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" Freedom of Speech "



Freedom of Speech
-- via Adbusters --

FREEDOM HAS ALWAYS been Western civilization's most powerful metameme.
The idea of a free citizenry was born with the ancient Greek notion of
democracy and has continued to evolve ever since. The English Magna
Carta gave it weight and permanence. When the meme spread to the New
World it inspired the end of slavery; later, it led to universal
suffrage and the dream of equality among all people. 

The march of freedom has been humankind's gradual awakening. We have
come to accept the simple truth that oppression does not have to stand.
We are under no one's thumb. In every way we control our own destiny. 

At the heart of freedom lies the freedom to talk to one another - to
communicate. That, too, is as old as the ancient Greeks, who recognized
the right of citizens to express their opinions. When the world's first
mass medium - the printing press - was introduced, it became clear that
"freedom of opinion" was not enough to ensure free speech. (Many
"Gutenberg revolutionaries" were censored and repressed when they tried
to express their opinions about kings and popes.) So the higher notion
of freedom of expression was born. This new freedom was first guaranteed
in the English Bill of Rights and then expanded to freedom of the press
in the US constitution. 

Article 13 of the 1979 American Convention on Human Rights reads, in
part: "The right of expression may not be restricted by indirect methods
or means, such as the abuse of government or private controls over
newsprint, radio broadcasting... or any other means tending to impede
the communication and circulation of ideas and opinions." 

Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads, in
part: "Everyone has the right... to hold opinions without interference
and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media
regardless of frontiers." 

Half a century after the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, citizens have access to a mind-numbing amount of information.
Hundreds of newspapers and magazines are at our fingertips. The
500-channel universe has turned out to be a conservative guess - try
5,000. CNN beams news live across the world 24 hours a day. Cyberspace
expands exponentially from the Big Bang of the digital revolution. It
would be easy to conclude, in this climate, that the long struggle for
freedom of opinion, expression and speech is over. 

But it's not. 





Michael Eisner (Walt Disney Chairman), Thomas Murphy (Capital Cities/ABC
Chairman). 

In the past 20 years, an unprecedented situation has developed with
grave implications for democracy and freedom of speech: the emergence of
a global communications cartel. The flow of information worldwide is
controlled by an ever-shrinking number of transnational media
corporations led by seven giants: Time-Warner, Disney,
Tele-Communications Inc. (T.C.I.), Bertelsmann, General Electric, Viacom
and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. 

The great power of the media megacorporations lies in their vertical
integration. They can produce a film and distribute it through their own
partially or fully owned theater chain, promote it through their own TV
network, play the soundtrack on their own radio stations and sell the
merchandising spin-offs at their own amusement parks. A property can
enter this vertical chain at any point and be sent in either direction.
A film becomes a book, a hit single, then a TV show, a video game, a
ride. Between them, the media giants have the means to produce a
never-ending flow of social spectacles, to nurture them, feed them,
massage them and keep them resonating in the public mind. And with the
exception of a few wild domains still left here and there (public-access
TV, pirate radio, 'zines, some unexplored reaches of cyberspace) the
media megacorps have pretty well taken over the whole global mindscape
and "developed" it into a theme park - a jolly, terrifyingly homogenized
Las Vegas of the mind. 

What does freedom of speech mean in this kind of mental environment?