Information Literacy

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Andrew Lybrand
FYS-100-206
January 30, 2015
Free Speech
The article “Free speech at risk” was assigned to be read during the class period. The
author of the article was Alan Greenblatt. Greenblatt was a staff writer for both Governing
magazine and CQ Weekly. While at the places he won the National Press Club’s Sandy Hume
Award for political journalism. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University and received
a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Virginia.
The issues that are being debated during the text of the article are whether or not free
speech should be given to the journalists. The reason for the debate is some of what the
journalist release at times can cause conflict in between two people, conflict in a town, a country,
or even the world. The journalist can also release private items in a country making them
vulnerable or even able to be taken over at times. This also gives the journalist a chance to show
what is happening in a certain area to people that may not otherwise see it.
The benefits of regulating free speech are that it prevents the release of items that should
never be released. The items in this list would include military secrets, the private conversations
of authority figures, the hacking of computer networks and others voicemails. Some examples of
the benefits of regulating free speech would be in Britain it is illegal to hack into the voicemails
of others, in Finland a Freedom of Expression Act states that parties that were affected by a
statement have the right to reply or correct the persons who made the statement or statements
without any delay, and by doing this the countries create a line that cannot be passed by the
journalist and prevents the release of vital information, as well as private information.

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The effects of unregulated speech are that the government has to be more careful of what
is said and this will also make them perform in the way that people wish for due to the
government knows that the people will discover any wrong doings. This also prevents people
from being questioned based on what side of a topic the person stands on. One good example
would be when Bassem Yousef was questioned for insulting Islam and President Mohammad
Morsi. Yousef should not have been questioned for stating an opinion. Another example would
be U.S. officials would have been able to openly release vital documents with no consequences.
This would maybe cause harm to the people of the country.
The implications that the debate places on democratic societies are whether the
government should restrict freedom of speech to protect the secrets or to allow the journalists to
find out every aspect of their life and it be released to any person who is willing to watch it.
That is the outline of the article that was read in class. The article is on the debate of
whether free speech should be regulated or just openly given to the press. The article goes into
great depth about this topic and gives the reader a chance to see both sides of the topic and see
which he or she best agrees with.

3. Lybrand3
Andrew Lybrand
FYS 100-206
January 30, 2015
Regulation of Free Speech
Journalists should not be regulated in the modern day and time. Journalists should be
able to tell the world around them what is discovered on a daily basis. In countres that the
government has full control the press is the way that people in the country know what to expect
and how the ruler intends to run the country. The journalist is a resource that should be used to
the fullest power. The information that is found out and dispersed is in the best interest of the
people of which it is being dispersed to. The journalist allows the people in society to know fact
that otherwise would not be known and forever may be hidden.
The article “Free-media-speech: Free speech and public media” by Andrew Kenyon
explains that media free speech should be a requirement of the world today. Kenyon (2014)
states in his article that “To suggest that free speech is merely about commercial freedoms is to
deny the reasons that free speech is valued”(p.156). The interpretation that is taken from this is
that free speech in the media has a true value that should not be understated. Free speech can be
used for many things, but its true value is what the public interprets free speech to be. Another
statement that Kenyon (2014) makes in his article that argues that free speech has value is
“Consensus politics and diversity in public speeches may not be the easiest partnership. But
ideas about free speech that have wider significance can be drawn from the German court
cases”(160). The cases that are discussed in that quote are when Germany tried to have its courts
play a large role in the countries free speech. By doing this the information that was released
was largely censored meaning that true free speech was not allowed by the media. This is wrong

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doing because the public was not able to fully see what was happening in the country (Kenyon,
2014, p.159-160). This allowed the government to maintain more power than it should have.
This shows that free speech plays a major role in the people being able to maintain a watchful
eye on the government.
The second article titled “Trial by media: overcorrection of the inadequacy of the right to
free speech in contemporary China” the two authors Chen and Zhang discuss how the lack of the
right to free speech in China has led to a great debate of the people of China and its leaders. The
life time imprisonment of a man for a reason the people of the country did not find adequate is
front and center in the debate (Kaiju, 2011, p. 49). The major points in the article are that the
lack of free speech and judicial independents are causing many problems with in the country that
contains over a billion people. The people of the country see these two things going hand in
hand saying that the judicial system should be capable of operating separately, giving them
freedom from the Supreme Court, and the media should be able to be present at the court cases to
be sure of a fair trial and conviction (Kaiju, 2011, p. 50-55). In this example free speech keeps
the people of China from being ruled by the court system that is in place and allows the people to
know the events that are occurring in the court system.
The final article titled “Googling Freedom” and is written by Anupam Chander. The
article discusses how Google, the search engine used by many, refused to regulate the
information that could be searched. The search engine allows people of countries that the news is
censored, not giving the whole truth, to see what role media should play in the world. The
search engine allows people to discover items that would inevitably never be discovered without
them. The company feels that its role is to show what freedom of the media truly is to those who
do not understand it. In this way Google promotes free speech by allowing any media to be

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played on it for all people to see (Chandler, 2011). This shows that free speech is strongly
promoted by many and is planned to stay that way.
The articles above show why free speech has a great importance to society. Freedom of
speech is something that should be promoted and not frowned upon. Many do not have the
rights that people in the United States do and are fighting to get to where this country is today.
That is why the citizens of the U.S. should take full advantage of the rights that are given to them
and why freedom of speech is the most important right to have.

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Work Cited
1. Chandler, A. (2011). Googling Freedom. California Law Review, 99(1), 1-45
2. Kaiju, C., & Xinhong, Z. (2011). Trial by media: overcorrection of the inadequacy to
free speech in contemporary China. Critical Arts: A South-North Journal Of
Cultural & Media Studies, 25(1).
3. Kenyon, A.T. (2014). Free-media-speech: Free speech and public media. International
Journal Of media & Cultural Politics, 10(2), 155-162.