Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers".
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the
freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation,
censorship, or legal sanction. The
right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a
human right in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
international human rights law by the
United Nations. Many countries have
constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.
Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". The version of Article 19 in the
ICCPR later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of
national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or
morals". (Full article...)
Golos Truda (
Russian: Голос Труда English: The Voice of Labour) was a
Russian-languageanarcho-syndicalist newspaper. Founded by working-class Russian expatriates in
New York in 1911, Golos Truda shifted to
Petrograd during the
Russian Revolution in 1917, when its editors took advantage of the general amnesty and right of return for political dissidents. There, the paper integrated itself into the nascent anarcho-syndicalist movement, pronounced the necessity of a
social revolution of and by the workers, and situated itself in opposition to the myriad of other left-wing movements. The rise to power of the
Bolsheviks marked the turning point for the newspaper however, as the new government enacted increasingly repressive measures against the publication of dissident literature and against
anarchist agitation in general, and after a few years of low-profile publishing, the Golos Trudacollective was finally expunged by the
Stalinist regime in 1929.
Image 7George Orwell statue at the headquarters of the
BBC. A defence of free speech in an open society, the wall behind the statue is inscribed with the words "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", words from
George Orwell's proposed preface to Animal Farm (1945). (from Freedom of speech)
Image 11Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers". (from Freedom of speech)
Image 14Orthodox priest
Libor Halík with a group of followers. Halík has been chanting daily for over five years against abortion via megaphone in front of a maternity hospital in
Brno,
Moravia. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Judith Fingeret Krug (March 15, 1940 – April 11, 2009) was an American
librarian, supporter of
freedom of speech, and prominent critic against
censorship. Krug became Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the
American Library Association in 1967. In 1969, she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation as its Executive Director. Krug co-founded
Banned Books Week in 1982. She coordinated the effort against the
Communications Decency Act of 1996, which was the first trial by the
United States Congress at a form of
censorship of speech on the
Internet. Krug strongly opposed the notion that libraries ought to censor the material that they provide to patrons. She supported laws and policies protecting the confidentiality of library use records. When the
United States Department of Justice used the authority of the
USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 to conduct searches of what once were
confidential library databases, Krug raised public outcry against this activity by the government. In 2003, she was the leader of the initiative to challenge the constitutionality of the
Children's Internet Protection Act. Her efforts led to a partial victory; the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the law was constitutional, however computers at the library could have filtering software turned off if requested to do so by an adult guardian. Krug warned that the same filters used to censor
Internet pornography from children were not perfect and risked blocking educational information about social matters, sexuality, and healthcare.
Proponents of using government authority to censor certain undesirable images and comments on the airwaves resort to the claim that the airways belong to all the people, and therefore it's the government's responsibility to protect them. The mistake of never having privatized the radio and TV airwaves does not justify ignoring the first amendment mandate that "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech." When everyone owns something, in reality nobody owns it. Control then occurs merely by the whims of the politicians in power. From the very start, licensing of radio and TV frequencies invited government censorship that is no less threatening than that found in totalitarian societies.
This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by
JL-Bot (
talk·contribs). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is
tagged (e.g. {{
WikiProject Freedom of speech}}) or
categorized correctly. See
WP:RECOG for configuration options.