DOSSIER: ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The recent publication of several somewhat malicious caricatures of the Prophet Mahomet in some journals has shifted the public focus again onto the debate about the right to freedom of speech. It is accepted as a top-most essential right for the structure of democratic Western countries as well as for the maintenance of mainstream ideology there. Indeed, no serious debate today ponders whether such a right should be at the foundations of democracy, yet the practical implications of this dependency are commonly downplayed. The text by Íñigo González goes back to the time of the American invasion of Iraq, when the war gave way to numberless instances of the mass-media interfering for information control, and analyses the appropriateness of holding control over broadcast images in the eyes of the risk of the mass-media’s spectacularisation of the representations of the world, which are no less than our most immediate references for construing our personal view of the world. The text by journalist Irene Lozano stands openly for the need to defend our right to freedom of speech, especially after the debate generated by the caricatures of Mahomet. She sustains it is an unquestionable right under democratic regimes; even more, a universal right, which should not be subject to any kind of regulation except those posited by the law (for example, the law protecting the intimacy and the private image of citizens). Similarly, Raoul Vanegeim, in his book Nada es sagrado, todo puede decirse, reviewed by Josep Pradas, sustains that the right to freedom of speech is indisputable in a democratic regime; reviewer Josep Pradas, though, posits in his text several objections to Vanegeims’ trust in the success of freedom of speech as a means to articulate sociability and to fight against mercantilism.

Private Corpses and Public Corpses. Epistemology and Ethics of the Censorship of Images. By Iñigo González.

In 2002, Daniel Pearl, journalist for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and beheaded in front of a camera. The registration of the beheading, deliberately publicly-addressed, was finally censured by the vast majority of the Western mass-media and did not go beyond the circumscribed private sphere where it happened. In contrast, the tortures and vexations photographed by Abu Ghraib jumped to the public arena in 2004 when they were published by The New Yorker and by the CBS, invading thus the public scene.
What’s the difference between both images that determines their publicability? This text addresses this issue and aims at analysing the appropriateness of censuring journalistic images, especially if bloody, in informative programmes –besides advertising and entertaining programmes. I will try to provide an answer to questions such as: What are those images entitled to show? Should they be showed? If so, how should they be showed?
The first question addresses an epistemological matter. Since it is a matter too wide to tackle here, I will simply sustain that it is necessary to define a certain idea of truth as a correspondence to distinguish between true and false images, and I will also precise what can be defined as the falsehood of an image.
The other two questions pertain to the ethical domain and point at the problematic formulation of the freedom of speech related to violent images. I will try to pinpoint the determining function of this short of images as revulsives and will critically develop some of the most common arguments to ban their publicity. I try to sustain the idea that, even if in principle we are entitled to see everything, the key issue is publication conditions, and mainly the mass-media spectacularisation of images. [Download full text]

The censorship of the freedom. By Irene Lozano

The European society should not withdraw in front of the Islamic demands that images with a potential to injure their religion be regulated. The right to freedom of speech cannot be cut in halves, and only the Penal Code should be entitled to restrain it. The author of the text criticises those in defense of self-censorship basing her discussion on the fact that democratic freedom and tolerance are guarantees enough for all members of society, irrespective of their beliefs. No democratic society should accept cuts in its fundamental rights only with a view to please the members of a certain religion. [Download full text]

Free Citizens, Tied Speeches. About a Text by Raoul Vaneigem. By Josep Pradas.

Freedom of speech entails certain risks, especially if presented in its most extreme guise, as is the case with Raoul Vanegeim, defender of the free circulation of ideas, even the most stupid or wildest ones, for example Nazi propaganda. Vanegeim thinks that the fight between ideas in a stage where freedom of speech is allowed will well prevent the risk that ideas contrary to humanity will circulate freely. In contrast, political restriction of freedom of speech, even if well-meaning, poses bigger threats, since it may end up injuring individuals’ freedom. I accept Vanegeim’s misgivings about political and mass-media power, but I criticise his excessive faith in the success of the fight of ideas, since the fight does not take play in the conditions of equality Kant imagined, nor between individuals willing to discuss, but rather between individuals digesting information and corporations fabricating it in private mass-media labs. It is not the free speeches of free citizens any more, but rather bound speeches so that free citizens may not reach reality at its deepest. [Download full text]