Yes, free speech is not consequence-free
By Chris Roberts It’s hard to think that $1 billion will actually ever be paid to victims of Alex Jones’ libelous speech about the parents whose children died in mass shootings, but it’s easy to recognize that our First Amendment right to free speech does not mean speech has no consequences. Here’s the FoxNews.com story […]
On the ethics of introducing anti-First Amendment bills that won’t go anywhere
A Georgia lawmaker who won’t be coming back to the House filed a bill in April 2019 that is obviously oppositional to the First Amendment. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says Rep. Andy Welch’s “Ethics in Journalism” act would write a canon of media ethics, and create a board led by the chancellor of the University of […]
Not all opinions should be treated equally
By Maddy Ard Richard Spencer has some rather unpopular opinions. The outspoken white supremacist delivered a speech advocating for an ethno-white state on Oct. 17, 2017, at the University of Florida. Though vastly outnumbered by protesters demonstrating against Spencer, it seems Spencer’s supporters made the biggest waves. About an hour after Spencer’s speech, a non-fatal […]
Cartoonist fired for biting the hand that feeds his publication
A herd of media are writing about Rick Friday, who was fired from Farm News, a weekly publication of The Fort Dodge (Iowa) Messenger, after it published this cartoon pointing out that the CEOs of three men who run major farming-focused corporations earned a combined $53 million in 2015, as much as 2,129 Iowa farmers. […]
What Cam Newton could learn about public relations from Satchel Paige
There are some things you cannot control, as Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton learned during Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016. The only thing you can control is how you respond. And Newton showed little control in one of the few things he could control – how he dealt with journalists after the 24-10 […]
Cross-dressing PR: Why trust in government continues to decline
Trust in local government tends to be higher than state and federal government, but is there a relationship between decline in trust and the rise of PR in government? That’s too big of an issue to address on a Friday afternoon. Instead, here’s a story from Cranston, R.I., where a male van driver for a […]
Facebook news feed emotion experiment was a failure of journalism ethics, too
News that Facebook manipulated content of nearly 700,000 users continues to make waves, and now a Democratic senator has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the company and researchers properly notified and/or debriefed users that they were being used as experimental subjects. The 2012 experiment tested whether users posted higher levels of positive […]