You have the right to remain silent... your Miranda rights, should you be a US citizen under arrest.
Then again, silence may be imposed on you.... i.e. if you are outed by a malicious troll you may lose your right to post anonymously on the web.
Silence may be imposed on you because you are a "company man" or a "company woman." You may have signed a loyalty oath. You may be under a gag order. You may be prevented talking about research, or products under development.
You may be a gagged whistleblower whose protections of free speech have been withdrawn by a corrupt regime. (See: National Security Agency Whistleblower Warns: Domestic Spying Program a Sign the US Decaying Into a "Police State"
You may be a gagged whistleblower whose protections of free speech have been withdrawn by a corrupt regime. (See: National Security Agency Whistleblower Warns:
Domestic Spying Program a Sign the US Decaying Into a "Police State"
Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants.
Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, "The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.")
You may be silenced by the imposition of "state secrets." (See: Republican Senator Defends Briefings on Domestic Spying; New York Times; January 6, 2006
Also Thursday, 27 House Democrats sent a letter to President Bush asking for information about the National Security Agency eavesdropping program, including
whether communications from or to members of Congress and journalists were intercepted.)
As a journalist, you may be prevented from reporting truth or facts that are critical of the current regime. (See: Helen Thomas; "Lap Dogs of the Press"
Of all the unhappy trends I have witnessed--conservative swings on television networks, dwindling newspaper circulation, the jailing of reporters
and "spin"--nothing is more troubling to me than the obsequious press during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. They lapped up everything the Pentagon and White
House could dish out--no questions asked.
Reporters and editors like to think of themselves as watchdogs for the public good. But in recent years both individual reporters and their ever-growing corporate ownership have defaulted on that role. Ted Stannard, an academic and former UPI correspondent, put it this way: "When watchdogs, bird dogs, and bull dogs morph into lap dogs, lazy dogs, or yellow dogs, the nation is in trouble."
You may, for instance, as a US main stream journalist be practicing self-censorship when reporting on the war on Iraq. (see: Al Gore; "Democracy Itself Is In Grave Danger;" June, 2004
Donald Rumsfeld has said that criticism of the Administration's policy "makes it complicated and more difficult" to fight the war. CNN's Christiane Amanpour said on CNBC last September, "I think the press was muzzled and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say but certainly television, and perhaps to a certain extent my station, was intimidated by the Administration."
You may experience this control of the press so tightly that even conservative journalists complain about the pinch:
Consevative Journalists Speak Out Against Warrantless Domestic Spying
In an appearance on the January 1 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, Safire added in reference to Bush's surveillance program:
SAFIRE: During wartime, we have this excess of security, and afterwards we apologize. And that's why I offended a lot of my conservative and hard-line friends right after September 11th, when they started putting these captured combatants in jail, and said the president can't seize dictatorial power. And a lot of my friends looked at me like I was going batty. But now we see this argument over excessive security, and I'm with the critics on that.
Washington Post columnist George F. Will wrote in his December 20, 2005 column: George Will
On the assumption that Congress or a court would have been cooperative in September 2001, and that the cooperation could have kept necessary actions clearly lawful without conferring any benefit on the nation's enemies, the president's decision to authorize the NSA's surveillance without the complicity of a court or Congress was a mistake. Perhaps one caused by this administration's almost metabolic urge to keep Congress unnecessarily distant and hence disgruntled.
You may be asked to impose silence on yourself on some subjects.... i.e. as a juror, an employee, or member of a professional association during litigation, you may be asked not to speak on certain subjects so as not to affect the outcome of the case.
You may impose silence on yourself because to speak or write on certain subjects is in violation of trust, in violation of the community ethos or in violation of your professional code of ethics.
You have the duty to remain silent on certain subjects or persons where to speak or write would compromise your employment, endanger others, cause uneccesary hardship for your family, your friends and your associates.
In some cases the risk is outweighed by the principles or practices involved. This is serious stuff, left to the conscience of the individual.
Some free speech will get you landed in jail. Some free speech will get your house fire-bombed. Some free speech will get you blacklisted. Some free speech will make you "box office poison." Some free speech will cost you your ability to speak freely. Some free speech will drive you underground, where you become a persona non gratis, save the ability to speak under protection of anonymity.
As a journalist, sometimes the price of reporting the truth will get you killed.
Steven Vincent: Steven Vincent, freelance, August 3, 2005, Basra
Vincent, who had written for a number of U.S. publications and was working on a book, was abducted along with his translator, Noor al-Khal, on August 2. They were taken by armed men driving what initial press reports described variously as a pickup truck or possibly a police car.
