Speech, Media and Ethics: The Limits of Free Expression: Critical Studies on Freedom of Expression, Freedom of the Press and the Public's Right to Know

by Raphael Cohen-Almagor

Speech, Media, and The Limits of Free Expression is an interdisciplinary work that employs ethics, liberal philosophy, and legal and media studies to outline the boundaries to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, defined broadly to include the right to demonstrate and to picket, the right to compete in elections, and the right to communicate views via the written and electronic media. Moral principles are applied to analyze practical questions that deal with free expression and its limits.

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Raphael Cohen-Almagor is Professor and Chair in Politics at the University of Hull, UK. He is a man of arts and sports. Between the ages 3 and 8 he painted most of the time and people envisaged him becoming a new Picasso. Alas, the toll of homework led to an early retirement. Later he wanted to play the drums but his parents bought him a recorder. He coached young children basketball and football, embarked on basketball career, played with Israeli national team professionals, but shortage of some 30 centimeters, bad back and a Jewish mother who demanded him to “do something serious in life” forced another early retirement. He was invited to swim professionally but declined upon hearing that training started at 4 a.m., as he felt people should literally pursue their dreams... In addition, Raphael loves theater, cinema, music, European football, and he has a most comprehensive collection of Israeli stamps. He plans to write his very first novel at the age of 85, as then he expects to decrease the amount of traveling.

Raphael Almagor has published two poetry books till now, Middle Eastern Shores (1993) and Voyages (2007), both in Hebrew.

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SPEECH, MEDIA, AND ETHICS: THE LIMITS OF FREE EXPRESSION deals with limits on freedom of expression, defined broadly as including the right to demonstrate and to picket, the right to compete in elections, and the right to communicate views via the written and electronic media. Throughout the book moral principles are applied to analyse questions that deal with liberty and its limits.
PART ONE deals with recent controversies over freedom of expression. The first article discusses free expression and its confines when dealing with hate speech. Its focus is on the ethical question of the constraints on speech. Two arguments relating to the ‘Harm Principle’ and the ‘Offence Principle’ are advanced. Under the ‘Harm Principle’, restrictions on liberty may be prescribed when there are sheer threats of immediate violence against some individuals or groups. Under the ‘Offence Principle’, expressions which intend to inflict psychological offence are morally on a par with physical harm and thus there are grounds for abridging them. Moving from theory to practice, in the light of the formulated principles, the ruling of the Illinois Supreme Court which permitted the Nazis to hold a hateful demonstration in Skokie is argued to be flawed.
While the first essay deals with the right to demonstrate with the aim to harm the target group that cannot avoid being exposed to the demonstration, the second essay addresses the question of picketing private homes of public officials. This essay reviews the American, English and Israeli stances with regard to the subject matter, arguing that the Israeli stance is more akin to the American, and that the right to picket cannot be flatly prohibited. Democracy may set regulations of time, place and manner but it should not proscribe pickets and demonstrations from private places.
The third article discusses the limits of parliamentary representation as it has been tackled in Israel (the rationale, however, is made in principled terms and could be applicable to every liberal democracy). It reviews the decisions of the Central Elections Committee and of the Supreme Court regarding disqualification of lists in Israel. The discussion revolves around the question what constraints on the right to be elected to parliament should be introduced in order to safeguard democracy. It is argued that democracy does not have to allow a violent list propounding the destruction of democracy to act in order to fulfil its aim. It is neither morally obligatory, nor morally coherent, to expect democracy to place the means for its own destruction in the hands of those who either wish to bring about the physical annihilation of the State, or to undermine democracy.
Hence, the three essays that open the volume deal with libertarian rights and freedoms, and their limits. The essays are concerned with different aspects of the tension between the basic inclination to allow as much freedom as possible, and the employment of self-defence mechanisms to safeguard and protect democracy. Together they provide a systematic analysis of some of the most troubling issues modern democracies are confronted with, and aim to offer moral reasoning that coincides with basic moral principles of justice and humanism.

PART TWO focuses attention on freedom of communication and media ethics, a very timely concern in the western world. The essays analyse some of the basic principles, and fallacies, of the media. All these essays formulate ethical limits on the working of the media, emphasising that these should be self-imposed by the media rather than imposed from above by the legislature or the courts. Like the three previous essays they combine theory and practice, and try to set boundaries to free expression. Here the concern lies with the concept of ‘the public’s right to know’ and its ethical constraints.
The aim of the first essay is to scrutinise the assumption that objective reporting is good reporting, is ethical reporting. I do this by reflecting on different dimensions that are associated with the concept of objectivity: (1) accuracy; (2) fairness and balance; (3) truthfulness, and (4) moral neutrality.
The concern of the second paper is with the limitations that should be placed upon freedom of the written and electronic press. Freedom of speech in the media is the guiding rule, one of the foundations of democracy, but at the same time freedom does not imply anarchism, and the right to exercise free expression does not include the right to harm others.
The third essay supplements the former one by devoting attention to the troubling issue of media coverage of suicide. It examines how the media in Canada, Great Britain and Israel report suicide stories, arguing for caution in reporting both for reasons of sensitivity to the individuals involved, the suicidors and their families, and for ethical reasons: caring for the consequences of reporting. Responsibility requires that teen and celebrity suicides be viewed as special cases that demand extra caution. This is because teens are attracted to sensational headlines about suicide, and teens are susceptible to imitation, and because celebrity suicides are the most often imitated. It is maintained that, in any event, live suicide should not be reported.
The fourth essay is concerned with the powers of the press councils in Great Britain, Canada, and Israel. It shows the inherent deficiencies of the councils and proposes some fundamental changes. The paper compares between the press councils in the three democracies and outlines practical recommendations for modifications.