Opinion & Analysis ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::: The First Amendment Teach-In ::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: D O S S I E R FREE SPEECH AND PROFITSEEKING ORGANIZATIONS: COMPATIBLE OR INCOMPATIBLE? CONTENTS Walker Fields Barbara Ehrenreich Ben Bagdikian David Ewing Lawrence Soley Eric Boehlert Alan Nevins Robert Lederman Dave Berkman Mark Crispin Miller Often, the goals of large corporations and the First Amendment's guarantee of a diverse marketplace of competing ideas are mutually exclusive. Here is an observation about organizations by Dr. Walker Fields: (begin excerpt) Organizations are detrimental to the mental (health) of their employees. There is no company I know of which enhances personal growth. Employees are inevitably victimized by petty territorialism, political regimes, and/or self-serving supervisors. (end excerpts) * * * * * * * * * BARBARA EHRENREICH ON CORPORATIONS AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION Here (see below) are excerpts from Barbara Ehrenreich's essay in the 5 February 1996 issue of TIME, a weekly newsmagazine. (begin excerpt) Earlier this month a fellow named Sam Young was fired from his grocery-store job for wearing a Green Bay Packers T shirt. All right, this was Dallas.... (content deleted) In mid-December, Boston physician David Himmelstein was fired for going public about the gag clause in his employer's contract with doctors, forbidding them to "make any communication which undermines or could undermine the confidence...of the public in U.S. Healthcare..." or even revealing that this clause is in their contract. (content deleted) When employers are free to make arbitrary and humiliating restrictions, we're saying democracy ends, and dictatorship begins, at the factory gate. (end excerpt) * * * * * * * * * DAVID EWING ON FREE SPEECH INSIDE AMERICAN CORPORATIONS Here (see below) are excerpts from David Ewing's "Free Speech Within The Corporation." That chapter appeared in The Big Business Reader: Essays on Corporate America. (begin excerpt) As former Attorney General Ramsey Clark once said in a speech, "A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you." Defined in this manner, rights are rare in business and public organizations. (content deleted) Consider the case of a thirty-five-year-old business executive whom I shall call "Mike Z." He was a respected research manager in a large company. He believed that his company was making only superficial efforts to comply with newly enacted pollution laws. In a management meeting and later in social groups he spoke critically of top management's attitude. Soon strange things began to happen to him, different only in degree from what happens to a political dissenter in the Soviet Union. First, his place in the company parking lot was canceled. Then his name was "accidentally" removed from the office building directory inside the main entrance. Soon routine requests he made to attend professional meetings began to get snarled up in red tape or were "lost." Next he found himself harassed by directives to rewrite routine reports. Then his budget for clerical service was cut, followed by a drastic slash in his research budget. When he tried to protest this treatment, he met a wall of top management silence. Rather than see his staff suffer further from his dissidence, he quit his job and moved his family to another city. (content deleted) So well-established is the idea that any criticism of the company is "ratting" or "finking" that some companies hang out written prohibitions for all to see. (end excerpt) * * * * * * * * * BEN BAGDIKIAN SPEAKS Here's an excerpt from page 38 of the April 1997 issue of The Progressive, a Madison-based monthly magazine. Ben Bagdikian commented on the control of mass communication by a dwindling number of huge media giants. Bagdikian wrote The Media Monopoly. He was interviewed by David Barsamian. (begin excerpt) BEN BAGDIKIAN: The new actors are bigger than ever before and have subsumed some of the old actors. What we have now is a small number of companies. Each has far more communications power than anything in the past. You have Disney/ABC, which has major newspapers, a regular television network, movies, studios, books. It controls every step in the process: the creation of content, control of the delivery system nationally, and the wire into the home. It's a closed circuit. Nobody gets on that circuit that you don't want. (content deleted) The First Amendment was based on the assumption that everyone was free to speak in the village green or to pay a printer a few pennies to publish some posters you could tack up in the tavern or on a local tree. And if people didn't agree with what you said, they could stand on a soapbox in another corner of the park, and they could say something else. We don't have villages where most people live any more. We have these huge urban complexes, and we don't have everything decided by people gathering in a town hall where they hear the arguments pro and con. The First Amendment says, in