it means a student can’t research breast cancer as a result?
The debate is raging and the questions are endless. Making matters even more complicated is the corporatization of America’s media — huge companies gobbling up newspapers, TV stations, Internet providers, entertainment groups and other entities that don’t value journalism unless it’s making money.
“It’s all become commercialized,” TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said. “It’s all for sale.”
Much of today’s journalism can be summed up by four “s” words: Sensational, shallow, sexy and superficial, said Marvin Kalb, former CBS and NBC news reporter, who now teaches at Harvard.
As a result, “You lose your distinctive identity as a truth-teller, and that’s what journalists are supposed to be, truth-tellers,” Kalb said.
But the same public that buys tabloids and makes sensational television shows a hit distrusts the media to a disturbing extent. Speaker Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, cited a 1999 public opinion survey by a nonpartisan group that studies media issues.
“Nearly one-third said the First Amendment goes too far in protecting various rights,” Strossen said. “Especially unpopular is the free press. More than half think the press has too much freedom, a 15 percent jump since 1997. Distressingly high numbers of Americans — 35 percent — said that newspapers should not be allowed to publish without prior government approval. Thirty-seven percent said newspapers should not be allowed to endorse or criticize political candidates.”
The good news, Strossen said, is that by talking to people who feel that way, they usually come to understand how fundamental a free press and free speech are to a free society. “A survey is a snapshot of people’s superficial views,” she said. “If you push people on the details, they start to come around.”
The impact of the new economy is hitting university professors hard, too, affecting their First Amendment rights and intellectual freedoms, speakers said.
“As federal funding has decreased and corporations have downsized their research and development, companies have funded professors in return for exclusive rights to their ideas,” Bahr said. “Who ultimately controls your research? Who controls access to your information? These are questions that remain unanswered.”
Bahr and others also noted that tenure for professors is under attack. “Tenure is supposed to protect the professor’s freedom of speech,” Bahr said. “But is tenure undermined by new forms of technology and market pressures? Again, more uncertainty.”
While the conference raised more questions than answers, TNG-CWA and the AAUP prepared a joint statement pledging:
“These principles and goals shall guide our actions in the coming years as we strive to protect the dignity, the freedom and independence of our professions,” the statement said, and cited what Washington Post editorial writer Alan Barth told the AAUP in a speech in 1953:
“We shall be fighting for much more than freedom for ourselves; we shall be fighting for the whole of human freedom.”
“Nothing involving technology is ever simple,” CWA President Morton Bahr said in a keynote address. “From the printing press to the digitalization of information, we have constantly reinvented what we call intellectual property rights.”
Today, anyone with a computer has instant access to a world of information and entertainment that was scarcely dreamed of a decade ago. But should it all be so widely, so publicly available? Should anyone be able to download movies and music for free, taking royalties away from artists and actors? Should access to websites with any mention of sex be restricted in schools and public libraries, even if it means a student can’t research breast cancer as a result?
The debate is raging and the questions are endless. Making matters even more complicated is the corporatization of America’s media — huge companies gobbling up newspapers, TV stations, Internet providers, entertainment groups and other entities that don’t value journalism unless it’s making money.
“It’s all become commercialized,” TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said. “It’s all for sale.”
Much of today’s journalism can be summed up by four “s” words: Sensational, shallow, sexy and superficial, said Marvin Kalb, former CBS and NBC news reporter, who now teaches at Harvard.
As a result, “You lose your distinctive identity as a truth-teller, and that’s what journalists are supposed to be, truth-tellers,” Kalb said.
But the same public that buys tabloids and makes sensational television shows a hit distrusts the media to a disturbing extent. Speaker Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, cited a 1999 public opinion survey by a nonpartisan group that studies media issues.
“Nearly one-third said the First Amendment goes too far in protecting various rights,” Strossen said. “Especially unpopular is the free press. More than half think the press has too much freedom, a 15 percent jump since 1997. Distressingly high numbers of Americans — 35 percent — said that newspapers should not be allowed to publish without prior government approval. Thirty-seven percent said newspapers should not be allowed to endorse or criticize political candidates.”
The good news, Strossen said, is that by talking to people who feel that way, they usually come to understand how fundamental a free press and free speech are to a free society. “A survey is a snapshot of people’s superficial views,” she said. “If you push people on the details, they start to come around.”
The impact of the new economy is hitting university professors hard, too, affecting their First Amendment rights and intellectual freedoms, speakers said.
“As federal funding has decreased and corporations have downsized their research and development, companies have funded professors in return for exclusive rights to their ideas,” Bahr said. “Who ultimately controls your research? Who controls access to your information? These are questions that remain unanswered.”
Bahr and others also noted that tenure for professors is under attack. “Tenure is supposed to protect the professor’s freedom of speech,” Bahr said. “But is tenure undermined by new forms of technology and market pressures? Again, more uncertainty.”
While the conference raised more questions than answers, TNG-CWA and the AAUP prepared a joint statement pledging:
- A renewed commitment to the principles and objectives of the First Amendment to protect the rights of a free people to govern effectively.
- A renewed commitment to the principles of academic freedom, and to mechanisms that protect and advance those principles: tenure, shared governance, peer review, due process and collective bargaining.
- A commitment to promote and secure legal and public recognition of journalistic freedom under the First Amendment.
- A commitment to continue to promote and protect the intellectual property rights of creators and to secure their recognition in the new digital environment.
- A renewed commitment to the development of workplace democracy and diversity in the new technological environments of the 21st century.
- A commitment to insulate intellectual work from commercial concerns and to maintain the distinction between intellectual content and commercial content.
- A commitment to encourage and stimulate broader access to knowledge in all its forms and venues: libraries and classrooms, as well as print and electronic media.
“These principles and goals shall guide our actions in the coming years as we strive to protect the dignity, the freedom and independence of our professions,” the statement said, and cited what Washington Post editorial writer Alan Barth told the AAUP in a speech in 1953:
“We shall be fighting for much more than freedom for ourselves; we shall be fighting for the whole of human freedom.”