Hate Speech versus Free Speech

Professor Eric FreedmanVytautas Magnus University

October 15, 2012

Issues to Consider

• Can journalists avoid showing their strong personal feelings when reporting about bias, discrimination & hate groups or hate speech?

• Should news stories directly & accurately quote hate speech statements & slurs?

• Does coverage of hate speech advance or interfere with diversity & tolerance in society?

Stereotypes?

Lithuania Constitution Article 25

The human being shall have the right to have his own convictions and freely express them…

Freedom to express convictions, to receive and impart information may not be limited otherwise than by law, if this is necessary to protect the health, honour and dignity, private life, and morals of a human being, or to defend the constitutional order.

Freedom to express convictions and to impart information shall be incompatible with criminal actions—incitement of national, racial, religious, or social hatred, violence and discrimination, with slander and disinformation…

Glossary

• Marketplace of ideas: Concept that allowing free debate in liberal democracies about competing ideas on controversial issues will lead to the truth or the best policies.

• Blasphemy: Words or action that express contempt or disrespect for God or religion.

3 Issues

Rights of individuals and groups to express their own opinions in private or in public.

Rights of the press – news organizations – to express their organization’s views.

Media’s right to serve as a forum for other people to express their views

Hate Speech: Words or Sticks & Stones?

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

English idiom

“Words that kill.”Valeriu Nicolae

The Geert Wilders Case: The Netherlands

President Obama & President Morsi September 2012

9th Fort in Kaunas

Waldemar Tomaszewski

Diversity in the Newsroom & Diversity in the News: Progress

& Challenges in Eastern & Central EuropeProfessor Eric Freedman

Center for European and Russian/Eurasian Studies

September 20, 2012

2 Areas of Diversity Concern

• Diversity in the newsroom• Diversity in the newsResources: • Islam, Muslims & Journalism Education

websitehttp://imaje.msu.edu• “Best Practices for Reporting on Islam”

http://imaje.msu.edu/guidelines/

Interview Comments from Immigrant Journalists in Sweden Gunilla Hulten (2009)

• Generation gap: Older journalists (hired 1970s-1980s) “had to fight their way to the newsroom.” Younger ones “partly recruited because of their ethnic backgrounds.”

• “Nobody says it aloud: `She got the job because she is an immigrant.’ I know it is a quality needed in the newsroom. I find it really hard. If I declare they took me because I’m an immigrant, I feel I reduced myself to my origin, to something less valued.”

• “There is so much hypocrisy. They cry: `Do you know someone from a migrant background to hire?’ What about me

Women in the Media: Eastern EuropeBulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine

• 85 companies show strong tendencies toward gender egalitarianism. Salaries generally comparable across occupational levels. Women’s job security is excellent.

• Lithuanian women hold 78.5% of junior and 70.6% of senior professional jobs.

• Bulgarian women have exceptionally high occupational standing.• Women at 10 Estonian companies enjoy high degree of equality.• In Hungary despite under-representation, most women in the

newsrooms have secure jobs but hold only 13.3% of governance positions.

• Russian women hold a particularly strong position, nearing parity in top management with about 1/3 of governance positions.