effect, that you or I or the woman next door are free to create a $100 million metropolitan newspaper or a $50 billion TV network or an international publishing house if we wish. All we need is unlimited money and credit. (end excerpt) * * * * * * * * * FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION "DISSED" Popular music is a huge business. CD production, distribution, and retailing is dominated by a few giants. Too often, gatekeepers inside those profitseeking organizations obey demands from procensorship activists. The result: adult consumers are denied access to lyrics and images. For more information on how music suppression works, see Eric Boehlert's article in the 21 August 1997 issue of Rolling Stone. * * * * * * * * * LAWRENCE SOLEY ON ACADEME, CORPORATIONS, AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT Here's an excerpt from Lawrence Soley's article in the 7 August 1997 issue of CITY EDITION, a Milwaukee-based weekly newspaper. (begin excerpt) Although universities often claim that corporate monies come without strings attached, this is often not the case. Contracts for research, such as the one between Freeport-McMoRan and the University of Texas, frequently include provisions giving corporations some control over the dissemination of research results. (content deleted) According to the National Cancer Institute's Steven Rosenberg, this secrecy is impeding scientific research. Rosenberg contends that, "Open discussion among scientists, even about the preliminary results of ongoing experiments...can play an important part in advancing research." (content deleted) Even contracts that appear benign can have strings that choke academic freedom. In 1996 the University of Wisconsin signed a multi-million-dollar contract with Reebok granting the running shoe manufacturer exclusive rights to make and market athletic apparel bearing the Wisconsin logo. In addition to paying coaches for promotional appearances for Reebok, giving financial support for the university's athletic program and providing student internships at Reebok's headquarters, the contract included an Orwellian clause: "The university will not issue any official statement that disparages Reebok [....and] will promptly take all reasonable steps to address any remark by any university employe, including a coach, that disparages Reebok." Although university administrators publicly disclosed many other provisions of the Reebok contract, they kept the speech-restriction clause secret until the last moment. When it finally was disclosed as the contract was going before the board of trustees for approval, dozens of UW professors signed a letter of opposition. Embarrassed by the flak, and the exposure of their willingness to sell out the First Amendment and academic freedom, university administrators retreated, asking Reebok to cancel the speech-prohibition paragraph. Facing a public relations disaster, Reebok quickly agreed. (end excerpt) * * * * * * * * * ALAN NEVINS ON AMERICA'S BIGGEST PUBLISHING HOUSES Here are the comments of Alan Nevins, a literary agent. His observations appeared in the Afterword section of Larry Flynt's 1996 hardcover autobiography. Over the years, Larry Flynt has spent a significant amount of time and money defending freedom of the press. (begin excerpt) The release of this book was an uphill battle. Every major publisher in New York turned down the opportunity to publish it. Their decision was based on the same limited perception and entrenched stereotype that I had originally shared. Larry Flynt was almost censored by ignorance and lack of curiosity. Ironically, those who had benefited the most from Larry Flynt's landmark First Amendment trials--America's publishing giants--were unwilling to print his story. (content deleted) Larry Flynt would be the first to defend your right to criticize him. Which is worse: the person who performs his deeds (or misdeeds) in public, or the one who secretly works behind the scenes to limit public freedoms? (end excerpt) * * * * * * * * * FROM THE MAILBAG: ROBERT LEDERMAN WRITES This letter (see below) was received during 1997. It was written by a New York NY-based First Amendment activist who battles arts censorship. To the editor: During the past four years, New York City street artists fought a fierce battle for their First Amendment rights. Hundreds of artists were hand- cuffed and arrested for daring to show paintings and other fine art on City streets, especially in SoHo, New York's art district. Last week, the US Supreme Court rejected the City's attempt to eliminate these rights. While most people endorse the abstract concept of free speech, its practical application, and its exercise by average Americans rather than institutions, is often less readily accepted or understood. Many of the people who "defend artists' rights" as an official job or who make speeches congratulating themselves for obtaining funding for arts institutions are working hand in hand with those attempting to take those same rights away from actual artists. Here in New York, real