The article “The Ongoing Challenge to Define Free Speech” written by Stephen J. Wermiel seeks to address the ambiguous and ambiguous entity of freedom of speech. The author tries to define the scope and meaning of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Wermiel discusses the main sticking points of the topic and explores examples of when free speech becomes ambiguous and whether it should be prohibited.
Freedom of speech appears an inseparable part of the contemporary democratic society, but despite the decades of its declaration, free speech evokes fierce debates. The first matter of ambiguity is vague notions about whether there is “a line at which the hateful of harmful or controversial nature of speech should cause it to lose constitutional protection” (Wermiel). Although most of the U.S. population strongly supports freedom of speech, many doubts raise when considering particular forms of speech. For instance, so-called hate speech is directed to offending people due to their race, gender, identity, or other exclusive features. Several movements contributed to increasing awareness of vulnerable topics such as racism and emphasized the necessity of prohibition and punishment of hate speech. However, the nation believes in open dialogue and unforbidden expression of thoughts, while the idea of prohibition of particular forms of speech interferes with those beliefs.
Another controversy is connected to the freedom of the press: media is believed to provide fair information but also is seen as a tool controlled and restricted by the government. Essentially, news media is expected to operate independently though there are a lot of concerns and suspicions that interfere with media credibility. The author also highlighted the issue related to the public-private line within social media usage by officials (Wermiel). There is a vague representation of whether public officials’ expressions on the social networks should be considered personal opinions or public officials’ speech. Thereby, there are many disagreements about freedom of speech and freedom of the press that has not been solved over decades.
Work Cited
Wermiel, Stephen. “The Ongoing Challenge to Define Free Speech.” Human Rights, vol. 43, no. 4, 2018, Web.