Spokane7
62°Quick links: 2012 graduating seniors • Summer camp guide • Jobs: The Road Ahead • Prep sports • News quiz
RE: Speak freely — or not/Coeur d’Alene Press Sunday editorial
Walkabout: Every website has the right to control content. It has nothing to do
with free speech. 
Free speech means you can create your own website and
say vile things. It means you can protest on the street corner or even
have a parade where you express your views. It doesn’t mean you could
come to my website and say what ever you want. The Press says they want
to hear all points of view so they have allowed comments “even when
those thoughts horrify or repulse us.” Clearly, allowing such
objectionable comments amounts to no standards at all. Yes, there are
racists in our community but who really cares what they have to say?
Don’t legitimize haters by giving them a forum where their thoughts are accepted.
Question: How do you define free speech?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201
P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210
Main switchboard: (509) 459-5000 • (800) 338-8801
Newsroom: (509) 459-5400 • (800) 789-0029
Customer service: (800) 338-8801
© Copyright 2012, The Spokesman-Review
Terms of use • Privacy policy • Copyright policy
Find DFO on Facebook
DFO on Twitter
MatthewRoot on May 18 at 8:14 a.m.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or press ……..
Nothing there about deleting posts on websites.
Nothing there about criticizing the objectionable speech of others.
brentandrews on May 18 at 9:46 a.m.
That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read in The Press. I have been threatened and temporarily silenced before (by the police!), and it’s worse than poison. Speech is like a teakettle whistling loudly while blowing off steam so it doesn’t explode. Deny someone the right to speak, and you close the vent. Maybe by giving haters a place to vent, The Press saved someone a beating or a killing. You just never know.
Where do I draw the line? Throw the rock as far as you can throw it - way over there. It still didn’t cross my line. Spew hate, be a racist, make porn, burn the flag, make movies about murder and sex, whatever. I can choose to read or watch something more uplifting. I think you’re definitely less likely to get your argument across with hate and racism than with reasoned commentary, but whatever.
Free speech is the best thing we have in this country. I would choose death over silence.
florined on May 18 at 7:20 p.m.
Some legal restrictions have already been put on the “free speech” right: yelling fire in a theatre, for example, and to some extent the “community standards” line in the sand.
I would personally add one: your right to say anything you want, anywhere you want, is negated if I can’t avoid hearing it, regardless of what you’re saying. I can avoid going to parades, checking in on blogs, etc. I can close the door on uninvited and unwelcome solicitors. I don’t have to purchase porn. If, however, I’m in a classroom, it’s not easy to avoid hearing either the lecturer or another student discussing issues. Even here, I have to assume that I’ve tacitedly agreed to participate. I can insist that some equity be established as far as time allowed any one speaker or side, maybe.
I had a neighbor who liked to sing and practice on his electric guitar in his back yard. There was nowhere I could go in my house where I could avoid listing to his chording. That crossed the line.
A few years ago there was a story about a young boy “preaching” loudly and regularly outside his school building among other students who couldn’t avoid hearing him. I’d say he had breached the free speech line, not because of what he was saying but because others couldn’t avoid hearing him without leaving the common area, and they were restricted from leaving.
Stickman on May 18 at 7:50 p.m.
I’m with Walkabout, as I need to be.