estate interests and corporations heavily support art museums, parks and cultural institutions for the public relations value. Those interests are the very people behind the artist arrests, anti-free speech and privatization of public space agendas. Loudly condemning human rights abuses in China or Iran, they endorse similarly repressive policies applied to their fellow citizens in the U.S. often under the guise of "quality of life". Real quality of life depends on keeping our most basic human right intact and unabridged: freedom of speech. The First Amendment protects those who may not have money or attorneys or corrupt elected officials to speak out for them. It's our only real weapon of self defense against government repression. Any attempt by government or its corporate sponsors to lessen this right must be denounced and resisted as if our lives depended on it. In fact, they do. Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) New York NY e-mail: artistpres@aol.com * * * * * * * * * PROFESSOR DAVE BERKMAN ON ADVERTISERS, DISNEY'S ABC, AND TRADITIONALIST CATHOLICS Here's an excerpt from Dave Berkman's "Media Musings" column in the 9 October 1997 issue of Shepherd Express, a Milwaukee-based weekly newspaper. The Shepherd Express Web site it at: http://www.shepherd-express.com. (begin excerpt) It seems that merely claiming "offense" (when it comes from the left, the synonym "insensitive" is just as often employed) has become the universally accepted justification for censorship. Most recently it was the father of the murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas (who's turned his daughter's death into a cottage industry) whose claim he was "offended" by two serial killer-created web pages, led AOL to zap them. All the news reports I caught seemed implicitly--in some instances explicitly--to approve AOL's action. People canceled an excerpt from Kitty Kelley's new book, The Royals--not because of any concern about the truth of what Kelley reports about Princess Di, but merely be- cause its appearance at this time might offend. Six advertisers, including Red Lobster, K-Mart and Heinz, have withdrawn from ABC's "Nothing Sacred." The series offends traditionalist Catholics. Among the authors whose works offended some folks and were banned by libraries or school boards this year, were Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, Toni Morrison and Mark Twain. Accepting that "offense" justifies limiting expression, gives license to all censorship. I mean, what other reason is there to censor? (end excerpt) * * * ESSENTIAL READING: MILLER'S ARTICLE ON HOLLYWOOD AND ADVERTISING Decades ago, cinemagoers watched Stanley Kramer films like "On the Beach," "Judgement at Nuremberg," and "Inherit the Wind." Other thought-provoking releases from an earlier era included "Fail Safe," "The Bedford Incident," "Fahrenheit 451" and "2001: A Space Odyssey." Back then--as a practical matter--Fortune 500 advertisers did not pay studios big bucks to insert products and corporate logos into major motion pictures. Now they do. That widespread practice has resulted in an unfortunate "chilling effect" on content. For example, it is difficult to produce thought-provoking films about social problems. And it is hard to obtain script approval for a film that lacks an audience- pleasing "happy ending." Who loses? Ticket buyers. People who buy and rent videocassettes. Laserdisc enthusiasts. Cable subscribers. The creative community. Educators. Thought leaders. Who wins? Big business. Religious groups. Neurotic busybodies. Land of the free? Freedom of expression? Artist's rights? Sure, if you're a multinational corporation and not a human being. For details, see Mark Crispin Miller's "Hollywood: The Ad," the cover story for the April 1990 issue of The Atlantic, a periodical. Here is a 45-word message for executives at The Majors and Fortune 500 advertisers: hands off. The creative spirit must be free. It is hypocritical for you to openly support "the arts" with donations and then extinguish content that might upset some rightists, procensorship feminists, theologians, special interest groups, and business types. You cannot have it both ways. Let's have some consistency. =================================================================== To receive other reports about First Amendment controversies, follow these three steps: (1) Send an e-mail message to: listproc@listproc.bgsu.edu (2) Leave the subject line blank (3) In the body of the message write: subscribe fau (your first name) (your last name) Please use your actual first and last name, not your e-mail address. There is no subscription fee and no advertising. =================================================================== To terminate your subscription, send an e-mail message to: listproc@listproc.bgsu.edu and leave the subject line blank. In the body of the message write: unsubscribe fau =================================================================== (c) 1997 by Chris Roth. All rights reserved.

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