There has been a dust up at Colorado State University over an editorial form Sept. 21 that had the headline of "Taser This: F**K Bush." This of course was a reference to the incident on the University of Florida campus. Now, advocating that every newspaper use such colorful language is not the mission of this entry, but I am wondering if what we all think of the prospect that freedom of speech will be limited. We can form our own opinions about the situation, and to help out, I will post a few links.
NY Times The Coloradoan(CSU's Newspaper) CNN I CNN II Rocky Mountain News
5 comments:
I'd actually like to hear your position on this first. Not that I am looking for an argument, but instead because I want to see what level of consistency we have here in reference to other things. For instance... ginormous asscrack.
Well, this is quite a doozy for me. The Supreme Court has stated that they will know vulgarity and obscenity when they see it, which is debatable here. The deal breaker here appears to be the fact that there is a clause in the contract of the editor that prohibits vulgar language for the editorial page. Human error on the part of the editor seems to be the case to me, not vulgarity. You can turn on the television at any point in time and hear much worse than this opinion. On top of that, you can go to most ballparks and see any type of "vulgarity" on shirts, such as Chicago white sox fan shirts that say F**k the Cubs. Free speech is a right that we have, whether or not is is abused is up to the court of public opinion, not to be limited by the courts of law. I do not condone the language that was used, but it is the right of the publisher to do so. However, with this case, I feel that the editor broke his code of conduct and he should pay the price.
Good answer.
I was expecting something similar to that, and I admit that I am on the same page. My only concern is the 'court of public opinion'.
That leaves a big ole' fat gray area as far as interpretation goes. Again, I refer to the baggy pants.
I don't see where everyone can be happy on this topic (or its outcome), but I would be apt to err on the side of Constitutional right. I do not agree with a lot of what people say, but that does not mean that I have the right to shut them up. heh
interesting debate...i guess more than just the "college liberals of colorado" read that newspaper.
Now does it matter if the paper is published by a public vs. a private company or in this case a gov't funded organization...free speech is definitely something that should be guarded closely; however, I think newspapers cannot necessarily be compared equally to individual expressions because unless they come from an individual column or letter to the editor that expression is a representation of a greater body and not just one single person.
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