Vincent's bullet-riddled body was found with hands tied with plastic wire and a red piece of cloth wrapped around the neck, The New York Times reported. Al-Khal was seriously wounded and was hospitalized.
In an op-ed article published in The Times on July 31, Vincent said police in Basra had fallen under the sway of Shiite religious groups, and he strongly criticized British authorities in charge of police training for tolerating such influence.
Vincent's work also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and the National Review. A resident of New York City, he had been in Basra for several months working on a book about the Iraqi port city.Vincent was the first U.S. journalist to be murdered in Iraq.
Source: COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS
La Blogosphera
As a "citizen journalist" where the body politic is the world you have an obligation not to use hate speech, not to write anything that would incite violence.... i.e. the infamous Danish cartoons.
As a "citizen journalist" you have a duty to write or speak what is true, what contributes to the public discourse. You have an obligation to refrain from libel and slander, from what is defamatory, to what is "negative campaigning" i.e. malicious stories that are planted to undermine the political process.... the process of the people empowered by factual and true information making themselves heard, making choices.
As a "citizen journalist" of La Blogoshpera, exercising your right of free speech, you have an obligation to protect the free speech of others.
As a "citizen journalist" you have an obligation to source your stories. Gossip, smear campaigns, intercepted emails, infiltrated meetings, tapped phone calls, bugged hotel rooms, stolen electronic records none of this is allowed as proper, authentic and appropriate sourcing for reporting on the web, and it is your responsibility not to engage in it, and to call people on it when they do.
Journalistas, Papperazi, and Infotainment
People are not for use. Technology gives many people a false sense of power. Even though some people use technology to achieve a feeling of power or domination, still people are not objects to be used.... i.e. happy-slapping, Abu Ghraib torture trophy pictures, etc. etc.
Brave New World?
Computers and the internet have made it possible for almost anyone to launch a campaign of electronic spying, harrassment, and whispering campaigns at will. All it takes is for this type of malicious invasion of privacy fed to the right online news media i.e. National Review Online, then wait for it to be picked up by the main stream media i.e. New York Newsday, and you've made it to the top of the heap of tabloid smear journalism. Don't stop until it is picked up by a blogger with the New York Times. Now you're in the zone of legitimate reporting. You've made it big, kid.
Is this what we've become? Is this where we're going? As Welsh said to Sen. Joe McCarthy during the House on Un-American hearings: "Have you no decency, sir?"
Let's take a break:
Life During Wartime
Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway,
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstore, lived in the ghetto,
I've lived all over this town
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
Talking Heads: Fear of Music, 1979; "Life During Wartime;" "(David Byrne/Chris Frantz/Jerry Harrison/Tina Weymouth)
And now a few words from our sponsor:
The guy who invented the technology we're all using said in 2000:
As was said, the idea of a tool for an individual that lets you really find information and create things on your own, where you would have the tools to share with other people, to track data, to learn things in new ways, that was really only a glimmer in a few people's eyes. And the idea that not only has that been created, but it's also now become something that's very low cost in developed country terms is really quite amazing.
....what we've done in the foundation is, we're putting about 60 percent of our resources into world health, and about 30 percent into things like the education and library programs that are also very important. But, it's a different balance than someone might have expected, or I would have expected that I would be involved before I got reading about this stuff and thinking about this stuff I would have thought, okay, let's just give everybody a computer, and that's it.
And so it was. The guy who invented the technology we're all using here has amassed a fortune of more than $49 billion dollars. He and his wife have, over the last six years taken $29 billion dollars of that fortune and created the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This humanitarian foundation is based on principle:
Bill and Melinda Gates believe every life has equal value. In 2000, they created the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help reduce inequities in the United States and around the world.
Within the next two years, Bill Gates will have retired from Microsoft to devote all his talents and energies to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On the announcement of his retirement, Gates said that it is his intention to use up his resources completely during his lifetime. His aim is universal literacy, elimination of AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, advancement of health care, education and quality of life around the world. And then? He's going to make sure they have computers and access to the internet world we so take for granted.
Anybody in the mood to throw a welcoming party for these new citizens of La Blogoshpera?
You could say we've gotten far enough that we need to think about computing and access to computing in the same way we've thought about literacy, say, 100 years ago.
And, Mr. Gates, I can say we've gotten far enough that we need to think about ethics and values, freedom and licence, access and entitlement, in the same way we've thought about civilization, say, 2,500 years ago. Brave New World, indeed.
Afterword: I am not a Gatist, nor do I think knighthood should be conferred on Bono. Bob Geldolf, on the other hand, still rocks in my opinion.