Freedom of speech, mass media, and debate

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A response to Taking Sides – Clashing Views in Mass Media and Society – Issue 8

In the affirmative argument, Kathleen Jamieson argues that the First Amendment has protected the media and allowed it to cover many sides of issues, even sides the government might want to suppress.  In the negative response, Thomas Patterson says the mainstream press hasn’t fought for its own freedom, routinely excludes unpopular opinions, and is more concerned with dollars than debate.

Jamieson thinks the press has the freedom and contains the robust debate the framers intended when they wrote the Bill of Rights.  She cites the case law progressively strengthening this right and also the development of broadcast law, which has as its heart a notion of opening discussion for the public good.  Watergate and the Pentagon Papers provide two good examples of the press using this power to defend citizens against the government.  Political speech that offends and may even seem irrational today is protected as vigorously as the political speech of the part in power.  And voters today are exposed to many different sides-everyone from Marxists to Buddhists to Bill Clinton in the 1992 primaries, for example.  The development of technologies has broadened communication and debate as well.

Patterson says Watergate and the Pentagon Papers are an oasis in a desert of mundane mainstream press practices.  The mainstream press has not been the driving party in many First Amendment cases, and has been played like a fiddle by people like McCarthy.  The press control the government orchestrated in the Persian Gulf War is a good example of the media’s willingness to be controlled; only the alternative press protested.  Patterson argues that individual publications and broadcasters have displayed little interest in public debate and more in being able to exclude opinions they don’t like.  And finally, he says the press is more interested in making money than anything else.  Television and competition for customers have dumbed down news more than opened debate.

What interests me about these articles is how both look at the same case law and come to different conclusions.  Jamieson sees Miami Herald v. Tornillo as the court defending the press’ right to refuse to publish even if it’s in the state’s interest.  Patterson sees the same case as strike against hearing all sides in a political debate.  Jamieson sees the series of cases defining the First Amendment as the government’s (or at least, the court’s) struggle to guarantee free expression; Patterson says the mainstream press are rarely the ones fighting for the freedoms they enjoy.  Patterson’s point is interesting and I wish someone had thought of it while I was in media law class.  Why is it that the mainstream press has not been on the front lines of its own freedom?

I think Patterson’s final point, about commercialism over communication, deserves its own chapter.  Giant corporations and profit-minded individual ownership of mass media helps narrow the marketplace of ideas in key ways.  I’m going to make this point in my paper, too, because I think Internet news may be even more apt for this-most people get news on the internet from companies that have never had anything to do with news (Microsoft, AOL, Netscape).  Though they outsource to more traditional providers (AP, Reuters, etc) they’ll happily go with the lowest bidder and have no sense of journalistic mission whatsoever.

Issues to examine in rape reporting

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A response to Taking Sides – Clashing Views in Mass Media and Society – Issue 5

In his memo to NBC news staff, Michael Gartner gives his rational for printing the name of the alleged rape victim in the William Kennedy Smith case and argues such names should be printed in most cases.  Katha Pollitt, on the other hand, says there are no good reasons to print a victim’s name.

Gartner has four main points to make.  First, the job of the news media is to disseminate news, not to cover it up or leave out facts that are important to the story.  Second, giving the victim the decision takes it out of the editors’ hands and rape is the only case in which this is even considered.  Third, not naming rape victims plays in to the stereotype that there is something shameful about being raped, where the rapist is the only one who should feel any shame.  And fourth, that news media consistently report the names of rape suspects, even if they haven’t been formally charged, and fairness dictates the same be done with the accuser.

Pollitt disagrees.  She says that the media often cover up things and leave out salient for other reasons, that anonymity for accusers is standard practice in America and not unfair, and that the press is uneven with its use of anonymity-demanding it for sources but denying it to rape victims.  Pollitt says that printing the name along with information about the accuser does not treat rape like other crimes because it call into question if the accuser was asking for it and that naming does nothing to dispel the stigma of being raped.

Personally I’m perfectly willing to keep a rape victim’s name anonymous.  As a rule I’m wary of anonymous sources and leaving names out of a story, but I think there are good reasons to, and the emotional pain that would come from publicity of rape is one of them.  Related to all of this is how the news media cover rape in general.  Working on the Transcript, we’ve come under fire for reporting on rape at all.  There are plenty of women (and probably some men) who don’t think the news media should even report a rape occurred on a campus this small, because people might be able to figure out who it was.  Pollitt made a point I think is telling when she asked where the media is at the thousands of Take Back the Night demonstrations-most likely, they’ve been specifically excluded.  Every year, dozens of date rapes and worse happen on this campus, yet no one ever hears about it.  Going to Take Back the Night amazes people-so many women have been violated, but no one ever brings the issue up.  That’s exactly the problem-because of the emotional distress and shame surrounding rape, many victims never even report it to the school, let along the police or the Transcript, who would happily plead their case and leave their name out of it.  The over-arching silence is not helping anybody and leads people to believe it’s not a problem.  It is a problem, but the media cannot expose it if no one is talking.

Examining the feminist critique of pornography

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In Doyle and Lacombe’s “Porn Power: Sex, Violence and the Meanings of Images in 1980s Feminism,” they argue feminists in the 80s who saw pornography as violence against women and their chief rivals, the Feminists Against Censorship, both missed an important point-many women use pornography for positive purposes.  Though the latter group argued the sexist images of porn came from sexist society, not men’s violent desires to use women, they still implicitly disapproved of it.

The authors argue that this agreement that mainstream porn could not be positive as well as their unwillingness to listen to women who enjoyed porn or worked in the sex industry meant that although the sides fought bitterly, their stance was effectively the same.  In the 80s, the only point of view allowed by feminists was that porn is bad, is against women, and cannot be enjoyed by women without harming them.  Doyle and Lacombe argue this simply is not the case.  They cite a Time poll that showed 40 percent of x-rated video renters were women.  More importantly, both sides failed to get above conventional ideas about power.  For example, some women find mainstream porn to be empowering in that it often breaks class barriers and shows women pursuing pleasure guiltlessly.  The lines between porn and art are often blurred, and most porn actresses do not find their work unpleasant at all-despite the assumption by most feminists that they are forced to do this demeaning thing by circumstances.  Porn created with a male audience in mind arouses even liberated women, and many porn workers consider themselves feminists.

I think they’re bringing up a valid point.  I truly doubt that 40 percent of porn consumption is done by women, and other studies I’ve read about Internet porn viewership usually place the number lower.  But it is true that modern mainstream pornography (which isn’t that different from 80s or 70s porn) is created and used by women who are not being deluded into victimization by the patriarchy.  As a fairly strong supporter of the First Amendment, I am against the efforts to ban obscenity altogether, but I’m not sure the Feminists Against Censorship can be so easily disregarded.  Their notion of resisting sexism in porn and perhaps creating a new kind of porn I think is admirable so long as they keep in mind it’s their opinion.  One thing I’m not sure I completely buy is the recent notion (reflected by many of the sex workers in this piece) that “acting” in porn and using your body for profit is real empowerment.  First of all, many of these performers are not valued for their performance, skill, artistry, and certainly not for their personality or worth as people.  They are valued as disposable objects by 15-year-olds with modems and creepy old men in quarter-fed viewing booths.  Empowerment is having the ability to choose to do anything and if you work hard enough, to succeed.  The fact that you are paid well is not empowerment in any sense outside catalogue shopping.  Second, they are doing nothing to change society’s basic attitudes that such women are sluts and such men are studs.  The overall effect is not as negative as many feminists think, but I doubt it’s very positive.