Andrew Bolt has a bi-weekly full page spread.
He appears every weekday on the radio.
He has his own TV show.
I don’t think his speech is really that threatened, do you?
The take away from today will be a discussion about “free speech”. There will inevitibly be those who wil argue that speech should be completely free and unrestricted. These libertarian types will no doubt get their knickers in a knot over it all. They will use the word “freedom” like the smurfs use “smurf”. And then there will be those who are quietly (or perhaps less quietly) glad that Bolt is finally getting his comeuppance. I have to admit that it’s like watching a murdering drug kingpin go down for tax evasion; it’s not how I’d like it to happen but part of me enjoys it all the same.
I love the idea of free speech, don’t you. I haven’t heard anyone argue otherwise. I think this debate centres more around degrees of free speech than any level of opposition to it. But like everything I think it gets pretty murky when you start looking at the details.
I think free speech would work great if everyone’s speech was equal, but it isn’t, is it? My speech is not equal to the speech of Andrew Bolt or his media asset owning overlords. Chances are, yours isn’t either.
So if a powerful media organization decided that it would like to say something about you (perhaps it is to do with your race, your performance at work, or you personal opinions outside of work) what chance does your speech have against that? Can you yell as loud as News Ltd?
Maybe these “restrictions” on free speech aren’t such a bad thing if it protects those that don’t have as much free speech as others. Maybe ensuring that those with more forceful free speech treat it with the respect and responsibility that it deserves is a good thing, even if it occasionally gets into murky water around issues of “freedom”.
Of course, when the legal system is used to shut down blogs *cough* and trample on those with soft voices the system is probably not working.
I don’t have any answers, but I think framing the discussion as “for freedom” and “against freedom” doesn’t help anyone. I think today was about “being a dickhead about it” vs “rationally discussing issues”, I think the court came down on the side of “don’t be a c***”.
But I will leave the last word to well known advocate of unity, Andrew Bolt:
“I argued then and I argue now that we should not insist on the differences between us but focus instead on what unites us as human beings. Thank you.”
That’s about all I have to say this morning. Carry on being free.
UPDATE: Dave over at Pure Poison has a copy of the law and the judgment on the blog. The issue doesn’t seem to be expressing his opinion. It seems like it was about the lies and distortions and stuff.
#1 by Peter Kaplin on 29 September 2011 - 1:21 am
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Andrew Bolts assertion that free speech in Australia is threatened is a furphy. As I understand it the court’s decision was based on errors in the reporting, and thus the case was won or lost on this basis. There is a predicable response that any curtailing of speech is an attack on freedom of the press. This so called freedom of the press presents a problem for me as they the press fail to deliver in many cases. This is not an attack on the press, it is a wake up call against bad journalism . A issue of note is how many people have the resources to present these types of cases to the court, not many.
#2 by Mohsin Mallik on 8 October 2011 - 7:03 am
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I agree with Peter. Free speech are appreciated by everyone but you should not misuse of this name. Bad journalism can make a huge misunderstanding in an area even in a country.
#3 by Sam on 16 December 2011 - 4:44 pm
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This is a tricky subject. I think free speech has to be curbed in some situations. The video that went viral on youtube lately, about the lady that went on a racial rant. Some people have backed her calling it “free speech.” That may be the case but I think this is taking the definition too literally. These kind of these can’t be said under an excuse that it’s free speech.